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Fifty Years, One Breakroom at a Time
In 1976, Jim Brinton put one vending machine in his father's shop to help the family out.
No business plan. No market research. Just one machine in one spot, solving one problem.
Fifty years later we run over 1,000 micro markets across Washington, Oregon and North Idaho. The job itself has changed less than you would think.
We held the anniversary at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
Why the Museum of Flight
The museum sits on East Marginal Way South. Among the buildings it saved and restored is the Boeing Red Barn, which the museum calls the birthplace of the Boeing Company.
This is a region that kept the small building a large company started in. That made it the right place to mark fifty years of a company that started with one machine.
It is also a Seattle landmark. We have stocked breakrooms in this city longer than many of our customers' buildings have been standing. We wanted a venue that means something here.
Everyone in one room
Fifty years of growth means we are spread out. Four branches, five metro areas, and a service map running from Coeur d'Alene to Portland.
That works in your favor. The person walking your building knows your building. It also means the whole company is almost never in one place.
For one night it was. Branch managers came in from Portland, Olympia and Seattle, along with the team covering Spokane and eastern Washington. Most weeks they are hundreds of miles apart, running their own routes and solving their own building problems by phone.
Our national beverage partners came as well, Pepsi and Coca-Cola among them, along with regional suppliers we have worked with for decades. Several of those relationships are older than most of the people in the room. A supplier who has delivered for thirty years is more than a vendor.
What changed, and what did not
The equipment changed completely.
That machine in the shop took coins, held about forty selections, and was counted by hand. Today we run micro markets with self-checkout, fresh food and sales data down to the item. The first one went into a Seattle news station, which was an unusual thing to propose at the time.
Along the way, two people from this company have served as president of NAVA, the Northwest Automatic Vending Association, which covers Washington, Oregon and Alaska: Jim Brinton, and Arthur Siller, our SVP. On the national side, NAMA has nominated Evergreen Refreshments as best provider.
Jim went on to found Avanti Markets, a micro market technology company later merged with 365 Retail Markets. That work is part of why these markets look the way they do.
None of it changed the work. Someone still has to know the third-floor breakroom runs out of the same three items every Thursday. Someone still has to show up when a cooler fails at four on a Friday. Fifty years of technology made that work sharper. It did not make it optional.
What fifty years means for you
If you are choosing a provider, three things matter.
We have seen your building. Offices, hospitals, hotels, schools, warehouses, plants. Fifty years of them in this region. Circuit capacity in a 1960s building. Freight elevators downtown. Shift patterns at a distribution center. We have handled all of it.
We will be here at renewal. This industry has consolidated. Companies get bought. Routes get reassigned. The person who knew your account moves on. Fifty years under one owner tells you something about year three.
The supply lines hold. Long supplier relationships mean better product access and fewer out-of-stocks. Long customer relationships taught us what works in a breakroom, and we got some of it wrong first.
Evergreen Refreshments is part of the BBV family of brands, with sister companies in Colorado and Utah. The added scale helps. Your local branch is still who shows up.
Year fifty-one
Next week the routes run, the coolers get stocked, and someone in Spokane repairs a kiosk.
Thank you to every customer who has trusted us with their breakroom over fifty years, including the ones who remember the coin mechanisms.
