The entrepreneurship ecosystem at Waterloo Engineering nurtures promising ideas into thriving enterprises. In our weekly Founder Fuel series, we look at new ventures and how they have benefited from that crucial early support.
In 2010, Tommy Chan and Jason Yeung (both BASc ’12, systems design engineering) saw a worker taking notes of the inventory in the vending machines and then returning with dolly-loads to restock. They immediately saw the opportunity to disrupt the vending machines industry using emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology for their fourth-year design project.
The pair bought their own unit for $400 and equipped it with telemetry and remote monitoring devices. They got permission from the dean of engineering to install their prototype on campus. And they proved that their technology could track inventory remotely, tell them what to refill and when, and alert them to coin jams or other malfunctions.
After graduation, a $60,000 fellowship from the University and FedDev Ontario helped them expand to a full-time business. Guidance and connections through Communitech were equally important.
The result in their case is Adaria, a company that boasts 1,800 vending machines across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area — including units at Pearson Airport, the CN Tower and Canada’s Wonderland — making them the biggest independent operator in the region.
Go to Upping the IQ of vending machines for the full story.