Five Star Food Service Gets Sales Lift Using ‘Vision’ Digital Advertising Platform

Five Star Food Service Inc., a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based vending, micro market and refreshment service provider, has reaped big gains in its micro market promotions thanks to a digital advertising platform that runs manufacturer-sponsored advertising. The digital advertising platform from LightSpeed Automation boosted sales by 12 to 85 percent for one product a month after the promotion began, according to C.J. Recher, Five Star’s director of marketing.

As a sales driver, the Vision video screen device has provided Five Star a helpful tool in negotiating promotions with product manufacturers. There are also possibilities for monetizing the digital advertising in other ways.

One promotion featured Arizona iced tea in Chattanooga, Tenn. when it was newly-introduced to the vending and micro market sector. The 42-inch video screen showed a slide for 10 seconds in a 60-second rotation. The five locations with the digital advertising experienced a daily sales lift from 42 units to 72 units. The product was priced at the manufacturer suggested retail price.

Another digital advertising promotion, M&M’s Crispy, boosted sales from six units per day to 65.

Five Star began testing the Vision program last summer in five locations in the Chattanooga area. “We were very pleased with it and are looking to move forward with that program,” Recher says. LightSpeed assisted Five Star with installing the 42-inch video screens in both blue collar and white collar locations. “We wanted to see the difference in sales lift,” Recher says.

Five Star mounted the video screens on walls in different parts of the break rooms, depending on each room’s layout. “We tried to put it in high traffic areas where people would see it, not necessarily having to be right next to the kiosk,” Recher says. Five Star also runs digital ads on the micro market kiosk, so the Vision screen is a secondary advertising platform at the location. “We run similar promotions on the kiosk screen.”

The company knew from its work with 365 Retail Markets that point-of-sale marketing improves micro market sales. “We definitely do see a lift,” Recher says. “It’s that top-of-mind awareness. We knew that advertising works. Once we found out we were able to do that with the technology from 365, we jumped on it.” Product manufacturers are becoming more aggressive in promoting products at the point of sale.

The 365 Retail Market promotions are uniform for all of Five Star’s micro markets. Five Star ensures that the products being promoted are in all of the locations, which is typically the case.

The Vision device, however, allows Five Star to run more than one promotion at a time, Recher says.

Five Star has a marketing department that creates the digital advertising for both the 365 and Vision screens. The company negotiates the promotions with the product manufacturers through their brokers.

Five Star uses either Blue Tooth or cellular connectivity to support the Vision media, depending on the location, using the same signal that supports the micro market.

Five Star is exploring paid advertising opportunities for its digital video promotions. “We do see there is potential to monetize the Vision platform,” Recher says. “It could be a combination of things where value is exchanged for value.”

The company has not worked with commercial digital advertising networks. “We want to make sure we have control of the content, and with a lot of those (digital advertising networks), you don’t have control of the content in the ads that are being run,” Recher says. “Our clients probably wouldn’t appreciate some random ad being run that doesn’t apply to their employees or anything that Five Star is doing.”

“We had the same opportunity on our mobile app, and we declined it,” he notes.

Five Star has not put any of the Vision screens on vending machines. Recher says this would be difficult with a 42-inch screen. “There could be potential to have a Vision screen inside of a break room where there’s a bank of vending machines,” he says. Where Five Star runs two to six product promotions for micro markets per month, it runs vending promotions once a quarter.

The LightSpeed Automation device is programmed to access the server at pre-set levels: five minutes for Wi-Fi or Ethernet and 15 minutes for cellular. When the device accesses the server, it checks for new content, then downloads the content to be scheduled in the media rotation.

Five Star Food Service – Fivestar-food.com
6005 Century Oaks Drive, #100
Chattanooga, TN. 37416
Phone: 423.643.2600

by Elliot Maras

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