Groupon’s Breadcrumb Founder Quits

Groupon’s Breadcrumb restaurant POS business is about to undergo some big changes.

To start, Seth Harris, the founder of the software and payments business, has announced he has left the company — which comes at a time when Groupon is laying off about 20 people from its 100-people unit, Re/code reported. While there were once rumors that Groupon was spinning off the business, it doesn’t appear to be the case for now.

“Breadcrumb is a great business, and we’ve made some operational changes to better position it for accelerated growth. There were some position eliminations as we chose to reallocate resources to other areas,” Bill Roberts, head of global communications for Groupon, said in a statement, according to Re/code.

Harris also provided a statement about why he was leaving the company, but he neglected to elaborate on his future plans. Rudd Davis, whose startup, Swarm Mobile, was acquired by Groupon is taking over for Harris.

“I’m extremely proud of what our team accomplished,” Harris told Re/code. “Point of sale is an extremely hard business to deliver exceptional product at a great value with a great experience. I believe we nailed that with Breadcrumb at Groupon.”

Breadcrumb was bought by Groupon in 2012 as a way for the company to assist their merchants by providing them with POS systems that would easily accept Groupon vouchers, eliminating the friction between merchants who choose to contract deals with Groupon. Harris is currently the VP for the Point of Sale and Payments Product at Groupon, which he has been since his company was acquired.

Groupon’s latest quarterly results showed the company posted a profit, but looking ahead to what may come out of its current quarter, Groupon executives warned that the earnings would likely fall bellow expectations. The second quarter boost was attributed to its sale of its stake in Ticket Monster for $360 million. Still, profit was lower than it was a year ago during 2014’s Q2 figure of $366.4 million. Revenue for the quarter increased 3 percent globally to $738.4 million, up from last year’s Q2 figures of $716.2 million.



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