Ohio Operator Chris DeSarro
Marks 50th Year in Coin-Op Business

by Matt Harding

Chris DeSarro was 16 years old in 1976 when his late father Jack started a coin-op route.

“He was always in business for himself,” DeSarro said. In the ’60s, the elder DeSarro was a livestock buyer for big packing houses, then got into the bar business, which morphed into operating vending machines, jukeboxes and pool tables.

“I remember our first location was an American Legion. He knew the commander there.”

Everything Chris was doing at 16 is still the stuff he’s doing today as the proprietor of that route – Top Shelf Amusements & ATMs in East Liverpool, Ohio. Moving pool tables, placing pinball machines and the like. A couple years ago at a class reunion, he reminisced with friends, recalling that one of them got his finger smashed by a machine helping him put it on location. It was a lot funnier decades later than it was at the time.

DeSarro said there have been a lot of ups and downs over the last half-century in his part of the industry. The business had the good fortune of being around for the video game boom, with Space Invaders and Pac-Man headlining arcades.

Alongside the route, they operated game rooms in that era, which were eventually closed down by the city of East Liverpool, which thought the venues were “detrimental to the youth of the city.” “They used to put exorbitant licensing fees on games, too, which would pretty much put you out of business,” DeSarro added.

As the ’80s wore on, the business slowed. Poker machines that were popular at the time would routinely get confiscated.

In that first decade and a half, the route had lots of locations, so it wasn’t as worrisome when business slowed. DeSarro noted that the population in his area along the Ohio River was about 30,000 at the time; it’s now less than 10,000 people.

“What happens is you lose businesses,” he said. “You lose that clientele and the population grows older.” It’s also been a challenge, he added, as socialization habits change, citing younger generations not going out to bars as much. “We have to always reinvent ourselves.”

The first time that really came into play was the ’90s. “At that time, music was a dead item,” DeSarro explained. “You didn’t make a lot of money on a jukebox. Very, very few locations got heavy play on those jukeboxes.” He also added that both 45s and CDs presented lots of problems.

On the flip side, digital jukeboxes – exclusively with TouchTunes since about 1996 – were great for the route.

“Digital music has been very good for me. It’s been a savior for us,” he said. “Now, I’d rather put a jukebox in than anything. The mobile app has been tremendous, too. More people use that than put cash in the machine.” He also said he’s looking forward to the next TouchTunes box. “I’ll probably go across the board and update my jukeboxes when they release it.”

In addition to the route of video games, cocktail tables, pool tables, dart boards and jukeboxes, Top Shelf Amusements also operates ATMs (in fact, as you read earlier, it’s right there in the name).

“I never believed ATMs would be what they are now,” said DeSarro, who’s been running them since the early 2000s. “The ATMs are doing well. I think there will always be the need for cash in locations.”

He has more ATM locations than anything, he said, because they can go a lot of places that many street operators don’t typically like, such as gas stations and convenience stores. The state of Ohio’s lotto and gambling machines take up the coveted space in those locations, where video games used to be more of a staple.

“Gambling has really taken over the locations,” DeSarro expressed. “We were the ones that brought this business up all these years. Now, you have a few big companies who could afford to get into it do so.” He said the cost of operating such machines is cost prohibitive and that a small street operator “could never get into that market.”

Top Shelf has about 55 locations – mainly those ATM spaces as well as bars and fraternal clubs, like the ones he and his dad worked with when the business started. DeSarro has a couple of guys who help with installs but he’s a one-man-band in the day-to-day.

He tries to make things easier on himself by keeping the route fresh with up-to-date equipment. “People appreciate newer equipment,” he said. “It operates better and it’s easier to work on, and I get fewer service calls.” Still, his wife has been known to say, “You get more calls than a doctor.”

Quality service has been a primary reason for the business doing well. “It’s a lot about earning trust and taking care of customers.”

Top Shelf operates out of a 12,000-sq.-ft. warehouse in East Liverpool. He shares the warehouse space with his other business, Clearly the Best Bottled Water, which he started in 1989.

“It’s a separate company altogether but it’s the same as the vending business,” he noted. An old distributor friend of his had actually suggested that he look into it. “A lot of tips that have helped me in life and business have come from people I met in this business,” he said.

DeSarro also owns A1 Bar & Grill in East Liverpool and is a regular at the annual Ohio Coin Machine Association meetings and Amusement Expo. “It’s a great time to network with people,” he said. “I still learn something at every event.”

“At 16 years old in 1976, I would have never imagined at 65 I’d still be doing this. But I wouldn’t change this for anything. I’ve met a lot of lifelong friends through it. Those are things you reflect back on. It’s still a people business.”