At the 2018 Amusement Expo, when they were still Rally, are Steve Irvin (left) and company founder Duncan Swezey
On-the-Go Phone-Charging Kiosks
Lyte.City Looking to Grow With Operators
Interested in making a few extra bucks and offering your customers a way to charge their devices? Lyte.City says they have you covered.
Formerly known as Rally before its acquisition by Lyte, the phone-charging kiosk maker says it’s tackling the problem of people’s needs to plug-in, and is looking to partner with operators in a wide variety of locations – providing maintenance-free machines at no cost.
Duncan Swezey, a co-founder of Rally (now a part of Lyte.City), has done the math and says operators can earn an average of $20-30 per machine per month. Equally important as this extra cash flow is that they say these units can be placed in a greater number of locations than typical route operation equipment like jukeboxes or pinball machines because customers can have a need to charge their phones in every venue they visit.
The kiosks also do the job of keeping customers on location for longer, instead of heading home to avoid “the battle of the battery,” they say.
From an ease-of-use standpoint, the Lyte app (for Apple and Android devices) helps users find the nearest device-charging station in their network. Using them is simple: From the app, the user scans the QR code on the kiosk to check out a portable charger. Once their device is charged, they can return the charger by pushing it into an empty slot on any Lyte kiosk.
Currently, there are 100 kiosks on location – mainly in San Francisco, Southern California and the United Kingdom. They say they’ve landed a national partnership with Dave & Buster’s, and reside in businesses like FECs and arcades, bowling alleys, bars, restaurants, airports, malls and any other place people congregate for an extended amount of time.
“The goal is to be everywhere at some point,” Swezey said. “We’re really just looking to get into as many locations as possible.”
Lyte.City’s app helps direct users to the nearest device-charging kiosk. The units can be returned to an empty slot in any of the company’s kiosks.
At the moment, they’re targeting 10 cities for launch but have the capacity to expand into any location around the world. The goal is to deploy 5,000 of the self-automated kiosks within the next year, as well as to double in size every year moving forward by strategically partnering with the right operators.
In the wake of COVID-19, “everybody’s going to be really wanting to press ‘go’ on making more revenue,” Swezey said. And Lyte is offering what it says is an innovative product that supports the prospect of extra income for these businesses at no cost.
As a company, Lyte says it puts a huge emphasis on getting operators paid. “That’s something that sets us apart from our competitors,” he added. “This is an opportunity for everyone from mom and pop shops to the big guns to make more money while offering a convenience to their customers. It’s a win-win.
“At some point a product like Lyte is going to make it into their locations whether it’s our company or not, and all the competitors we’ve spoken with didn’t agree to paying operators,” Swezey explained. “We want to make sure they get a cut.”
Learn more about the business at www.lyte.city.
