The Franchise Insiders "Inside Scoop" Podcast

Robert Dean on the Vending Revolution: How Naturals2Go is Redefining Unattended Retail

• The Franchise Insiders • Season 5 • Episode 5

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Corporate executive turned entrepreneur Robert Dean takes us behind the scenes of his journey with Naturals2Go, revealing how he's transforming the outdated vending industry into a tech-forward healthy food revolution. Learn how his frustration with stale chips and broken dollar slots evolved into a multi-unit operation that's changing what consumers expect from unattended retail.


WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER

  • How Robert identified a massive gap in the vending market by focusing on quality, healthy options when competitors wouldn't
  • The unexpected tech revolution happening in vending—from AI-powered inventory management to cashless payment systems
  • Why unattended retail is becoming one of the fastest-growing segments in the franchise industry
  • The specific challenges of scaling from one machine to a multi-unit operation
  • Real numbers on startup costs, time to profitability, and key performance indicators in modern vending


WHY LISTEN NOW

The unattended retail space is experiencing unprecedented growth, with healthier options and advanced technology converging to create opportunity. Robert provides the insider perspective from someone who's already succeeding in this evolving industry.

"I saw broken machines serving stale junk food everywhere I traveled in my corporate career. The opportunity wasn't just to fix a problem—it was to completely reimagine what vending could be." — Robert E. Dean


ABOUT OUR GUEST

Before becoming a multi-unit Naturals2Go owner, Robert spent decades in corporate America, experiencing firsthand the limitations of traditional vending. Now he operates a fleet of next-generation machines that serve premium, healthy options through an experience that feels more like a micro-market than old-school vending.

Share, subscribe, and leave a review to help others discover opportunities in this emerging industry!

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Send us your questions for an upcoming episode at 305-710-0050.
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Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, I'm Jack Johnson.

Speaker 2:

I'm Jill Johnson.

Speaker 1:

And welcome to the we Bought a Franchise podcast. Today we've got a very unique guest, robert Dean, who owns I don't know, robert, how many naturals to go vending machines did we just decide you owned?

Speaker 3:

We have eight full-time routes, so I'm not sure how many machines it is, but it would be well in excess of 500. And we do a lot of things other than vendings, self-checkout, markets and things like that, so we have quite a few of those as well.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, welcome to the show. So, robert, this is really interesting because most of the time we're talking to traditional franchise owners. We own a window washing power washing franchise and now we're doing like a ton of paper sealing. It's so weird, the things you do in your life, that, like two years ago, someone would have said, hey, you know what do you see You're going to be doing all these paper ceiling jobs in a couple of years.

Speaker 2:

I don't even know if I knew what paper ceiling was a year ago.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and now it's like our favorite thing, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I actually know what it is. I think it's great.

Speaker 2:

Life is weird, yep.

Speaker 1:

It's funny how that happens. But, Robert, let's, let's start with you. You know, tell us your story. How did you become a, a business owner? Kind of give us, give us your path, if you will.

Speaker 3:

I grew up in the corporate world. You know, work for a for a large insurance and financial services company ended up running the Northeast United States for them for about 15 years. Company ended up running the Northeast United States for them for about 15 years. And, you know, the older you get and the more employees you get, that ended up being a topping out at about 29,000 employees. Then things start happening in your life. I had some grandkids, sick parents, things like that. So the constant traveling hotel room every night, all the employees you know it really kind of led me into wanting to do something entrepreneurial. So I put a year's notice in at my job and, you know, started looking at, doing you know, various things. I looked at virtually everyone but most franchises and business opportunities that I could find before I could find myself.

Speaker 1:

And here you are now with this business and I see people. I mean it seems like every week we're seeing people invest in these machines. Right, and I get it. I mean I think there. I mean there's there's many reasons why someone would invest into the vending business. So many benefits, not just the revenue. A lot of people seem to think it's like a, a passive investment. I'm sure it's not quite that, but maybe speak to what it's been like for work, life balance. And maybe what would be great to hear is you know you own so many machines now, but I'm assuming it didn't start that way right?

Speaker 3:

No, it didn't start that way and, interestingly enough, you know, I think I think with any wannabe entrepreneur you kind of have to find the right fit for yourself and in me, looking at all of the franchises and business opportunities, vending was a good fit for a few reasons. The first thing in my job is that we would build a $20 million facility and someone would bring a $200 vending machine into the place that never worked At that time, didn't have cashless payments, it was always broken and dirty at that time, didn't have cashless payments, it was always broken and dirty. And the number one complaint I would get being at that level of executive in our facilities wasn't all of the things you think it was, it wasn't that someone didn't get a $10 million commission check, it was that the vending machines never worked and that they were all junk food and just so many complaints about that. So I started thinking about doing something on my own. And just so many complaints about that. So I started thinking about doing something on my own. It was a good personality fit for a few reasons.

Speaker 3:

Firstly, I'm a foodie, food and beverage person Italian heritage, grandparents been cooking since I was probably five years old, so I had a love for food and beverage to begin with. Fairly handy, so I can, as I say, I can turn a screwdriver fairly well and back then I was a little bit of a techie. I'm not so much anymore it's been a long time now but I was a little bit of a techie and the interesting thing that led me into the business was that Naturals2Go had an idea, and that idea was to make a vending machine that was fairly dumb this vending machine here speak to an Android device and it didn't exist at the time. Back then, 2012, 2013, even cashless payments were rare. But the vending machines were kind of dumb on their own in that they didn't have any way to communicate and basically the technology at that time didn't work at Naturals2Go. But it was the right idea and I thought, wow, if I can get a hold of this tech, I can probably make this work. I'm not sure why it isn't working, but once again, being a little bit of a techie and super handy and good at electronics and electricity, I kind of thought I could make that work. So, and I thought it would revolutionize the vending industry, which it really has. And I thought it would revolutionize the vending industry which it really has.

Speaker 3:

And you know, in traditional vending someone walks into a vending location and they open the door and it's interesting They'll have a tablet in their hand. They still do it today. They'll count everything in the vending machine, write it down. They'll walk out to their big box truck and hope that they have it and can pack for it, and they hope that it's not melted right. And they hope that they have it and can pack for it and they hope that they it's not melted right and they hope that you know, once again, they do have the items, et cetera.

Speaker 3:

But this, this ability for a vending machine to speak to an Android device, you know, I thought would change the industry, where the vending machine could actually speak to me on a consistent minute by minute basis and let me know what was going on how is the vending machine, how is the health of it, what products are in there, what products are empty right, and the ability to kind of for the lack of a better term babysit my customers' vending machines created such a tremendous experience. In addition to that, when there was a problem, you know, in traditional vending everyone put a sticky note on the vending machine. You know, I'm Joe Smith, you owe me a dollar. You sucked another $2 out of me. You owe me a quarter. You know, you see, you still see that today.

Speaker 3:

But the ability also to rectify those situations where you would know immediately if there was an issue. Someone could touch a few buttons on the Android device bolted to the vending machine. You could send the money right back to the vending machine or a coupon to their phone. So there were so many things that intrigued me about this technology. Once again, it didn't work, but now, through research and development and good technology partners, we're on our seventh version of these devices and things really really work well now. So it really, it really changed the industry and made this, what we call the vending or break room experience, much, much better for the customer than it, you know, than it used to be.

Speaker 1:

So when you wake up in the morning, you've got or anytime you want to look at it, you've got a full dashboard that tells you everything that's going on with your machines. You've got all that data at your fingertips.

Speaker 3:

Everything. It's on my tablet, my notebook, my PC, my mobile phone. You know. It's everywhere so and it's easily, easily accessible and, you know, very accurate today.

Speaker 1:

You know, I and I'm sure you're seeing what we are. So we have a um, a CRM system for our our pinks window washing um franchise and constantly same sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

I've got my dashboard. I'm able to see our jobs when they're completed, I can see the hours, the guys that they're working, and I can track revenue. But if I really just want to make it simple, we've got an AI function in the CRM where I can just say, hey, how much have we billed this week? How much are we going to bill? How much are we going to bill?

Speaker 3:

And it can come back to me that data very quickly, which is super. And if you think about that technology and you think about the vending business in general, today 90% of the operators in the United States, and globally for that matter, are still using a tablet counting it, don't have the communication with the vending machine. So the industry itself is very backward and most of the competition still doesn't use the technology to even a low extent. It really makes that there isn't much competition in what we do because everyone still doesn't have it. The vending business is so old that there's just so many older operators, antiquated equipment. No tech can't be retrofitted the tech. So it's a real competitive advantage for us.

Speaker 1:

I'll never forget, when I was maybe 12 years old, my dad and I went to Costco, which at the time was called Price Club, and they had a vending machine you could buy like your own vending machine.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I've seen that.

Speaker 1:

And he's like hey, you know, I've got an idea for your first business, we're going to buy this vending machine. Yeah, never came to fruition, but I'll always remember that because prior to that, and you know, in the schools we'd always have, you know, the beat up old vending machines like the ones you talked about, the one, the Snickers bar would get stuck.

Speaker 2:

It would get stuck in the little coil.

Speaker 1:

Or you push the wrong, you know that sucked yeah, but that was the moment that it really became clear to me that no, this is a business. And then, as we got deeper into the business ownership world, the advantages not only from a revenue standpoint were there, but also from the tax savings standpoint with section 179. Absolutely, I mean that in itself is a is a strategy to own vending right.

Speaker 3:

Well, it certainly is, and it's interesting, to take a step back, that you mentioned buying a vending machine at Sam's Club or at Costco or whatever, and I obviously looked at that when I started. But there were some significant disadvantages to that. First of all, someone dropping a vending machine on my front porch. What do I do with it?

Speaker 3:

I can't move it around I don't know where to put it, I don't know how to program it, I don't know how to fix things, I don't know how to work it right. So the advantage I felt with Naturals To Go kind of the business in a box was pretty simple. Naturals To Go said look, we've got very good vending machines, which they did. We have tech started that we think is going to revolutionize the industry. But it wasn't there yet. But one of the biggest things was white glove delivery and training. You know, not only would they bring me into training, which I was skeptical about, you know thinking I'm a pretty sharp guy who can teach me anything right at that time, but the training was just tremendous. I mean it was tremendous and I couldn't have done it without it. And then the ability for naturals to go to kind of work, the movement of these eight 900 pound vending machines around for me, with big guys with big toys they say you know, with the big trucks right, and you know that training and the ability to get those things around really got me started.

Speaker 3:

From a tax perspective, the vending business really is math. I mean, to start off, you can buy something for a dollar and sell it for $2 in about four days. So me with an accounting degree, yeah, the math works pretty good with this. But then when you get into the tax savings, it's pretty significant because the business, as we say, requires a lot of iron, it requires a lot of equipment, right, and the tax advantages and depreciation in Section 179 really enable you to manage the taxation every year. And it's really, you know, depreciation in these vending machines. They last forever. I mean, I don't have one vending machine that I've ever had to throw away and it's been 15 years, so they last a long time. But you're able to accelerate that depreciation with 179, of course, to offset income. It's a very good business for tax strategies, no question about it.

Speaker 1:

So you can take that 179 all in the first year if you want right, or you can amortize it. Is it over seven years? Is that right?

Speaker 3:

You can do either. Most people like to take it all in year one, but it also depends if you're buying vans and vehicles. So depreciation expense management is a very it's very good benefit to the business, but it takes some care like ours.

Speaker 1:

So we're franchise consultants first. That's our first business. We help people become franchise owners and buy, buy businesses like naturals to go. So we grow franchise insiders to a point where, okay, now we're starting to pay a lot of money in taxes, let's add another business and then we added our pinks windows franchise and while it's been, you know, highly successful and we're out of, you know we're, we have such a good team. We were able to be their top franchisee last year, but it was still a business in its first year that we spent a lot of money on. So, yeah, so you had a loss in the business. Well, the accountant says to us great news guys, this loss you have in the business now mitigates the profit you had in Franchise Insiders. Sure, god bless America.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. Hey, it is the tax law and we you know.

Speaker 1:

Well, and the nice thing is to you know, putting all political sides aside here for the purpose of the podcast, but the way the current tax structure is written, it's in all of our, for all of us business owners. We should be going out there and making as much money as we can Because, again, like you said, staying within the letter of the law, it's in our favor, the, the, the right. Now, the way tax laws are written favors the business owner. So to have a business like yours, it not only is profitable and works for your portfolio, but also comes with these tax advantages right out of the door. I mean, it's incredible.

Speaker 3:

No, no question about it.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about your first year. This is really where we like to break it down, because you know people as they start to think about investing. You know you've got, you know Bob Smith, who's out there listening to this podcast, and you know he's a busy executive, but he's got this burning desire to diversify Right. You know, what advice would you have to that person who maybe isn't ready to leave their full-time job but wants to start diversifying and adding another revenue stream? What was it like for you when you started?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think the first thing that I had to analyze, as does everyone, is time. You know, most people seem to want an absentee business, right, they want to continue to keep their job, they want something completely absentee, and of course, I looked at that as well. You know, I looked at a donut franchise right before I got into Naturals to Go. You know, the questions came to me. Well, if you know, susie doesn't show up to make the donuts in the morning at 4am, I have to go do that. Right, and you know to think that things are really absentee and going to work. Well, I just never believed in that, right. So the first is time. You know, and some people view the vending business as as absentee or semi-absentee. Right, that it's just easy. Right, it's only semi-absentee and easy if you have low performing locations. Right, because these locations need replenished and the better you do at securing customers, the more frequently they need serviced, right. So vending is not something that you take every couple of weeks I can go see a customer. The machines are empty in three days because of what we do. So in looking at that initially, I knew that it was going to be more work than people said it was going to be, especially to do it right and to continue to develop business and all of that. So the first thing I think anyone has to determine is how much time really, with your full-time job, can you put into this on your own, or do you need some support system or help family friends your own, or do you need some support system or help family friends? Employee, whatever it might be? So when I got into this, I started fairly small, but it was the largest thing that Naturals to Go had ever seen, because I'm one of the first people to ever buy a business opportunity from Naturals to Go and I bought 30 units. At first Naturals to Go I said, wow, 30 units, it's fairly big. But I really knew that those 30 units would take a lot of time to do well and to try to do things. World-class was going to be different than just you know what the competition was doing.

Speaker 3:

So and and you know there are a lot of mistakes that got made along the way the biggest mistake that I made was when I got into this. I wanted to do healthy vending and I took that to an extreme right. You know I didn't want to sell Pop-Tarts and Mountain Dew, so I ended up trying to sell organic kale chips, right, and organic candy, and I really took it to the extreme and it failed miserably. Like it just didn't fly, you know, as they say, the dogs wouldn't eat it, but. But, but the equipment was so good and the service platform that I call premium vending with world-class service. Their service was tremendous. Everything worked, you know. Everything was spotlessly clean, serviced, frequently monitored.

Speaker 3:

So I had a lot of customers come to me and say, can't you just do everything? Like, look at these other vending machines we have in here, it's all junk food, we know. But we, you know, we don't want to have a mutiny here if we just do healthy health food, and you know. So I decided and gave in on. A few customers said look, why don't we do everything and why don't we do 50-50? You know, can you agree on 50-50? If someone wants to buy a Mountain Dew bottle this great, this big, they're going to be able to do it. But I still want healthy choices in here and got some agreements to do that and ever since we adopted that 50-50 platform, it's just been tremendous. So the junk food is bad alone, the healthy vending alone is not good, but that combination of having very smart choices has really fueled our company and Naturals to Go. You know all the operators across the country have adopted.

Speaker 2:

And you can make those changes fairly quickly, right? So you can look at your data and see what's selling out and what's not and then be able to swap it out. So you can be pretty like quickly reactive but also proactive if you need to be, and, you know, test maybe a certain product or something like that. So you have that data coming to you.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, I mean with with these, with these devices. Now speaking to the vending machine, it gives us the data that no one ever had Right. And we don't have to guess. So you know it takes about nine seconds to run that report called an item movement to see what's moving, and run it for the last month or two or three and see and it tells you. You know, if an item's not moving I consider every row of a vending machine its own store.

Speaker 3:

You know it's its own profit center, right? So if that coil is not moving product, you've got to try something else. And the other thing that helps is just listening to the customer. I mean most of our competition. If you looked at all of their vending machines, it's the same product in row one, row two, row three. It's the same in every location, regardless of demographics. What customers want, it's just the same products. And we're a little bit crazy, you know. We have a thousand products, we. You know it's interesting, I tell this story. A lot kind of change my philosophy as to what you're asking about putting the right products in that people want Early in the business.

Speaker 3:

I guess I was about four years into the business and I walked into a Starbucks. You know I'm really a big time guy. I'm going to go into Starbucks and get a black coffee. I'm probably going to get a big black coffee, right, you know, benty, whatever they call it, I'm going to get a big black coffee. Right, you know, benty, whatever they call it, I'm going to get a coffee. And there's a girl.

Speaker 1:

I always get it confused. I always get the names yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, there you go.

Speaker 3:

So there was a girl in front of me, very attractive appeared to be 24, 25 years old, maybe a student, you know and she orders this drink in front of me that I have no clue what that is. She orders a hookah, ju juca mocha latte two whip, no squirt, whatever right. And it's this long, long recipe. And I had a chance to talk to her after I got my copy, while she was waiting for hers, and I said, hey, you know, I'm in the food and beverage business and I'm interested in what you ordered. And she said, hey, people today, especially my generation, they want what they want and we're willing to pay for it, but we want what we want and if we can't get it in one place, we'll go somewhere else.

Speaker 3:

And you know, that led onto our company being now that if we have a, you know, an employee in a manufacturing concern that once a bang cherry blade energy drink with creatine in it and extra electrolytes, like we're going to put it in because they're going to buy one every day. So the whole market of food and beverage has become real custom and it just, it just taught us to be very good listeners and we listen to the customers. They can do it on the machine and make requests, but really we try to put in products that people want. Yeah, stay on top that quite frequently you know it's really interesting.

Speaker 1:

We took my mom to a place in San Diego called Urban Plates, and Urban Plates you go and you customize your plate. You choose what meat you want, what salad you want, and for us it's heaven.

Speaker 1:

I'm a picky eater, so yeah you are, you know what we mean, right, but my mom, born in 1941, 1941 walks up to the counter and says I hate this, I don't want to make. I want them to tell me what I should have. And it goes exactly to what you said is that it seems like the further we go along each generation because think about it now we have so many choices in what we can listen to and what we can eat. We can have so much customization. It's incredible. My question for you is what right now, is the? What's the number one thing you're selling? What are people buying from the vending machines? Is there one clear leader or maybe category?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, there's not one, there's not one clear leader. It's a lot of a lot of things, and of course, we're pretty good size. Now, you know, I mean, still to this day, nothing sells like water. That's interesting that you know bottled water. But bottled water leads into flavored water and sparkling water right, and it leads into vitamin water and now it leads into coconut water drinks right. So you know, waters are still good sellers. Carbonated beverages, of course, on the more unhealthy side, are still you know, still super popular.

Speaker 3:

What's happening more, though, in the vending business for popularity is really becoming real food, though, and the real food, especially. In our case, we make 700 food items. Like we're crazy, you know, we do it now, we do once again micro markets and some things we can get into, but really, in vending for really good installations, where you know, employees today don't want to leave and their employers don't want them to leave, it's inefficient to go out for lunch in traffic in an hour and a half right, they want to be at work, but they want to be home for the soccer game right, so they want to get finished. But oftentimes in now vending, one of the biggest complaints and threads of discontent was the food is assembly line processed prison food. People called it rot gut. I mean if you can imagine the comments we got.

Speaker 3:

But now, in taking vending and really supplying good food that people can use as a meal, we call it so they don't have to have Cheez-Its for lunch. Our company now sells about 38,000 meal items a month. That would not be snacks. So if you think about that, people now in the workplace want good food. They want custom-made food, they want good food that we can buy and resell. So a lot of it now has morphed from junk snacks into real food and it's really taken off over the last five or six years.

Speaker 1:

You know I was making breakfast for our son this morning.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for doing that, of course I made him two scrambled eggs. We get these protein pancakes from Costco that have more protein and fruit. I put the plate in front of him. He says Dad, you're crazed, you're obsessed with protein. I said you're damn right, I'm obsessed with protein. It's good for you. You're growing, you need it to build strength. My question for you is for people can we get heavier protein items out of the vending machines now? What kind of products are you selling there?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we we have a whole array of protein products, both mostly in bar form and many different ones right, there's a lot of popular ones there and then also in liquid form. So you know, it is the protein shakes and all of that. When we're doing specific vending, um for athletics. You know it's super heavy that we're doing when we're in universities and we're in high schools and we're backed by the sports facilities. We have specific sports vending that we do. But in most of the general vending the marketplace still wants protein bars, they want protein shakes, and the sales of that seems to increase every month Once people try those as an alternate to a candy bar, you know, and whether it's a cliff bar, it's a fit cruncher, it's a premier protein.

Speaker 3:

I mean it could go on and on with the, with the choices that we have, you know, and a lot more meat snacks too. To think that now we sell bags of organic beef jerky that are really big in vending machines and they sell and they're expensive but they really sell. So the meat snack options and high protein options, once people try them it seems like they'll opt for that more often than the candy. So we've seen a good trend in that.

Speaker 1:

Cool. So I'm assuming you probably do a fair amount of validation where prospective Naturals to Go owners talk to you. I know we do for Pinks once a month something like that. We're talking to prospective franchise owners normally on like a big group call. Is that something you do too?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, I used to do a lot more of it Now it's just lack of time. You know, try to get more people together to kind of get to me maybe once a month on a more of a kind of a Zoom right than a lot of individual calls. And it's interesting, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. Well, and it's interesting. You know, people that are getting into Naturals to Go or into vending come from all different walks of life and all different objectives with their life. You know some want to stay very small and want it kind of as a side gig we say right and some want to know how to take it to a major employer or a regional powerhouse, and you know they're every way in between. The business is very scalable, so it's interesting. You know, when you do one-on-one conversations it's easier to focus on that person that's trying to fund their child's education, but they're not necessarily want to hire 50 people.

Speaker 3:

Then you get people that really want to do it. So the business is very, very scalable, super profitable. When you're small, you don't have infrastructure, employees can do it out of your house. It's very profitable. When you're large, like I am, it's super profitable. In the middle it's a little bit tough when you're starting to get to that spot where I have to quit my job or I have to hire employees, buy big vans, a warehouse. I'm in employee benefits, workers' compensation insurance, so that middle land in vending, and I'm assuming with most of the businesses that you represent as well, it's a tough spot to be in. So you have to blow through that middle. You either have to stay small, you know, or or or get pretty serious about this.

Speaker 1:

You know, I mean again, I think it's. It's like we bought five units of our franchise, right? So we bought all of Palm beach. We initially started with two and then we got real nervous right. We were like what if somebody buys? We bought Boca Raton and Delray beach and then we said what if somebody comes along and buys Palm Beach and we're like we want to be able to clean Mar-a-Lago one these days, right?

Speaker 1:

So, we better buy the other three units. So we spent a lot of money on franchise fees, which impacted our first year profitability and also because of the scale of the business. We have a GM who he's great. His close rate is like 80% now. But, like you said, we're kind of growing towards the company we want to be, because our whole vision for this was we want to scale to 15 trucks. You want your truck doing a thousand bucks a day that's what you want a window washing truck to do, right? So? But it means that in the beginning, as you're growing there, you're pumping a lot of cash into the business to to get it where it needs to go.

Speaker 1:

And someone sent me a message last night and they asked me a very question the way people talk, right, when was the point? When was the inflection point when it all changed? And I said I don't look at it like that, I look at it more like Rocky Balboa. It's just how long can you stay in the fight and take punches until you can finally throw the hand? You're right about that You're right.

Speaker 3:

That's just the way it is, I mean. So I think you're right about that. You have to stay in the fight. You know, until you get to that scale that you need to be based on what your objectives are for sure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I know if I were talking to you as a prospective investor and I don't know, jill, what your thought would be, but mine would be okay I'm curious if I'm looking at this as someone who maybe is going to scale in with one or two machines. But what if I'm a corporate executive and I do okay, right, let's say I do 100, 200k a year and I want to make this my full-time thing, understanding that I won't get there overnight. Is there a path to me doing that as a vending machine owner? And that would be a question I would ask you without having to talk about any real specific numbers. But do you think that's attainable? Is that something someone could do?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's attainable. You just have to know how to scale. And when you scale infrastructure, you have to scale equipment and locations at the same time. It just has to be the same right? You can't get a bunch of infrastructure and not get more customers. They have to go like this. So, once again, when you start and you start with eight vending machines or 10 vending machines right, or maybe you grow to 20 on your own, but then you can't grow to 22. You have to go 20 to 40. If you're going to add infrastructure, you kind of have to double your equipment. When you're going to add a vehicle or warehouse employees etc. And it depends on the market you're in.

Speaker 3:

In this business too, though, it just really depends on the locations that you select. You know, when we, when we get a location, it's just very important to get the right locations, and if you do that it's a lot easier to scale and get the full time. If you really have busy locations, and if you do that, it's a lot easier to scale and get the full time. If you really have busy locations and if you don't, it's just you know the equipment costs the same for poor location as it does a busy location. You don't see exact same equipment cost right, and you have a choice at that. You can select any place that you want, and the competition is so bad that we can really get pretty much any place that we want today.

Speaker 3:

So not only do you have to scale in equipment and infrastructure at the same time, but you have to be able to select the right customer relationships, very, very, very important in this business. I mean, I'm sure it is with any business, but in this one it's, you know, it's especially important and everybody's got a different path. Everybody asks that same question Well, if I want to do this, what do I have to do? And every market's different. The individual business owner is different, situations are different, so it's really a custom answer to every individual person. It's not one set thing. But obviously, just like investors or whatever you see, things have to be done within your own personality. You know, and you have to be able to run this business and grow and scale based on what you think in your own personality is, and it has to match at some point before you really see the light.

Speaker 1:

How's the support from Naturals to go? You know you're in a place where there probably aren't many operators you correct me if I'm wrong many operators at your level within their system. Do you feel like their support scaled along with your needs as you grew?

Speaker 3:

Well, it's kind of interesting, With me being one of the first, I created a lot of the support that was necessary, right, and a lot of the things that have developed in Naturals to Go. Naturals to Go really today is an unattended retail company. Vending is a small piece of what we do. It's a big piece of what we do but it's a small piece as far as all of the offerings that we have. Right, you know, when you're looking at vending into vending markets, into significant office coffee business or coffee vending, we do self-checkout micro markets now artificial intelligence vending, and we do pantry services. So there's just a lot of different things now that we've been able to scale, to do. And it's interesting. We just had a training class yesterday.

Speaker 3:

Naturalist to Go really takes on meaning that for training classes, between 30 and 40 new business owners come in every six weeks and I think there was about 40 there here in Savannah over the last couple of days. Right, and the initial support is pretty interesting, you know, and the support changes over time. Originally it's I need training, I need that support of training, then I need the support of finding locations until I learn my own business development, then I need support of getting the machines put in place, and then I need a coach for a year or so to kind of guide me along the way until I'm self-sustained. Some operators need a lot less support than others. It just depends, right. It really depends on that old. If it's up to me, you know, if it is to be, it is up to me, right. So some operators need a lot more support and get it, and some operators need a lot less support and start growing.

Speaker 3:

Once an operator gets to that position where they've been coached, they've gotten through that first year or so all their machines are working. Now, when they want to go to the next level of support, we have another phase called Naturals to Grow. And now, naturals to Grow consider it something I built, I developed it with some folks at Bentec and Naturals to Go that is a masterclass. So now we're going to come to graduate school and we're going to teach you how to do a lot of different forms of unattended retail to expand. And we're going to teach you how to do a lot of different forms of unattended retail to expand, especially into the self-checkout markets, which are just a phenomenal. Food and beverage you know, covid killed the cafeteria.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3:

It killed the cafeteria. So a lot of places that had cafeterias no longer have them. But they have self-checkout markets that are really your own convenience store in your own secure business. But it's all unattended and it's self-checkout and of course there's security and things like that. So after an operator gets through that initial phase, the support they need really is now growth support, new kinds of tech and all of that. So we have an entire department that kind of does that.

Speaker 3:

And because it's not a franchise in this case at Naturals To Go, when an operator buys more equipment, we have some profit, but if they don't, we don't. So we really have to do a good job along the way to continue to get that customer. They can buy equipment vending machines from other people don't have to buy it from us, but our goal is to do such a good job that they continue to want to buy from us and want to innovate with us. The operator base, though it's interesting. Like myself, we've invented and developed a lot of these things. You know when you're on the front lines it doesn't matter what mother corporate says. You know when you're really doing it. You figure a lot of things out. Naturalist to go is interesting. They're pretty good listeners. They've been good listeners to me for 15 years, so a lot has you know the same.

Speaker 1:

I would say the same thing for pinks, like they started in Austin. Um, we were one of their first franchisees, and down here in South Florida there's a heavier need for power washing than there is in Austin, right, and the deeper we go into summer and things like that where we just get torrential rains, the more people need it. And so we were like guys, we need a heavier duty power washing truck. Are you okay with us testing this for you to roll it out to other franchisees? We'll take the risk, we'll spend the extra money on it. And they were like yeah, absolutely. And so to have a partner who's collaborative and those jobs, by the way, are paying huge dividends for us now because now you know we're seeing it, we can do, you know, know, get it done faster, right? Yeah, so I think you're right, and it's fun to be, and not everyone wants to be a trailblazer franchisee.

Speaker 1:

A lot of times they like it when, when people like us can sort of do that, and then by the time they come in, everything's on a menu. But the thing that I love and the call we did right before we did this podcast with you, is our weekly pinks sort of franchisee call, where every single franchise owner whether you're two days old or you're you're you're the longest tenured, like we are. And uh no, there's two more people that are ahead of us, that were that got in before us. But everybody loves it because they throw all our numbers onto the call and we see on a week by week basis who's leading the field. And I just think that that is one of the great things about franchise ownership is, yes, we want to build a business, yes, we want to help people, but if you're competitive, it gives you that extra little jolt every week. To want to go out and win too, it does.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no question about it, no question.

Speaker 1:

Well, you've been so generous with your time. I have one last question for you, which is what are the effects of AI on your business currently? What do you guys? How do you think it's going to impact it? Is it making it better, easier? Maybe tell us about that.

Speaker 3:

Well, the interesting thing is that AI bridges a pretty big gap for us. So when you have a vending machine, right, a vending machine has a closed door, so you can't have theft in that right. So when you do that, someone you know does the payment, whatever they're going to do, and it vends and you have a secure environment. In the micro market business, where we have open air convenience stores with insecure businesses right, you know, we only do those when the penalty for theft would be expulsion from school or termination of employment. So you have to have that agreement, right, and we do monitor the security cameras, but you can't, you know you can't watch it every single minute of the day, especially the bigger. So we have those two ends of the spectrum where we have the complete closed door and a complete open door, and what AI has done for us is we, you know, we waited a long time to get the right tech going because the AI inventing didn't work. It was the same as I talked to you about that Android device right, it's just, the tech was a good idea, but it didn't work and people were trying to use weight and different things where you know you could just grab something and it would charge you the right amount and it didn't know what you were taking and it didn't work. So we developed a lot with our partners in AI over the years that now really bridges a gap.

Speaker 3:

What that gap is is that we're able to do non-vending, so I think, a more robust service with artificial intelligence eyes when places have public access, right. So if you have a place that doesn't want a vending machine, maybe they think, hey, a vending machine is too tacky for my beautiful high rise residential Right, but we still need a store. But we can't have it attended. We lose our shirts. We can't have someone sitting in a store 24 hours. What can you put in?

Speaker 3:

And in those cases is usually where we do the artificial intelligence and we have beautiful cabinets that we call managed stores and you know they have small products and big products. We can do not only food and beverage, but laundry, soap and paper towels and things that you need, bigger things, right for those types of installations. Eyes, artificial eyes and basically now the technology has gotten so good that when you do a cashless payment or you scan a card and it unlocks the door and you're able to open it, you can take what you want. Look at it. If you keep it, it charges it. If you put it back and take something else and we've been able to make that 99.999% accurate.

Speaker 3:

And a lot of companies now that aren't using the tech we're using. You know they're 95% accurate and if you think about a thousand men's, there are a thousand people. If you're 95% accurate, you have 50 really upset people. That's not a very good thing. So it has to be with AI in food and beverage and unattended retail. It has to be virtually 100% accurate, and now we've got these vending machines and the tech that they're associated with learning learning over time as well, and learning the absolute everything in the package, the exact color and kind of what you see. So it's made a pretty big difference as well. So AI in our business done right is really a part of the future of vending. Ai done wrong is still bad, but we've made some very good strides and I think over time you'll see more and more AI versus vending machines.

Speaker 1:

So could Naturals to Go eventually go, you know, like the at the airport, where we're able to walk into, like the smaller sort of store, with it's unattended but all the products are there. Could Naturals to Go eventually go to that route where it's essentially a store, if you will?

Speaker 3:

We're doing those now yeah.

Speaker 2:

Sounds like they have them.

Speaker 3:

yeah, so we're doing those now we're doing artificial intelligence, self-checkout, markets. We're doing a lot of that now. The technology has just gotten to the spot where we're comfortable with it. Yeah, so we're comfortable with it, yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's incredible. This is really interesting. Thank you so much for spending time with us Before we let you go. Is there anything that we didn't ask, that we should have asked?

Speaker 3:

No, I think you asked a lot of great questions. Once again, I'll just kind of finish that this world of unattended retail that we're in we used to call it vending, but this world of unattended retail there's really no end in sight for this and these businesses are really growing and those that can do it in a world-class fashion and really pay attention to the detail can really succeed. If you're not that kind of person, probably not a good business for you, but I think in the future, doing it the right way in every aspect is really what's going to make it successful. And everywhere you go today, you see self-checkout. You just see it everywhere and it's not going to go away. It's going to get bigger. So adding that would be a good end to it, and I really appreciate you having me on. It's been a pleasure to be on your podcast.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Same as well. Well, uh and uh. Thank you so much for spending time and for everyone that wants to get more information on naturals to go. You know the best way to do it Text us 3 0, 5, 7, 1, 0, 0, 0, 5 0. And for today's podcast, I'm Jack Johnson. All right, see you guys. Thank you All right, take care. Good having you.