Breadcrumb at Top Chef Kitchen

We could hardly contain our excitement, giddy like school kids leaving for holiday break, when Alicia looked over from the hostess station and told us a table opened up. There was a little more of a squeal escaping my lips than I’d like to admit, but we were about to have the Top Chef Kitchen NYC experience… I mean, how could I not be ecstatic?! Michael, Catherine and I sat down to what unfolded as the most amazing journey of flavor, laughter and friendship.

For weeks, the Breadcrumb team has been working with the staff of Top Chef Kitchen gearing up for their launch. As we took the first sips of our cocktails, we knew the preparation and work TCK had put in—fine-tuning every detail—was totally worth it!

I caught myself staring at the menu, feeling a slight panic attack starting as I couldn’t decide which dishes to order. I was just about to scour the dining room for a stray Xanax when I realized, there was no wrong choice here; all of it would be outstanding and I was fortunate to have any of it set before me for my consumption. Luckily, we three diners selected the perfect variety, covering all the courses and desserts planned by Chefs Edward Lee and Mike Isabella. As our wonderful server, Rachel, walked over to input our order at the iPad, we made a sampling pact—no dish shall be left untasted! As each course arrived, our taste buds kept shouting, “You have to be kidding me, this is freaking phenomenal!” Looking around the dining room, it was evident that we were not alone in our joyous celebration of the culinary arts.

Beyond the extraordinary parade of favors, there is an incredible team that works tirelessly and seamlessly. It’s really quite amazing: the masterful chefs, hostesses, servers, runners, management, designers and other folks behind the scenes who all function like a well oiled machine. This is truly what restaurant magic is made of, and as I finished the most sensuous glass of Malbec I’ve ever tasted, I was reminded how thrilling it is to be on a team that can assist in helping make these moments.

Find a way to get yourself a reservation for Top Chef Kitchen. Do it!

Reinventing Restaurant POS

At my core, I’m a hospitality guy. I love running restaurants. I can stand at the end of the bar at a nightclub just watching customers pay for drinks for hours. Hell, I get giddy when I can drop food cost by 0.3% in a week. But what I never could understand was why I paid so much money for my point of sale system, why it felt so old and looked so ugly and why I needed to spend hours studying a manual just to figure out how to rearrange my floor plan.

I founded Breadcrumb about 20 months ago to provide a better way for hospitality businesses to manage labor, menus, payments and reporting. Our focus is to provide the best hospitality point of sale experience that our customers have ever had. We do that with a phenomenal product and amazing customer support. We deliver an intuitive system in a subscription model that obliterates traditional POS cost. We know what our customers want not only because we’ve been on both sides of the bar, but also because we ask them. Constantly. Every single time anyone from our team is out eating a meal or having a drink.

The goal had always been thousands of customers. That’s what I told every new hire. We won’t rest until there are thousands of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and cafes using Breadcrumb to operate their venues. About four months ago, our goal changed when we joined forces with Groupon: now we won’t rest until there are tens of thousands of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and cafes using Breadcrumb around the world.

Nothing has really changed from a customer perspective since the acquisition: we’re still called Breadcrumb, we still provide the same level of support and responsiveness, we still have an unwavering focus on hospitality point of sale, and not one of our customers has been asked to run a Groupon deal in order to keep using the POS they love. As I’ve gotten to know the folks at Groupon, I’ve come to understand just how passionate they are about helping small businesses succeed. Like us, Groupon knows that point of sale is so critical to a hospitality operation but is such a huge pain point within the operation. Like us, Groupon differentiates itself with unreal customer support. Like us, Groupon knows that it will win by making customers happy.

Our team was ecstatic to join Groupon because we knew that we had a shared vision...and Groupon’s tremendous resources in sales, engineering and support would allow us to continue to deliver the best hospitality point of sale experience across the world. Well, today is a first step in that journey as we proudly announce Breadcrumb’s availability to every restaurant, bar and cafe in the US. If you’re interested in learning more about our fully-featured hospitality point of sale system, please visit www.breadcrumbpos.com to learn more or get started. If you work in restaurants or bars, want to keep up to date on the latest Breadcrumb features or just want interesting tidbits about the hospitality industry, check in on this blog or subscribe to it.

Starting a company is hard. Some might say starting a company as a single founder is crazy. Even without a co-founder, I had tremendous help from our original investors and employees, both of which have been instrumental in helping Breadcrumb to reach this amazing point on our quest. The Breadcrumb family has grown considerably the last few months--a big thank you to everyone who has joined to help make our software and our support even better than it was before. We would have nothing without some very brave customers who took a chance on me and our product early on. I’d like to personally thank John Fraser (from Dovetail), Rich & TJ (from Mother’s Ruin), Eytan (from Southern Hospitality) and Anthony & Rebekah (from Destino) for being the first hospitality visionaries who saw what the future could be. Finally, I want to thank my wife—she has sacrificed most to allow Breadcrumb to flourish (and restaurants to rejoice).

Groupon is on the verge of transforming local commerce, and Breadcrumb is a big piece of that transformation. Tens of thousands of customers. It’s time for us to get started on the new goal.