Groupon Follows MPOS Breadcrumbs

Groupon’s Breadcrumb point of sale platform has already proven itself as an innovator in the mobile POS space. The tablet-based solution won the Best POS Innovator Award at The Innovation Project 2013, and is established as one of , if not the, dominant player in the tablet POS space.

So where does the platform, which was designed with the hospitality industry in mind, go from here? PYMNTS.com spoke with Seth Harris, GM of Breadcrumb POS at Groupon, to find out.

According to Harris, Breadcrumb is unique because of its origins as the solution to a problem that real hospitality employees face on a daily basis.

“The key differentiator that separates Breadcrumb from everything else that’s out there is the fact that it’s built from a Restaurateur’s or bar owner’s point of view,” said Harris, who comes from a hospitality background. “We started with the work flows that bartenders, servers and managers go through, and then modeled the technology to fit those workflows.”

That approach – coupled with what Harris deems as a “transparent” payments service – has helped Breadcrumb to experience the success it as to this point, as well as add another element to Groupon’s business.

But Harris says that he views bars and restaurants as the veritable tip of the iceberg for Groupon, and says he believes that tablet-based POS systems are about to gain an even larger share of the market.

“As we move forward over the next, I don’t know if its two, five or eight years, but I’m pretty confident that there is going to come a point where at least local businesses are no longer buying bulky legacy terminals, and they are all going with tablet point of sales.”

To that end, Harris teased some new industries that Breadcrumb may target in the coming months, including salons, small retailers and other small-to-medium-sized brick-and-mortar entities.

“I think the big innovation you should look for is connecting customers with merchants. At the end of the day, that’s why I named this thing Breadcrumb. It’s about the trail between consumers and local businesses, and how there are all these crumbs out there. In the offline world, in the real brick-and-mortar world, we haven’t really figured out a way to connect those crumbs.”

To hear more Harris on Breadcrumb’s upcoming moves, listen to the full podcast below.

*If you have trouble with the audio player above, click here.

Seth Harris
GM, Breadcrumb POS
Groupon

Seth Harris is the GM of Breadcrumb POS at Groupon. He founded Breadcrumb, a hospitality point of sale system that runs on iPads, in January 2011. Groupon acquired Breadcrumb in May 2012.

Prior to founding Breadcrumb, Seth was a McKinsey & Co management consultant from 2000 to 2002 and the CEO of a marketing services company from 2007-2011.

He also spent 12 years suffering with hospitality point of sale systems as a bartender, general manager, director of operations and managing partner in various New York restaurants and nightclubs. Seth never understood why POS systems cost so much, felt so old and didn’t work very well. This longing for a better system drove him to develop Breadcrumb, the modern approach to hospitality point of sale.

Seth graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Ethics, Politics and Economics. He currently lives in New York City with his wife Melanie and dog Mookie.