Vending Delivers

Vending Delivers As Sales Of Pringles Minis In Vending Machines Exceed All Expectations

Vending Delivers: Right from the get-go, it was clear that the launch of Pringle’s Minis was going to be a major event in the UK vending industry.

The excitement was palpable even before Christmas, when we checked in with ARN (Automatic Retailing Northern), the industry’s leading wholesaler. We’d heard about ‘the Minis buzz’, and cheekily, we asked Lyndsey Boutflour if she could substantiate the rumour that pre-sales were booming. She was only too pleased to oblige: ‘You can absolutely quote us on this’, she said. ‘We have already taken pre orders for 4,218 cases for Pringles Minis Original and Sour Cream & Onion. The fact that these products are exclusive to the vending channel and that they are available only through ARN really is a big deal for us.’

Vending Delivers!

Vedning Delivers
ARN’s Lyndsey Boutflour

As we reported in Planet Vending a month ago, ‘Pringles is the growth engine of the Chips & Snacks category in the UK and with a consumer target that over-indexes in out of home consumption’. That fact alone makes vending the perfect fit for the brand’s launch of Pringles Minis, which promised ‘to give all the taste of the iconic Pringles crisp in a 30g bag’, which was handy for on-the-go and perfect for the spiral.

Vending operators responded pro-actively and a number of them stoked the fires of anticipation by means of concerted Social Media campaigns. At least 2 of them, Excel Vending and Graddons, launched sales incentives. Consumers were invited to tweet about their Pringles Minis purchases; what flavour they had bought and where they enjoyed them. A ‘winner’ would be chosen at random from the participants and the prize was a case of Pringles Minis.

Jane MacDonald of Excel told us, ‘we were delighted with the response to the Pringles Minis Competition that we ran on both Facebook and Twitter.  We’ve worked hard to build our Social Media community, so we’re used to excellent responses. However, the reaction to Pringles Minis was astonishing. We generated over 1,000 comments on Facebook and around 600 on Twitter in the first 12 hours after going ‘live’! I think the success is a good measure of Pringles popularity and the appetite consumers have for the brand-new Pringles Minis.’ Vending Delivers again.

Vending DeliversTwo further operators, The Vending People and Brodericks, identified Kellogg’s willingness to collaborate with their in-house marketing teams as being critical to the success of the launch. Josh Wood, Group Marketing Manager at the Vending People told Planet Vending, ‘Our launch event at the University of Plymouth on February 6th proved just how popular Pringles Minis will be in our vending machines. The day was all about sharing the fantastic taste of Pringles and highlighting that Minis can only be bought from vending machines.

‘For students, the opportunity to enjoy one of their favourite snacks in a convenient way proved to be a huge selling point. Most of the students we met were excited and surprised to see one of their favourite brands in a bag. Some of the feedback even characterised them as ‘cute’!

‘It was also great to see the students from the drama department using the empty boxes for a project they were working on, which helped reduce our environmental impact’, Josh said. ‘Following the great reception at the university and the hugely positive response from the students, we can’t wait to see more and more students along with everyone else tucking into Pringles Minis from our vending machines.’ Once again, Vending Delivers.

Pringles Minis
Brodericks customers meet Mr. P at Manchester Airport

Meanwhile, Brodericks were re-writing their own record books as Pringles Minis achieved unprecedented sell-through. Johnny Broderick told PV, ‘Brodericks are smashing it out of the park, with 25,000 bags of Pringles Minis sold in the first six weeks – and there’s no sign of sales slowing down, which is both proof that Vending Delivers and the reason why they’ll be a permanent fixture in Brodericks machines for the foreseeable future.

‘Pringles Minis are proving popular in all business and industry sites as well as leisure and travel markets, proving once again that vending is a great platform for brands’, Johnny said.

‘It’s great for the vending industry. Kelloggs have created Pringles Minis specifically for us and that means we can command a premium price and enjoy healthy profit margins by making a premium product available in a niche market.

‘It’s perfect timing, when you analyse it’, Johnny said. The out of home market that Kellogg’s have identified and invested in has coincided with the vending industry’s evolution from ‘service provider’ into ‘work place retailer’.

Vending Delivers

Vending Delivers
Johnny Broderick

‘I want to recognize and thank Kelloggs for becoming the first brand to encourage their marketing people to sit down with ours to create a joint plan. Ultimately, we agreed to launch the product on our Pay4Vend platform, which gave our customers a heads-up about the imminent arrival of Pringles Minis vending bags.‘Kelloggs’ willingness to cross-promote on social Media platforms, utilizing mediaVend, (and a personal appearance from Mr. P himself!), ensured that our launch project will go down as a nailed-on success story. This approach is long overdue in the vending industry in my opinion and it makes me wonder what could be achieved if other brands were equally willing to invest in the channel.

`Finally, I like to say ‘thank-you Mr. P, best wishes from Mr. B!’’

Kelloggs National Account Manager Gianna Regonini seemed genuinely moved by this feedback when we spoke to her today. ‘I feel incredibly humbled by these comments. The enthusiasm with which the UK’s leading vending operators have welcomed Pringles Minis is very gratifying for all of us at Kelloggs who have worked so hard to make the launch a success. Vending is a very professional sector of the market and we’re delighted to have forged so many important partnerships in the short time we’ve been a part of it. The launch of Pringles Minis in the channel has proved to us that Vending Delivers.’

More on the launch of Pringles Minis on Planet Vending, HERE
Has your business enjoyed great success with Pringles Minis? Let us know! editor@planet-vending.com

 

 

 

 

 

About the author

The Editor

Planet Vending’s Editor is Ian Reynolds-Young and it’s Ian’s unique writing talent that has made PV what it is today – the best read (red) vending blog in the world, and vending’s best read (reed). Ian ‘tripped and fell into vending’, in the capacity of PR executive, before launching a specialist agency, ‘reynoldscopy’, dedicated to the UK Vending business. The company continues to represent the interests of many of the sector’s leading brands.

‘It’s all about telling stories’, he says. ‘We want to make every visit to PV a rewarding experience. By celebrating the achievements of the UK’s operating companies, we’re on a mission to debunk the idea that vending is retailing’s poor relation.’

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