Not Your Grandpa’s Bulk Vendor

CandyMachines.com Innovates in the Bulk Biz … and Amusements Too

We hear it constantly: People just don’t walk around with cash in their pockets these days, much less change. In the bulk vending world where quarters have long been the coin of the realm, that’s a real challenge. But, fear not. CandyMachines.com has been working diligently to modernize bulk vendors and bring them into the cashless payment world.

In a recent call with owner and CEO Andy Denton, we learned that not only has the bulk vending machine manufacturer been innovating to make card acceptance easy, but it has also been expanding their product line to include mini cranes and, more recently, larger cranes and even a kid-sized boxer. And they’ve got a long roadmap ahead with more to come, he promises.

Denton bought the company in March 2024 in what seems to be a purchase tailor made for success, that sweet spot where preparation and opportunity meet. Looking to buy a business for about a year, Denton came upon CandyMachines.com and felt his skill set tied in nicely with the company. His background was chiefly in e-commerce and internet marketing (his past also includes time overseas as a civil engineer on large construction projects like U.S. embassies).

“I saw my experience driving e-commerce transactions very similar to what the bulk and amusement industry does: attract as many people as you can and convert them, raising the dollar value of each transaction as high as you can.

“The previous owners – Jerry Korn, Harris Korn and Kevin Johnson – were just starting to figure out how to free the industry from the quarter mechanism, adding modern payments, card readers and dollar bill acceptors to these machines that historically didn’t have them,” Denton said. “Being able to take cards really opens up infinite possibilities.”

Five years ago, the previous ownership began developing quick-connect wiring harnesses for their machines and worked with their manufacturer to put sensors in each machine. The idea was to build a plug-and-play framework across all their machines.

“Kevin Johnson deserves all the credit,” Denton said. “It was his ingenuity and entrepreneurship that really brought this to life. Kevin desired to pack more value into these small machines. Even with the card systems we use, Nayax, and more recently Cantaloupe, we’ve yet to reach the full capacity of what these readers can do.

“Essentially, it’s all about rich analytics,” Denton said. “Historically, MDB (multi-drop bus) was used in vending and could support more detailed data, but in amusements, it typically was manual counters that only reported cash-in, cash-out, and maybe plays –operators still had to visit the machine, count prizes and do the math. Pulse devices, on the other hand, were just simple credit signals with no real intelligence.

“What we’ve done is transform pulse into a modern, data-rich system,” he continued. “With our sensors and quick-connect wiring, you now get real-time prize reporting, win ratios, alerts and performance insights right in the app – essentially giving pulse the advanced analytics operators always wanted from MDB, but in a way that could retrofit and work with existing pulse machines. Our goal was to make the machine ‘smart’ and connected.”

Originally, they partnered with Nayax for their bulk vending and mini cranes. Denton estimates that their sales have put some 10,000-15,000 Nayax readers on the streets. Knowing their customers then went on to buy Nayax readers for other equipment on their route that came without, he thinks the number of sales they’re “responsible” for might actually be a multiple of 5-10 times. “Nayax has been great to work with, and we value them greatly,” Denton said.

Now that Cantaloupe has a competing system, as of about a year ago, customers can choose between the two when they place an order, based on their preference.

“We’re just getting started with Cantaloupe, and I think it’s healthy to have some competition in the space. We fully support both brands as we modernize payment. Our goal is to empower a player base that has been powered by a quarter,” he said.

What’s Next?

On the payment side, the company is busy developing its own route management app. Called Smart Claw, it will go beyond the machine-based reporting of Nayax and Cantaloupe readers and give operators a complete location and route view.

“We’re still in the beta phase, but Smart Claw will connect to any of these payment devices and pull in all of your data, letting you collectively manage your entire route, not just machine by machine.
And speaking of machines, there’s a lot to come there, too. “It’s an exciting time,” says Denton. “We have an electronic rack rolling out in the next couple of weeks and a handful of new electronic bulk machines coming out this year.”

Denton stressed, “We’re trying to be innovators, not just importers. Our framework has many more development opportunities ahead, and we’re actively building to stuff even more value into our machines. We really teeter the line between bulk and amusement, and both types of products are worthy of innovation. We’re in a good place to do that.

“We’ve brought innovations to our customer base. The bulk business has come back and bloomed – it’s exciting to see a resurgence in bulk vending – and we’ve also built a small ecosystem around our cranes,” he said. With primary positions in the bulk and mini crane markets, they’ve added larger cranes and boxers, and are looking ahead to adding more amusement machines to their lineup as they push further into the FEC market.

“There’s still a lot of opportunity,” Denton said. “As I said, we have a whole roadmap ahead us. We’re continuing to iterate upon the engineering we’ve done, and there’s more to come. I don’t want to say too much, since we are see still early in the development, but we’re excited about what we’ll roll out in the coming months.” Stay tuned!

Visit them online at www.candymachines.com.