Why 3,000+ Restaurants Trust Cluster POS with David Lafleur

David Lafleur  [00:00:00]:

And obviously one of the change, and this is more technical, even if the restaurants don't really know, is most of the PoS right now and more and more in 2030. I'd say most of the PoS will run in Android soon because Android is a more open platform. It's easier for dev to work with it compared to an Apple platform.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:00:35]:

Welcome to another episode of WISKing It All. We're joined today by an old friend in the industry. Still a friend, but, I mean, I've known him for a while, David LaFleur. He's actually the senior vice president at Cluster POS. I think we've known each other a decade now. But David, thank you for joining the show.

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David Lafleur  [00:00:55]:

Thanks to you, Angelo. I've been wanting to do this for a long time and I think it was long overdue.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:01:03]:

Awesome. I know it's awesome to have you here. You know, we met for. Just for people listening in. We met actually when. Pretty much when I started Wisk and David was a. Was a veteran in the space. In the POS space and the restaurant space.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:01:15]:

So we'll get into his story for sure. But really cool to reconnect. So why don't we start. I always like to just start with what you're doing today and we'll dive deeper. But let's just quickly talk about what is cluster so people can understand. And then I want to kind of dive into your story. So but let's start there. Can you tell people listening in, what is cluster?

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David Lafleur  [00:01:35]:

Pos so Cluster POS is first a restaurant POS that was founded about 15 years ago.

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David Lafleur  [00:01:45]:

I would say that we went to significant change in the last 24 to 36 months. We're mainly focused in the Canadian market, but we do have also a good, you know, a starting US presence. Cluster has around, I would say on this date, close to 3,000 merchants across Canada and US and mostly close to probably 2,000 merchants in Quebec. So we're now the number two POS in Quebec in the restaurant space. Yeah, exactly. So we're really, really proud of that. And I joined in cluster in March 2024.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:02:28]:

That's awesome. Okay. And we'll dive more into the specifics of cluster and, you know, what makes you guys different. All that fun, Stu, but I'm always curious to understand, you know, what drew people into the hospitality space in the first place. Right. It's a crazy space. It's fun. I love it.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:02:44]:

But I always like to understand people's history. So why don't we go back? What got you into hospitality in the first place.

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David Lafleur  [00:02:52]:

It's a very good story. So I started my IT career about it's now more than 20 years ago and I started in a small boutique shop where you know, where people were still building their PC and I was selling DC and supporting people and you know, there was no remote access at the time and you had to go in every commercial site to fix their issue. So one day I had a call from Restaurant Express who's a famous institution in Montreal, you know, 40 years old Milestone restaurants. And yeah the 19 years old, I think I was 19 or 20 at that time. Didn't know what Lex Press I was like this is such a weird place. So I walk in that place. We really connected well and you know, so I was maintaining their PC, taking care of their equipment and at some point, you know, after a year or they're like, you know David, that, that, that, that POS system, you know, it's called mit. Do you think you can help us with that? And I'm like oh you know I was young at that time, I was a kid.

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David Lafleur  [00:03:57]:

I'm like ah, super easy. Like no problem, I'll do that. And then it's all started with that. So I started helping in them with and then there was a guy back in the days called Nicholas, he was working at.

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David Lafleur  [00:04:12]:

A company called POS 2000 and he started teaching me on maitre d and this is all. And then it's a 20 year story later. There was a lot of stuff and we can talk about it but it all started with Express and to this day Express is still very loyal to me. I go there, we talk, I'm friend with there. I'm. I'm really part of their family. So.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:04:37]:

No, that's awesome.

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David Lafleur  [00:04:37]:

Yeah.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:04:38]:

And then yeah for people that don't know yet, it definitely is an institution in, in Montreal and, and people know it. People that come to visit Montreal like it's, it's often on their list of restaurants they, they have to go to. So that's pretty neat. I'd love to kind of pick your brain on.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:04:56]:

Your, your journey. Right. So you started off you know, simplifying it there, kind of dabbling in Metro D. What happened next career wise? Because, because you know when I met you I believe you were at Villas right at that time.

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David Lafleur  [00:05:10]:

Yeah, correct. So, so basically what happened is, you know lexpress, they dropped my name to other fame. Good, good restaurants like Holder and at that time it was Cafe de Nouveau Mond and they're like oh David can take care of your stuff. So it's all started like that. So I started to take care of all of their. The existing system, their new opening, they opened new restaurant at that time. And then my name started to spread around the city. At that time I was reselling maitre d and I was purchasing my license to someone.

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David Lafleur  [00:05:44]:

And then quickly what happened is I.

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David Lafleur  [00:05:49]:

There was. I. I've done that for a couple of years and at some point I decided to go buy my own. And then this is how I met the people from Velos and I got involved with them and I worked for Velos as a reseller for a couple of years. And at some point they say, why don't you, you know, join us and. And be part of the business and run the business size of Velos. And you know, we had an agreement in place and. And then we.

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David Lafleur  [00:06:16]:

I decided in 2017 to join them and run everything that. That was related to the sales expansion of Velos and that was including pivoting from a lice to us to a software subscription base in 2017. So Velos was one of the major player that started the trend with lightspeed in Quebec to go SaaS all the way. And we did and we were very successful with that. And then we ended up selling Velos in 2020 to be facto.

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David Lafleur  [00:06:53]:

And then I stayed there almost for years and then, you know, at some point.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:06:57]:

And pay facto also own.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:07:02]:

Yeah, just. Just to connect the dots of people that go.

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David Lafleur  [00:07:04]:

Exactly. So yeah, so that's cool. So Pfacto also owned Metri now. We did the transactional, I think almost at the same time and then went on stay four years there. And then at some point Coster saw that I was available in the market and they asked me, hey, can you come and run the the business? And I said yes, it would be a great opportunity. And I'm. It has been an amazing story so far with Cluster. We did a lot of growth and everything is going very well and I have so much to give and you know, I've did everything in the POS space from, you know, programming, installing, training, beyond side cabling.

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David Lafleur  [00:07:44]:

Like there's anything I didn't do.

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David Lafleur  [00:07:48]:

So I have all the tools here to run the company and it's something I do very well. Yeah.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:07:52]:

So that's awesome. And look, you kind of just mentioned now, but you work through, you know, big transitions, new technologies. You think about POS's 20 years ago to today, company acquisitions, evolving customer needs. And we know how that is. What's been your kind of why you Know through all that, what's been your, your, your motivation or your reasoning, your reason that you're so passionate?

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David Lafleur  [00:08:16]:

I think it's the people around the industry that keep me very passionate. For people who work in hospital like you and me, I think we see the passion in people. It's a crazy industry.

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David Lafleur  [00:08:30]:

And it's not a, it's a fun industry because we create institution with the merchant. There's opening, closing, there's a lot of action. You and I went through Covid with that industry which was not easy and there was a lot of transition, new technology also, you know, come to market and it's, it's a fast paced industry. And I think this is why, this is why I'm still there. And you know, a funny story and it's going back to express what I said at the start. So when, when I was done at the facto, I was maybe thinking of, you know, maybe I should do something else. You know, I'm a guy who learned by himself a lot. It was very taught by myself.

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David Lafleur  [00:09:14]:

And I said, oh, maybe I'll change career. And then one day I was with Mario Aliexpress and he's like, David, look, you're really good at what you do. I don't know why you want to reinvent yourself. Like you're really, really good and you should go on with this. And I'm like, you know what Mario, you're prob. Then I stick it, I stick it around in the, the POS industry.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:09:32]:

So that's awesome. That's good advice. And you know, to our listeners, we, we have a lot of restaurant owners, managers, bar owners that listen in. And so part of the goal of WISKing it all is to share people's journeys and experiences, you know, ups and downs and lessons. I'd love, you know, I'm sure a question I have to ask because people are going to kill me if I don't is I want some of your advice when it comes to pos because we have people listening in that might be thinking, what should I watch out for when I pick a pos? How do I know if I should change pos what makes a good pos? So I want to dive a bit into those questions. So especially from someone with 20 plus years of experience. So from your point of view, maybe let's start from the top. What advice can you give? And we can go deeper, but high level.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:10:17]:

What advice can you give to someone who says, how do I pick the right pos?

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David Lafleur  [00:10:22]:

I think it's about what do you really Need. I think the restaurant needs to do his homework and not just look into the surface, but also do his due diligence. Who are the POS clients? What have they accomplished? Is this a stable company? Are they new to the market? What are their proven track record? I think this is all legitimate question. And also ask the people around you, what do you use? Are you happy with the system? A lot of people lately were asking me, oh, what's your big difference with the other pos? I'm like, look, first POS at the start started to be a big calculator. I make that very simple. It's a big calculator. POS industry evolved. Like in the industry, we added more feature, it's more in depth.

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David Lafleur  [00:11:12]:

We have nice integration with WISK and other platform, but it really evolved. But at the end of the day, the main goal of the POS is the making your client pay, producing the invoice and making your reporting. That's the main goal. So I will tell my clients, you have to start with the basic and also not try to solve every problem in your restaurants that they want. Because I saw too many clients in my lifetime wanted everything from inventory, from this, from this. And then, yeah, at the end of the day, they were. It never works because it's too much information. You have to remember they're opening your restaurants, there's a lot of stuff in their mind.

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David Lafleur  [00:11:54]:

They have to order the, the, you know, the. All of the stuff for the kitchen, fine food distributor. There's a lot of stuff going on. If you try to make anything, everything at the same time, it's never gonna work. So my advice to them is taking the time, making sure you have everything that you need. At least the basic that will let you operate on day one. And then I would engage after that. When everything is, is in place, it's solid, you're happy, then you do integration, right.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:12:21]:

So, yeah, I love that advice. It reminds me of, of the quote or the saying about like, you know, sometimes perfection is procrastinating. You know, procrastination. Master, master, whatever it is. But basically the idea, sometimes the illusion is like, okay, I need this, and okay, I need a loyalty system. I need this. And it's just really, that's just a, a disguise that you're procrastinating and there's no such thing as perfection. And I agree with you there.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:12:48]:

I've seen that mistake. So people listening in don't make that mistake. Find the right system. But you don't need everything they want. Of course you want to think about the future. But even at risk, funny enough, sometimes when we get brand, brand new clients that are, oh, we're opening in two months, we'll even tell them like listen, find your POS first. Get your Laker license, like get things in order because and, and sometimes we even tell them you might not even sure the best case is you do inventory day one. But we know a lot of people might not even do it until a couple months in because we know the reality is you open.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:13:20]:

What are you worried about when you open? That you can collect money from clients and that you have staff usually after three months, then they care, you know.

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David Lafleur  [00:13:29]:

Yeah. And I think, I think if we go back to my advice, I'm not saying that you don't need to do all of those things. My point is more make sure the POS can make the things you want in the future, but for now focus on what you need to do at the start. Yeah, you can plan the future ahead, but don't put too much on your shoulder because a lot of time I saw a lot of failure on people. You know, even it create unnecessary frustration because they're trying to do too much thing at the, the first time.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:14:03]:

Yeah, that makes sense. Another point you made, which I wanted to elaborate on because it's, it's a good point but it's something I've seen and I'm curious to get your opinion is sometimes people ask for references but my I like to add something. There is ask not just friends in the industry because that's helpful. What do you think of cluster? What do you think of this POS that's helpful. But I also view as similar businesses. If I'm a full service restaurant, don't go. Ask a coffee shop. If I'm a nightclub, you know, don't go.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:14:32]:

And I've seen that mistake happen where sometimes people will ask someone's opinion on a pos, but it's a totally different business model. You know, you're, you're full service, fine dining, selling wine and alcohol and whatever. And then you're asking advice to someone, someone who has a coffee shop. Right. So I'm curious on your take when it comes to.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:14:53]:

Referrals. What advice can you give to people when talking to friends in the industry?

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David Lafleur  [00:14:57]:

I, I, I'm really aligned with you because historically and even now, I rather tell a client we're not a good fit for them and they maybe we will be in the future than having the deception. So I always tell my sales team to make sure we have a Business case and they referen giving is the similar type of business. And you know what, you're 100% right because a pizzeria is very, very different than even a full table service or a quick service or a fast casual. Because there's a lot of technicality in there.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:15:34]:

Yeah.

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David Lafleur  [00:15:35]:

So for example, let's say we would refer pizza restaurants. Then we would, you know, ask them go see those pizzeria. We've done that. See if this could be okay for you and it suits you. And then if, if yes, then we'll, we'll, you know, we'll progress to the next stage and we'll engage more with the merchant.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:15:55]:

That makes sense. And what you know, as we got kind of go down this road. I think it's super helpful for our listeners. What are some other kind of common mistakes? You see, I think we named two good ones there. Are there other things?

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David Lafleur  [00:16:05]:

Price.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:16:06]:

Okay, tell me more.

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David Lafleur  [00:16:07]:

People see a cheap price, a sexy price. They think that's the steel and it's going to do the job. So too much time. I've saw client made the right decision based on price. Oh, I got a good deal. We'll sign here. If you look at the value proposition, what are they offering? Right. So too much.

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David Lafleur  [00:16:29]:

I have so much example in mind. But I understand and I'm sure you do also Angelo, that you know each restaurant says their budget.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:16:39]:

Yeah.

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David Lafleur  [00:16:39]:

What they were willing to spend monthly. We all agree on that. There's a lot of costs but you also have to be mindful. Right. So too much time. I had client tell me, oh, I don't get support from them. Yeah, but how much are you paying? Oh, I'm paying 29 per month. How do you think the guy can afford support people and give a 24 hour service if you're only paying 49.

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David Lafleur  [00:16:59]:

Right.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:16:59]:

Yeah. You're paying a dollar a day.

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David Lafleur  [00:17:04]:

So that's why I said when you do your limited, your due diligence, you have to be mindful of all of this and making sure you're putting everything. And I think you know, even if we look at the, you know, the biggest POS in the world, which is toast. They announced it two weeks ago that they're adapting their price to smaller merchant because they're what?

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Angelo Esposito  [00:17:24]:

They're what?

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David Lafleur  [00:17:25]:

They're adapting to price to smaller merchant because there's a limit to, you know, being super expensive, effective on the price and too cheap. So you have to be mindful about that. It's the same way as you buy a car. Right.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:17:41]:

So yeah. Yeah, yeah.

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David Lafleur  [00:17:42]:

So you cannot expect to buy a Ford and get what a Tesla is doing, right? So it's, it's a balance, right? So.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:17:50]:

No, that's fair. It's fair. And, and, and I think that that value proposition point is, is a good point because a lot of people think about the price, but the question of what's like the cost, right? If you, what's the cost if you have the wrong system, right? So sure, the price is $49 a month, but what's the cost if you can't split the bill? And what's the cost if your printer is not working? You know, there's a real cost. So sometimes people just look at the price. But like, what's the cost? Another big thing that I'm curious to get your take on, right? 20 plus years in this space. You know what? Inside out, I have a lot of, you know, sympathy, let's say, for, for, for restauranteurs when it comes to technology because now they're like inundated. There's so much tech, it's hard to choose. So when it comes to the pos, you know, I mean, my space too, but every software space is, you know, pretty, getting pretty busy.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:18:40]:

But if we Zoom in on POS's, what advice can you give in terms of like meeting with POS's? Because yes, you want to get advice, yes you want to get maybe referrals. But how do you start building that initial list? Because there's so many POs, right? And they're all real, you know, there's 100 options and yeah, there's the popular ones, but there's so many options. So when someone wants to start their journey and they can go from square to toast, to micros, to this, to that, to cluster, to Velas, to me, right? Lightspeed, what do you, how do they narrow down? Because someone can't do 50 demos, right? They might book five demos. How do you recommend someone goes about building that short list?

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David Lafleur  [00:19:20]:

I'll give you a quick example. Like most of the people that are in restaurants business, they walk to other restaurants. So I, you see who's around, right? So I would probably start with that. You're in a neighborhood. Oh, I see a cluster here. I see a Velos. I see. Oh, oh, maybe So I would start with that.

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David Lafleur  [00:19:38]:

Yeah, I think it's a very good point of decision. But to be fairly honest, like most of the people that are opening our restaurants, like especially. And I, and I could understand your question more in terms of the US market, but for example, because there are way more player options, Right? Yeah. And in Canada there's a little bit less, to be fairly honest.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:20:00]:

That's fair. And I guess get back even less because Quebec always has that.

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David Lafleur  [00:20:04]:

Exactly.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:20:05]:

Weird rules. Exactly.

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David Lafleur  [00:20:07]:

So no, I think it's, it's, it's looking around your contact, what people are using. Obviously Google is a good source of information. It's, it's. I think it would be a mix of everything, you know, and a lot of. You know what just surprised me the most is and, and even Toast talked about that 50 of their business. Toast is coming from referral. It's crazy.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:20:32]:

Wow.

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David Lafleur  [00:20:32]:

Word of mouth. And I did that when I was at Velos and we're doing this at Coster. We're getting a lot of word of mouth business, which means that, you know, one restaurant will tell the other. Oh, you should use cluster. I really like Cluster. So it's the same. So you're gonna see a trend about referral program more and more. And it's something that really is really picking up in the industry right now.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:20:55]:

It makes sense. And it's funny because even when I think about it historically, I would always notice how there'd be a lot of POS concentrations per geography. Now it's a bit more like global because everything's online. But if you think about it historically, it's like, let's say Quebec, like you said, it might be a Metro D or a Villas at that time. Or a cluster. Right. And then you look at Ontario and it was like me at that time at least. You know, maybe a touch bistro, maybe a silverware.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:21:20]:

And it was kind of funny, you know, and you go to Texas and it'd be. And I think it was for the reason you just said. It's like you'd start there, you'd have your main office, people talk. So you naturally end up kind of growing in an area. Yeah. And you see this kind of.

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David Lafleur  [00:21:34]:

I was at an investor conference last week and the restaurant space is a very fragmented space, exactly like you describe it in Aria. So even again, I'm gonna use Toast because it's a public company and we have our data. Even in the US they only own 10 market share, so there's 90% still available, which is huge.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:21:56]:

Wow. I didn't realize it was. I thought I would have. It's funny, I would have assumed it more.

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David Lafleur  [00:22:01]:

No, because there's so much restaurants in. In the US it's crazy.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:22:06]:

Wow, that is interesting.

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David Lafleur  [00:22:08]:

So the 10 was number from last year probably grew a little bit now but yeah, I, I doubt there's a player will own 50 of the market.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:22:17]:

So that's super interesting and switching gears a bit, I wanna, I wanna give shed some light on, on cluster. Right, so you're at closer now you're, you, you know, you said over a lot of changes happened over the last, you know, 18 months, 24 months. So then I guess especially if they're in the Quebec market, but not exclusively because you guys are in the US too. Let's talk a bit about cluster. Who is cluster? Right for where do you guys play well? Like let's just get into, into the cluster side of things.

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David Lafleur  [00:22:45]:

So, so cluster historically was very, very. They played very well in the quick service space and you know, they went over and do more fast casual and eventually table service. But when I came into position about almost two years now, I wanted to change the vision a little bit and move you know, a little bit up market. So right now let's say cluster historically was you know, an 8020 business which 80% was quick service and 20% was stable service. Now I could say that we're more 5050 business.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:23:23]:

Oh wow.

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David Lafleur  [00:23:23]:

So yeah, we attracted more table service. We went it, you know, it, it went really well. The last two years we, we almost added. No, we added 2000 rooftop which was great. So there was a big expansion. While doing all of this, we're developing our new platform which we're releasing, releasing this year in around April 2026 to the public. Yeah.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:23:48]:

Okay.

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David Lafleur  [00:23:48]:

So it will be, it's a completely new product. Nothing was recycled from the platform and as you know, sometimes you have too much technical. So yeah, you just better just rebuild the house. I put it this way.

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David Lafleur  [00:24:06]:

So we decided to have a modern Android iPad platform and a cloud platform, modern UI and ux. And you're gonna ask me why? It's because.

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David Lafleur  [00:24:18]:

I feel that the last five or six years, the new generation that are getting in restaurants are super tech friendly. I spoke to that about that in another podcast. They know what they want. They're super tech savvy when they come to apps they like, they like nice thing because they're using to. They're used to use meta every day and platform like that and Instagram and so they're, they have always, you know, constant updates. So, so I, I thought when we thought two years ago it was time to, to start a new project and build you know, 2025 plat technology that was not existing at this time. So what we will do with the new product is really simplify first, the onboarding of the merchant. Have a very nice and simple experience with modern ui, but also use, you know, modern technology and we're implementing some AI.

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David Lafleur  [00:25:18]:

Obviously everyone's going to talk about AI in the next 25 years.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:25:22]:

Yeah.

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David Lafleur  [00:25:23]:

But there's, you know, there's some stuff for us that was not available and I'm sure it's the same for Wisk, you know, same.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:25:29]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, yeah, totally aligned. It's, it's, it's a new game because there's, there's, yeah, just things. It's like if you were in, in business before the Internet existed and then the Internet came, it's like, you know, there's a whole new thing and that's, that's even more so now with AI. It's crazy. And I, I know that, you know, many POS companies talk about efficiency. Cluster I know talks about or focuses on empowerment. I'm curious, like, how does that show up in your platform and your partnership?

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David Lafleur  [00:26:00]:

I think, like everyone is asking me, oh, what, what is Cluster different? I think, I think Cluster was very different because it was easy to use and easy to learn. That's a lot of comment we get from the people, which is very fundamental to the foundation of Cluster. We've kept that also in the new product, so we've kept that easy of use. But we also had another mode which was more.

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David Lafleur  [00:26:27]:

Which was different. So the new product will really appeal to the two type of merchant. The one that want more, a little bit more complicated interface, more customizable. But the merchant that want the simplicity and the ease of use of Cluster will get exactly that in the new product. But we just redid the whole experience from scratch. And yeah, that's the number one thing from Cluster and even for myself, just easy to use. It was very well made by the original founder and I take, I, I always thank him from that base and he did something good anyway. He had a very good vision also.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:27:07]:

That's awesome because I know, I know that's a, a big deal for a lot of hospitality people. Right. Like hostile is all about people.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:27:18]:

And you know, technology supposed to help, but ideally you still want to keep people at the center. So, you know, I'm curious about like Clusters vision. How does Cluster think about designing, you know, technology that keeps the, the people at the center of, of it. Of it all?

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David Lafleur  [00:27:34]:

First, we're working with restaurants to design the new pause.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:27:39]:

Okay, nice.

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David Lafleur  [00:27:40]:

Because we wanted to keep them and I'm sure you've, you're gonna laugh what they're gonna say. So people think AI will cut job. It's not true. AI will improve, optimize what we do and give more time to the restaurant ownership owner and the people that work with the restaurants to build their menu and stuff will just be. The job will just be different.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:28:02]:

Yeah.

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David Lafleur  [00:28:03]:

They'll be more training with the merchant. So it's gonna probably save time. And I think.

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David Lafleur  [00:28:12]:

Like I'll give you a quick example. There are some restaurants where kiosk is very good and self ordering but at the end of the day it's not for everyone. You go to a restaurant like express, you still want the people experience and talk to people.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:28:30]:

So.

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David Lafleur  [00:28:30]:

So I feel and, and especially you and I have seen the last ten years fly by. There was so many change industry, you know, from people ordering themselves with a QR code from menu with a QR code from kiosk, from the arrival of all of those delivery service like DoorDash and Uber. This is huge. Like I've the last 10 years is the year I started robot delivery. Exactly. The most change and one also of the big topic that is not fully done is the kitchen. If you look at the kitchen, yes. 70 of my order are still kitchen printer.

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David Lafleur  [00:29:13]:

There's a slow adoption to having kitchen monitor like you we saw McDonald's or Tim Horton. Yes, those big chains are doing this. But if you take the restaurants from the street, it's not true that they're all there. So some, some change take longer, some are done quicker. So it's really depend. But there was a lot of change the last 10 years. I would say.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:29:35]:

Yeah. As we, as we kind of slowly wrap up, I always like to get people's vision of what they're thinking and we kind of just touched on it a bit right now about you know, hey, what's happened the last 10 years? What do you think the POS, a POS of you know, call it 2030 will look like?

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David Lafleur  [00:29:54]:

I think it's going to be.

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David Lafleur  [00:29:57]:

Look the way we designed the new POS is the way I think it's going to be. But I think what it will really change is that the service will be more integrated. So what I mean by that is, you know, you're gonna take a product out of the shelf and it's gonna come straight. With the uber doordash integration there's gonna be no need for a third party. We're seeing this more and more. The POS will.

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David Lafleur  [00:30:25]:

Will have more feature and require less partners integration. This is where I see.

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David Lafleur  [00:30:34]:

And I think we're going to see them more and more. We start to see a lot of mobility but I think it's going to go way more like we're going to see more order at the table, more of this even as you, as you and I know there's restaurants who will never come to you with a tablet at your table or iPhone.

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David Lafleur  [00:30:55]:

I think the industry but I don't see major changes because one thing that stop a lot of the evolution right now and it's kind of a little bit stupid is that in the US for example payment is still very old school. There's no chip and PIN yet you still need to sign your receipt. So the guest experience is not that great from a guest perspective. Even myself as a Canadian, I travel and I know Angelo, I think you're based in the US now.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:31:25]:

Yes.

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David Lafleur  [00:31:25]:

If you put your Canadian chip and pit card I, I even if I tap the card I still have to sign my receipt.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:31:32]:

Yeah. Which when I first moved here I was always mine alone.

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David Lafleur  [00:31:36]:

Yeah, no, exactly. It destroyed the whole purpose of tapping your card.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:31:41]:

Yeah.

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David Lafleur  [00:31:41]:

So for me that whole thing is slowing down the industry. But in the other end there's a couple of major change that are coming especially in Canada with instant founding and instant rail. What they mean is that the restaurant's owner soon because bank of Canada is working on this and it's coming next year or thereafter will be able to get his found instantly. So that means by that is at the end of the night instead of waiting one or two days to get his money, they'll be able to get the money live. It's something available in the US but it's not done yet in Canada. So this is all big change because as you know the restaurant business hospitality is a big cash flow business. They have a lot of orders so cash flow is important. The money to flows in Wisk is working on that profitability margin.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:32:37]:

Exactly.

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David Lafleur  [00:32:38]:

So this is going to be a big big change. And obviously one of the change and this is more technical even if the restaurants don't really know is most of the POS right now and more and more in 2030. I'd say most of the PoS will run in Android soon because Android is a more open platform, it's easier for dev to work with it compared to an Apple platform. And also the cost of the solution compared to using an existing Windows license or Apple is way more effective and it's also more flexible to.

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David Lafleur  [00:33:20]:

Work with a platform like that. The other big and last trend I would say is we'll see More and more, and especially the US and Canada.

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David Lafleur  [00:33:31]:

We'Re going to see less and less spin pad on the quick service world because SoftPass is coming on and SoftPass allow US developers, uni to integrate their SDK and solution in our platform, to allow to reuse our existing hardware, to process payments and to remove the fact of carrying a second device, especially in a quick service setup. So this is going to be a good revolution. I see more and more coming in the next couple of months.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:34:03]:

Yeah, there's going to be a lot, a lot coming. Dave, this is awesome. I always like to wrap up with how can people connect with you? How can people connect with Clusters? So for people listening in, we'll obviously put the links there. But for people that are maybe in their car or just hearing, I'd love for you to plug how do they find you? How do they get in touch with you? Your team? Cluster? Go for it.

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David Lafleur  [00:34:23]:

So for the website, it's clusterpls.com you can reach us. The website is brand new, so I'm very happy. So it's very easy to get to a contact form and people can always reach me through my email which is davidusterpos.com we're going to keep it simple.

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David Lafleur  [00:34:46]:

And if they have any question or they could always reach out to me, I'm very, very happy for the time. Angelo, I thought it was great, so.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:34:53]:

No, this is, this is fun. Thank you for joining. It's fun to have someone like you on the podcast. 20 plus years in the space, super integrated with tech and working with restaurants and as passionate as I am on WISK, I see passion with Cluster on the POS side, so I love it. So there you have it, guys. We got David joining us from Cluster POS once again. You can check him out@cluster pos.com and thank you for joining us on the WISKing at All podcast.

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David Lafleur  [00:35:23]:

Thank you.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:35:25]:

If you want to learn more about WISK, head to WISK AI and book a demo.

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