Imperial Vending building new office, warehouse in Fort Smith

Tulsa-based Imperial Vending is building a new $7.4 million facility in south Fort Smith that will almost double its office and warehouse footprint in the city. The expansion is not expected to add to the about 40 people Imperial employs in Fort Smith.

A building permit issued Jan. 30, shows PTKH Investments of Tulsa (Imperial Vending) is building a $7.4 million new facility at 4500 Siegenthaler Road in Fort Smith. Amy Metcalf, operations manager of Imperial Vending in Fort Smith, said the new building will replace the vending company’s location at 6001 Prairie Drive in Fort Smith.

“Basically, we’ve just outgrown our current location,” Metcalf said.

Metcalf said the new building will be 50,000 square feet, which will about double the space the company now occupies and include office and warehouse space. Construction of the new facility has begun and they hope to have it completed and open later this summer, she said. She said the company may lease the existing building once everything is moved to the new location.

Imperial Vending was started by Paul Tims in 1979 in Tulsa with annual sales of $30,000, according to the company website. Imperial now employs more than 850 people in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas with over $150 million in annual sales.

Metcalf said the Fort Smith operation has 40 employees and there are no plans to hire more employees with the opening of the new building.

“That just depends on if we get new business,” she said.

The Fort Smith operation provides vending machines, coffee service, water filtration systems and micro-markets for commercial breakrooms for the Fort Smith region. Its service area covers Ozark, Van Buren, Sallisaw, Roland, Greenwood, Mena, Waldron, Talihina, Wilburton, Heavener, Muldrow and points in between, Metcalf said. Imperial Vending also has operations in Springdale, Harrison and Russellville in Arkansas.

Metcalf said though they thought the company might see a decline through the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, business really did not slow down.

“We really didn’t see much (decline). Lots of places were still open. The chicken plants never closed,” Metcalf said.

The one hit the company took was to the coffee service business, she said.

“People were working from home. They didn’t really need our coffee service,” she said.

That coffee business has returned and is now back to where it was pre-pandemic, she said.