You see more and more of them every day: iPads, doubling as cash registers in businesses small and large, thanks to forward-thinking mobile payment companies like Square. Now Groupon, the deals-and-couponing social network, is getting in on the game with Breadcrumb, an incredible point-of-sale system which makes integrating an iPad into your business as simple as if Apple made the product themselves.
Breadcrumb is a sales, reporting and order management system for restaurants, bars and cafes that runs on the iPad and allows business owners to do everything from put together menus, rearrange tables or assign servers, check out their reports, and ring up customers all from a simple, touch-based interface.
Usually, integrating a service like this into your business would require proprietary hardware and a lot of expense, but Groupon’s taking a page from Apple’s book and making setting Breadcrumb up in your business completely simple: $99 to run Breadcrumb on one iPad, $199 to run it on two, $299 to run it on five and $399 to run it on up to ten.
It seems weird that Groupon would get involved in point-of-sales when they are usually known for being a deals site, but Groupon eventually hopes to become “an operating system for local commerce,” says its CEO. That means expanding into new markets, and they’re hoping to leverage the iPad to do so.
Source: Reuters
