Meet Squirrel Systems

IFBTA Admin June 17, 2018

Rob Grimes: Rob Grimes with the IFBTA, here at the NRA show, but actually more importantly here with Jason Leeson, the president of Squirrel Systems who is one of our newer Global industry partner members. So Jason, welcome to NRA, welcome to the IFBTA, and it’s great to see you someplace other than Vancouver for a change.

Jason Leeson: You bet, glad to be here Rob.

R: So why don’t we just start out with getting the overview of what Squirrel is about.

J: Sure, well look Squirrel’s been around for about 34 years, right, so Squirrel is actually one of the pioneers in the point-sale industry.  We were one of the first to come to market with the touch screen point-of-sale. Squirrel’s really evolved over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time since I joined the company in the last two and a half years kind of connecting to our core purpose, why we do what we do, and frankly it’s really coming down to enabling amazing guest experiences. Where we’re going as an organization is we’ve really evolved from those roots in hardware and point-of-sale touch screen into more and more focus on software and frankly evolving even from just the point of sale system, if you will, to full restaurant management, customer engagement platform that’s really providing actual insights to our customers.

R: So everybody uses the term full restaurant management, I believe people know Squirrel as a point-of-sale company, so what is included in that portfolio of applications?

J: At its core, with Squirrel is really built on an open architecture and an open platform. So the goal here for us is really about providing those end-to-end Solutions for our customers so I’m not going to profess and claim that we do it all, but we have great partnerships that allow us to provide those end-to-end solutions for our customers, many of those partners are here at the National Restaurant Association show here today. And it’s true that that open architecture and the open APIs that I have that we enable that.

R: So a person could go ahead and work with Squirrel, either as an all-in-one or a best-of-breed provider, you know working with other partners or getting it, technically, all through you.

J: Absolutely, really what we talk about is it’s not just best-of-breed orfully integrated, it’s best-of-breed andfully integrated. We’ve got a partner program where were very selective about who we partner with because we recognize that we don’t want any finger-pointing and head-butting kind of, if you will. It needs to look, feel, and behave like an end-to-end solution to our customers so we bring that all together.

R: Listen, it’s been a pleasure. And it’s been a pleasure getting together with you now several times during the year as our Global industry partner member, and I look forward to spending a lot more time in the future and seeing where things go with Squirrel.

J: sounds good I appreciate you Rob.

R: Thank you, so Rob Grimes with the IFBTA and here in Squirrel Systems at the NRA show.