Kinney Amusement & Vending

Retaining and attracting employees is one of the greatest challenges facing American companies right now. Most business owners don’t realize that vending can be used in employee incentive and benefit plans. Kinney Vending has a loyalty program that provides employees with benefits like cash back, free items, and the ability to give a percentage of their vending purchase to a charity of their choice, while enjoying the meals and snacks they appreciate.  

“Working with the technology we provide and the employer’s HR department, we can reward the employees through our loyalty program,” says Jeff Lee with Kinney Vending.

Reward and Recognize

Working with various departments in a company, Kinney’s Reward and Recognize program is an incentivizing and motivational tool companies can use in a number of ways depending on the department and reason. “If the sales department wants to reward the team for hitting sales targets, we can do that through vending,” says Kinney. 

“Manufacturing clients can reward teams for meeting OSHA requirements.” 

But the recognition doesn’t always have to be tied to work performance. “We also partner with HR departments when they want to recognize employees for milestones or anniversaries or birthdays in a simple but meaningful way.”

Loyalty Program

Every time an employee goes to a vending machine or micromarket to make a purchase they receive five points for every dollar spent. Using Kinney’s mobile app, the employee can redeem those points for cash that goes right back into their vending spending account. 

By using the loyalty program, employees can also earn free items. The app records each purchase made by the individual and each quarter some of those regularly purchased items will be offered at no cost to that employee. 

Charitable Giving

Vending machines aren’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of ways to give to charity, but with the app, Kinney’s loyalty program allow employees to choose an organization to which they’d like to donate.

“In that way, we’re really able to impact our community,” says Emily Kinney Carroll. “We partner not only with our customer, but with that customer’s employee. It really makes a connection from the top down and we’re able to work together to benefit our community.”

Employees can choose from various national charities and also several local charities including Care to Learn, Convoy of Hope, Sammy’s Window and more. And if an employee doesn’t see their charity of choice on the list, Kinney will add it to the program. 

Technology

“Technology in vending has come so far in such a short time,” says Lee. “It allows us to connect with our customer like never before.” This technology provides better quality control and the ability to keep shelves stocked with on-time, fresh food. 

“It’s really allowed us to run our company a lot more efficiently,” he continues. “We can control the food we’re selling. It doesn’t sit on a truck for a week. It goes out when it needs to go out and we’re not in our locations when we don’t need to be. We know exactly what is sold when it’s sold and exactly what they need when they need it.”