Simcha Triger and his partner started with $1,300 each and a machine in a yeshivah. Today, The Vendors employs 65 people, stocks hundreds of office pantries, and has grown into a food service business built on one principle: eat well, work well
I grew up in Monsey and learned in Beis Dovid, by Rav Moshe Green. I also learned in Eretz Yisrael. After getting married, I settled in Williamsburg.
“I always did different kinds of work. As a bachur, I sold danishes in yeshivah and did small IT jobs. I also helped my brother set up the networking in his office. At different points, I was an English teacher, a tutor, a shamash and a head counselor. I was active and entrepreneurial, but there wasn’t one particular business I decided would be my future.
“The Vendors started in around 2018, when I was about 25. My partner and I were both learning in kollel and doing some work on the side. We learned every morning at 6:30 in Birkas Menachem in Williamsburg, where I was the shamash and he was the gabbai. One morning after davening he came over to me and said, ‘Simcha, let’s start a vending machine company.’ I looked at him. ‘Vending machines?’ He had done some research and heard that it was a large industry. He wanted to get into it. So we went out and started selling the idea.
“Our first location was a yeshivah across the street from my house. We both invested $1,300 of our own money, bought our first machine and started to fill it. A good week brought in about $200 in sales, not profit. We still had to pay for the merchandise and take care of the machine.
“At first, our storage space was one shelf in a room in the basement of my building. A neighbor let us use it for free. As we grew, another neighbor gave us another room and a couple of shelves. Eventually, we had to rent a proper space.
“We were doing all of it ourselves. Selling, stocking, carrying boxes and writing invoices. We went from one location to two and then three, and we kept going until we had about 30 locations, mainly in the heimishe community.
“There were also summer ventures. Yeshivos wanted us to bring machines to their upstate locations. On one occasion, we went to a warehouse that was selling used vending machines and spent an entire day testing them. We chose a couple dozen and arranged for a truck to bring them to the camps. We had a few bachurim helping us move them, but we were doing the work ourselves.
“I remember leaving home around 4:00 a.m. and getting back around 2:00 the following morning. On the BQE near Williamsburg, the police stopped me to check if I was drunk.
“Business was very hard for two summers. We put in money, worked hard and hired someone, but it wasn’t successful.
“Toward the end of 2019, we started getting requests from offices. People wanted vending machines, but an office with ten or 15 employees couldn’t support one. My brother had an office, and my partner’s brother also had a business. They became our first customers for a different service: providing snacks and coffee for their employees with the employer paying for it.
“That was the beginning of our pantry stocking service. We already had the snacks, and we figured out what it needed to include as we went along. It grew much faster than the vending machines, and it eventually became the main business.
To read more, subscribe to Ami
