How to Automate Cantaloupe

Cantaloupe makes an unattended machine report for itself

Cantaloupe is the software and payment layer behind self-service retail: vending machines, micro markets, smart coolers, kiosks, laundries and car washes. Its card readers sit inside the machine, take the tap, and send back what the machine did. It now belongs to 365 Retail Markets, which completed the purchase in 2026 and runs the combined business under its own name, alongside Avanti Markets, Company Kitchen and Stockwell. The Seed products keep the Cantaloupe name.

That last part changed the trade. A vending route was steel boxes in other people's buildings, and an operator learned what a machine sold by driving to it. Now the machine reports: Seed Live comes with the reader and shows device health and the day's transactions, and Seed Pro turns that telemetry into routes.

The business underneath is unusual. An operator owns the equipment and the stock, pays the location a commission for the floor space, with nobody near the point of sale. It is a wager that a slot earns more than it costs to keep full.

Every case in the van was bought somewhere else

Cantaloupe can tell you exactly what sold. It cannot tell you what any of it cost, and in unattended retail that is where a year is won or lost.

Cases are bought from a wholesaler or a cash and carry, at prices that move week to week and are visible only after signing into an account. A forty cent move on a case of the best-selling drink, across three hundred faces, is a real number by the end of the year. Almost nobody checks it weekly, because that means opening two supplier sites and comparing them against what each slot earns.

The rest of the week goes the same way. Card settlements have to be matched against what the readers reported. Commission statements have to be produced for every location on the terms in that site's agreement. Buildings run vendor portals now, and want a current certificate of insurance before a driver gets a badge. Parts and control boards come from a distributor with its own stock page.

All of it sits behind a login, and none of it is vending.

Cantaloupe

Cost against every slot This week's case price at each wholesaler set beside what a face actually earns, so a product that stopped paying is obvious.

Settlements that reconcile The processor's deposits matched to the sales the readers reported, so a day that did not fund is a question on Tuesday.

Locations kept, not lost Commission statements built per site, and each building's vendor portal watched for the certificate or form it now wants.

Dynamic scheduling routes the van on what the coils report

Cantaloupe automates the machine side thoroughly, and an operator not using it is sending drivers to machines that are still full.

Seed Pro builds routes from live machine data using dynamic, interval or static scheduling, and consolidates the routes that result. Pre-kitting generates each machine's pick from the same data, so a van leaves with what the machines need rather than what the driver guessed, and less comes back. Planograms update automatically from machine data. Remote Price Change pushes a new price to a coil without anyone visiting it. Seed Live raises a device health alert when a reader stops reporting, and emails the day's sales report on its own.

The common ingredient is telemetry. Everything above is computed from what the machines and the readers send back.

Telemetry is a complete record of one side of the ledger. It knows every sale and every fault. It knows nothing about the invoice from the wholesaler, the deposit from the processor, or the commission owed to the site.

A slot can be priced on what the case cost this week

Telemetry covers the selling side, and the buying side is only a set of logins.

This week's case price pulled from each wholesaler and set against what every slot earned, so a product that has stopped covering its face shows up before the next pre-kit is built, not at year end. A price change follows while the reason for it is still true.

The processor's settlement read and compared with the sales the readers reported, so a day that did not fund is a question on Tuesday instead of a variance nobody can reconstruct in March. Commission statements assembled per location from what the machines recorded and the terms of that contract.

Each building's vendor portal kept current, with the insurance certificate, the tax form and the renewal date watched, because losing a good site over a lapsed document is the cheapest loss there is. The distributor's parts page checked for the board on an open service ticket before a technician is sent.

Fetching and comparing can run unattended. Anything that pays a location, sends a statement or changes a price across the estate is prepared and waits for a person.

Nobody grows a route by reading a wholesaler's price list

An operator wins by putting the right machine in the right building and keeping it full. Signing into a wholesaler, a processor and four landlord portals to work out whether it paid is not that job, and it still decides whether the job paid.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the wholesaler's account, the processor's dashboard, the building's vendor portal or the parts distributor, reads what is on the screen, and sets it beside what your machines reported.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it. Anything that sends money, a statement or a price change is drafted and held for approval.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names the sites it opens.