From a side hustle to a regional business, Ryan and Michelle’s home-grown approach is working and they are taking it on the road

It started as a side gig to make some extra money, but after a while, Ryan Harrington realized that he loved the vending business. As it turns out, his investment connected him to love on many levels, including a life partner and co-CEO – his wife Michelle.

In this episode of Automatic Merchandiser’s Vending & OCS Nation podcast, host Bob Tullio brings you a conversation with Ryan Harrington, Founder and CEO of Royal ReFresh in Portland.

You’ll hear about his home-grown approach, utilizing strong community roots to help build his business. He’s expansion-minded – not only in the Northwest, but also in Las Vegas, where his company has now opened a branch.

Harrington enjoys mentoring new operators and is very active in NAMA. He was part of the team that brought you the 2025 NAMA Show.

He’s a very levelheaded guy, but you may have seen his recent LinkedIn post where he got a little fired up about all the bogus online claims about the vending business being the ticket to passive income – an easy route to riches. He knows it’s work. In fact, he got started in vending by investing in one of those business opportunity programs himself, involving Red Bull-branded vending machines. He tells us how he managed to make it work.

A side note: The business opportunity with Red Bull machines had quite an impact on his life. It led him into the convenience services business, which he loves, and it facilitated the connection to his co-CEO and life partner, his wife, Michelle, whom he met at a Red Bull-sponsored event.

The Royal ReFresh story is a good one and especially valuable for the many industry newcomers, who can only hope that their story will be laden with similar success. Harrington offers some suggestions on what it takes to scale a business and keep moving to the next level.