Groupon goes to the restaurant with the Breadcrumb app

[dgstorm]

Groupon used to be all about bringing the best deals to customers looking to save a couple of dollars, but apparently the company is thinking of expanding its horizons and plans to go into the restaurant business indirectly.

Groupon hinted at that when it purchased the iPad point-of-sale company named Breadcrumb somewhere around May for an unnamed sum of money. This week Groupon has actually launched the baby spawned by the union across U.S.restaurants. What Groupon is actually trying to do is become a more notable presence in the world of mobile payment, competing with companies like Square, Intuit and PayPal.

Breadcrumb former owner and currently General Manager at Groupon seems more than happy of how things actually turned out, as he himself stated in an interview with VentureBeat:

“Coming over to Groupon made a whole lot of sense. […]The company has now opportunity to be a major player in the world’s local commerce operating systemâ€

Breadcrumb comes to the aid of the restaurant owner trying to simplify his or hers extremely long list of tasks. With Breadcrumb restaurant workers can easily merge or split checks, add items on a menu, add notes and input from customers, set employee access levels, manage shifts, view reports and monitor sales. All this tightly packed in a neat little app that food providers will use on an iPad.

Breadcrumb prices start at $99 per month and the fee includes installation help and technical support 24/7. Restaurants who want to jump aboard the Breadcrumb boat will be awarded with a Breadbox – which includes an iPad with stand, cash drawer, credit card swipe, printer, router, wireless access point and cables. And the Breadcrumb app can be downloaded for free via the Apple App Store. The deal is an extremely sweet one.

By Radu

Source - Groupon eyes restaurants with nationwide POS offering | Reuters