Error processing SSI file
Custom Data Solutions President Chuck Schmidt, left, and vice presidents Michael Nudi and Denise Fullerton deal with snack data.Local spotlight
Firm crunches sales numbers for snacks
Romeo company's next assignment is to track food purchases to convenience stores.
Comment on this story
ROMEO -- Employees at Custom Data Solutions are keeping track of all those cookies, candy, cashews and other snack foods placed in vending machines across the country.
The company has been collecting data about snacks sold to vending machine operators for the past 11 years, said Michael Nudi, vice president and CFO of Custom Data Solutions.
"Basically, a food manufacturer knows what they manufacture and who they sold it to," Nudi said. "They sell it to distributors. What they don't know is who the distributors sold the product to. We collect this sales data from distributors across the country and report back to the manufacturer."
From its Romeo headquarters, Custom Data collects and analyzes information for a vending machine Who's Who of clients, including Hershey's, M&M Mars, Kellogg, General Mills, Frito Lay, Quaker, Snyder's of Hanover and Kar's Nuts of Madison Heights. This month, Custom Data started collecting information for Poore Brothers of Arizona, makers of TGIFriday's chips and other brands.
"What we bring to the industry is a consistency," Nudi said. "These distributors only have to report their data one way, one time in one set format, instead of to 10 different entities and in 10 different formats. The second thing is there's someone that's extremely familiar with that data. We can look for anomalies in the data that might go unnoticed."
Custom Data also helps manufacturers calculate and process rebates and allows its clients 24-hour Internet access to secure Web sites filled with reports and information about sales through vending channels, he said.
"The firm appears to enjoy an outstanding reputation as they appear to have separated themselves from competition by servicing large clients in an efficient manner," said Michael Kasavana, the National Automatic Merchandising Association Professor in Hospitality at Michigan State University.
Having access to the information via the Web also helps manufacturers keep an eye on this retail segment, where revenues are estimated between $29 billion and $40 billion annually, he said.
"The 24/7 aspect of the Web is a real benefit to manufacturers tracking sales forces and product brokers and to sales agents and brokers tracking customer purchases and preferences," Kasavana said.
Custom Data has grown from 18 employees five years ago to 35 today and in 2002 started to track sales to convenience stores, or the c-store channel, Nudi said.
"The c-store channel is actually a larger channel than the vend channel," he said. "No one is doing much work in the c-store channel. That's where we are taking the business in the next stop. We moved into the c-store channel three years ago. It's a growth opportunity for us."
But instead of dealing with 55 to 65 distributors in the vending area, Custom Data will need to work with 600 or so distributors to convenience stores, he said.
Neal Haldane is a Metro Detroit freelance writer.
Copyright © 2005
The Detroit News.
Use of this site indicates your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 12/19/2002).