Amy's Kitchen Selects e-Port® Cashless Vending
MALVERN, Pa, October 10, 2005-- USA Technologies (OTCBB: USTT) announced today that America's preeminent pre-packaged organic food company, Amy's Kitchen, had chosen its e-Port cashless transaction solution for vending machines to open a new distribution channel for its frozen gourmet food.
USA Technologies, a leader in wireless, cashless transactions and network services, reported that Amy's Kitchen represented the fourth new, non-traditional vending marketplace it had penetrated in little more than a week.
"We are honored that Amy's Kitchen, perhaps the most popular maker of organic and vegetarian pre-packaged food, chose USA Technologies to activate its vending machines," said Stephen P. Herbert, President and COO, USA Technologies. "Amy's Kitchen has experienced 20 percent growth year after year. To keep up accelerated growth they look towards vending as a new distribution channel. And with higher priced items, credit card vending made this possible," he said.
Other national brands that have taken their product outside "bricks and mortar" of traditional retail stores with e-Port's wireless credit card technology are KRh Thermal for their Hot Choice® automated diner system, Reebok for athletic shoes, Staples for office products and Sony Corporation for digital photo processing.
"These past few weeks have seen significant growth in e-Port orders from a variety of companies wanting to take their products into new, more convenient locations, to capture new customers," said Mr. Herbert. "And giving customers the ability to pay with credit or debit cards, businesses for the first time can vend higher priced items never before considered for sale in vending machines," he said.
Amy's Kitchen, which makes high quality, healthy organic and vegetarian frozen foods, believes more customers will purchase their gourmet food line over snacks and other fast foods traditionally dispensed from vending machines, especially when they can pay with debit or credit card.
The vending machines, which are provided and serviced by Canteen, will dispense popular Amy's Kitchen food lines such as pesto tortellini bowls, ravioli bowls, enchilada meals and breakfast entrees, ranging between $2.25 and $3.95.
"Amy's likes the unique cashless payment method for higher priced items in vending machines, and the ability to monitor sales data over the Internet," said Andy Berliner, President of Amy's Kitchen. "And Amy's saw opportunity for taking a healthy food product line into the vending market, opening up an entirely new market opportunity. Results to date show that people will purchase nutritious foods, even at a higher price, if made available and given the ability to use their credit or debit cards," he said.
The Amy's Kitchen vending machines are being installed in office buildings, hospitals and police stations. The first were installed in Northern California and met with an enthusiastic response.
Amy's Kitchen is a multi-million dollar family business that was launched in 1987. Visit Amy's Kitchen at www.amyskitchen.com.
With the exception of the historical information contained in this release, the matters described herein contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties that may individually or mutually impact the matters herein described, including but not limited to product acceptance, the ability to continually obtained increased orders of its products, the ability to meet installation goals, economic, competitive, governmental impacts, whether its pending patents will be granted or defendable; validity of intellectual property and patents of USA, the ability of USA to license its patents, the ability of USA to commercialize its developmental products, technological and/or other factors, which could cause actual results or revenues to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements.