Groupon releases, pulls, then rereleases Breadcrumb POS

The app is a simpler version of Breadcrumb Pro

After accidentally releasing and then pulling its new Breadcrumb POS app, Groupon has rereleased the app—a new, simplified version of Breadcrumb Pro, Groupon’s point-of-sale system for restaurants. Where Breadcrumb Pro is more all-encompassing and comprehensive, Breadcrumb POS is more generalized to cover a wider range of commerce categories, such as retail, salons and spas, eateries, and more.

The app deals a big blow to other mobile payments competitors like Square and PayPal, as the POS app comes with Breadcrumb Payments’ super low rates—1.8% plus $0.15 per transaction (for Mastercard, Visa, and Discovery). By comparison, Square charges 2.75% or a flat rate of $275 a month for businesses processing less than $200,000 a year. PayPal charges 2.7%.

Additionally, POS users can also take advantage of Breadcrumb’s next-day deposits. Merchants can get their deposits within 24 hours, rather than the usual 2-3 business days.

Along with the low rates, merchants can take advantage of a promotional offer that offers free processing on the first $5000 of credit card transactions.

The app doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of the Breadcrumb Pro, which includes the ability to manage operations, like orders and payments, as well as employee time sheets. Restaurateurs can also get labor reports and real-time info on sales stats. But the POS app does come with some reports and stats, such as real-time reports on product mix, daily and monthly sales, past customer purchases, and deposit records.

“With this launch we can help every local business replace their outdated cash registers with a modern, affordable, money-saving tool that allows them to save on credit card transaction fees and run their businesses better,” said Mihir Shah, Groupon’s VP Merchant OS, in a statement. “The successful adoption of Breadcrumb Pro by restaurants and bars has been very encouraging, with some of the finest venues in the country using it to run their businesses. As a result, we decided to launch Breadcrumb POS and bring the power and simplicity of this product to more merchants.”

Groupon acquired Breadcrumb last year as part of its quest to become the ultimate local commerce operating system. Since then, Groupon’s man-child CEO Andrew Mason has been ousted, but it seems that the company is staying true to the operating system vision.

In its first quarter sans Mason, Groupon beat analysts’ expectations with higher operating income and revenue. Non-GAAP operating income (excluding stock compensation) came in at $51.2 million, or $0.03 a share on revenue of $601.4 million. Street consensus called for non-GAAP operating income of $29 million on revenue of $591.3 million. Shares were trading at $6.80 Tuesday morning, a five-day increase of 16.5%.

But TheStreet has downgraded its Groupon rating from ‘hold’ to ‘sell,’ citing a decrease in operating cash flow, as well as the stock’s historically bad performance.