Overview
The Pelican Group was founded by Richard Scherer in 1993 to manage vending and amusement equipment for companies with Regional and National locations. The Pelican Group is privately held and headquartered in Danville, CA. The principals of The Pelican Group have more than three hundred years of combined experience in the vending and amusement businesses. Utilizing this expertise and knowledge, we are able to improve our clients’ revenue and their customers’ satisfaction by implementing our management program across multiple Regional and National locations freeing our clients from ‘the vending burden’. In addition to providing local resources through our network of more than 600 operators, The Pelican Group partners with leading manufacturers of state-of-the-art equipment, including automatic retail machines, self-service kiosks, digital music, interactive gaming, vending machines with wireless reporting, cranes and bulk vending, as well as kiddie ride games, ATM’s and comprehensive solutions for FEC/FFC’s. Collaborating with technology industry leaders such as Touch Tunes, IT Games, Raw Thrills/Betson, Merit, Global VR and Cantaloupe Systems allows us to develop programs that benefit your patrons, our vendors and our clients bottom-line.
Employees
The principals, with over three hundred years of combined resources in the vending and amusement businesses joined to establish a quality driven company.
Richard J Scherer
Chief Executive Officer
Richard Scherer, President and founder of Pelican Communications, Inc., has been in the vending and amusement business since leaving USC in 1972. He was brought up in the business trained by his father Jay Scherer. In 1975, Richard was promoted to president of Oakland Cigarette Service, Inc., aka Oakland Vending Service, a subsidiary of Canteen and then in 1990, TD Rowe Corporation. During this time, Richard was instrumental in the diversification of Oakland Cigarette into the operation of jukeboxes, pinball games, video games, pool tables and pay telephones. He served as a vice president of AMOA, a National trade association for the promotion of the amusement game and jukebox industry and was president of CCMA, the California association representing the video game industry during the boom years of the 80’s. In 1993, Richard formed Pelican Communications, Inc., to operate pay telephones and manage the vending and amusement for Regional and National accounts. Today, Pelican owns and operates over 1800 pay telephones (Pelican Communications), operates amusement equipment in over 600 taverns (PelicanTunes) and manages 65,000+ pieces of vending and amusement equipment in over 25,000 locations nationwide (The Pelican Group). Pelican is a closely held corporation, located in Danville, CA.
Jason Scherer
President
Jason Scherer has been involved in the Amusement and Vending industry since he was 12 years old. He started off spending the summer breaks repairing pool cues and cleaning equipment at Oakland Vending Service for his dad, Richard Scherer. During Pelicans’ early years, Jason accompanied his dad on the initial Costco Wholesale Vending program and met many of the vendors Pelican works with today. Always a “hands on” person, Jason has been directly involved in the installation of over 2,000 pay telephones for Pelicans’ Public Pay Telephone division from 1996 until early 2003. After 7 years of running the phone division he returned to the road and began inspecting and meeting with vendors at all National Vending and Amusement accounts across the county. Jason is proud to be a graduate of Notre Dame’s AMOA Business Executive program. As President, Jason is responsible for all areas of Operations, Account Management and New Business Development. “I have grown-up in the industry and every day I am more and more excited to see the opportunities to grow the business with our incredible network of vendors and product manufacturers”.
Sean Hanna
Chief Revenue Officer
Sean is responsible for the company's strategic operations, overseeing a team of Regional Managers, and continuing initiatives with The Pelican Group's diverse client base. Sean joined The Pelican Group in 2002, where he was promoted through the ranks of Regional Manager to Vice President of National Accounts to his current position. Prior to joining the Pelican team, Sean managed company operations for an Atlanta-based amusement company where he gained his experience in the amusement industry. Outside of the coin-op industry, Sean’s career after college began with Merrill Lynch.He graduated with a Finance and Accounting degree from Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL.
Laura Allen
Director of National Sales
Laura Allen joined the staff of The Pelican Group as Director of National Sales as a result of the acquisition of Win Stuff. Laura served as vice president of Win Stuff, the leading licensed toy crane company for 8 years and was responsible for running the skilled crane division, driving all major sales initiatives. Before joining Win Stuff, Allen served as CFO of Folz Vending. Folz was a national bulk vending company providing service to over 200,000 bulk heads across the country. Folz’s major clients included Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Safeway, Kroger and K-Mart. Allen is a CPA and received her audit training at Grant Thornton, one of the world’s leading organizations of independent audit, tax and advisory firms.
Darin Pilcher
Regional Manager, Northeast US
Darin began his amusement career in 1983 working as an arcade attendant with Barrel of Fun (later to be purchased by Atari then Namco). He advanced through the many operational ranks at Namco until he was promoted to Vice President of Corporate Operations to manage the equipment department, merchandise department, technical department & other support services. Darin transitioned to head up the business development department as Vice President in which he managed a team to negotiate leases and secure new accounts for Namco USA. He worked with clients such as Walmart, Disney, AMC Theatres, Caribbean Cinemas, Cici’s Pizza, Boyd Gaming, Mall of America, US Navy and many other high profile clients. In April 2015, Darin joined The Pelican Group and now leads the management of operators in the Northern US and well as being the account manager for companies such as Travel Centers of America, Cinemark & K1 Speed.
Jeff McKenney
Regional Manager, Central US
Jeff McKenney comes from a long line of family operators; he was introduced to vending at any early age working at his grandfather’s vending company. He later spent 8 years in the U.S. Army before returning to the coin-op industry in the early 90’s and back to the family business, Kofe Kady Vending based in Houston, Texas. Jeff later moved to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area assuming the role of General Manager and Vice President of a local amusement and full-line vending company. Jeff has also worked for Texas vending giant Mcliff Coffee & Vending serving as the North Texas Branch Manager. He joined The Pelican Group in early 2014, is based in Texas and serves as the Central U.S. Regional Manager covering TX, LA, MS, OK, AR, KS, MO, NE, IA, S.D., N.D. &MN.
Casey Scherer
Regional Manager, Western US
Casey Scherer, the youngest son of Richard Scherer, started working with The Pelican Group when he was just 16 years old. His first job was counting quarters in the coin room. Not long after that Casey moved his way up the ladder at The Pelican Group and started with collections which included the responsibility of driving a route. In the coming years, Casey learned many avenues of the vending business. Casey now was well rounded in Amusements, Payphones, Juke Box installations, sales and collections. In 2014 Casey was promoted to Regional Manager Support to help vendors and Regionals make each location shine to its full potential. Casey traveled all over the country inspecting locations to better help vendors with how equipment should look and preform to maximize revenue and curb appeal. Over the years, Casey has performed many Revenue Enhancement Visits and continues to help the customer and the vendor to better understand the vending business. In 2017, Casey was promoted to Regional Manager overseeing and managing the operations in the West, including Alaska and Hawaii.
Jeff Lane
Regional Manager, Southeast US
Prior to joining the Pelican Group, Jeff spent several years managing the Florida territory for a large arcade distributor, where he was first introduced to the Amusement industry. During that time, Jeff was responsible for selling the right equipment to maximize profits for the location as well as make sure the locations operations were in line with industry standards. Jeff graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Accounting & Finance, then went on to start his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Alison Leal
Account Manager
Alison Leal joined the Pelican Team in 2010 where she began facilitating the Company’s data entry processes. Since then, Alison has worked her way up to Office Manager as well as holding a seat on Pelican’s National Account Management Team. As one of Pelican’s coveted Account Managers, Alison is responsible for developing purposeful relationships with key clients while achieving strategic goals for each client account. Her responsibilities as Office Manager include preparing vendor contracts, monthly reporting, accounts receivables, revenue analysis, equipment growth, customer reporting, and leading Pelican’s Support Staff in their individual roles and responsibilities. Alison graduated from California State East Bay with a degree in Business Administration.
Debbie Bartman
Controller
Debbie Bartman has been with the Pelican Group since 1995. Debbie started out collecting reporting from the operator base for vending sales and processing monthly reports and payments to the customers for the vending side of the business. Additional she was responsible for the processing of the data for the payphone side of the business for customer commissions. Debbie became the Office Manager overseeing the support staff and other accounting functions including AR/AP, monthly reporting and payments for customers. She was responsible for the initial building of the companies database to house all reporting information in one place. Debbie has now worked her way up to Controller overseeing all of the day to day financial responsibilities.
Locations
The Pelican Group’s national headquarters is based in the San Francisco Bay Area in the town of Danville, California. We have 6 regional offices and vendors in all 50 states – including Puerto Rico and Canada. Regional Offices are as follows:
Atlanta, GA
Dallas, TX
New York, NY
Monterey, CA
Chicago, IL
Danville, CA
St. George, UT
Tampa, FL
In addition to our regional offices, our network of more than 600 operators allows Pelican to provide clients with unrivaled service.
