Groupon Update: Now It Wants To Be Your Cash Register

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that Groupon chief executive Andrew Mason has been working as a maitre d' in order to learn more about the restaurant business.

Critics of the daily deals company—whose prescient arguments got an airing in a WW cover story last year—might wonder why Mason didn't make that effort before running thousands of deals that pinched local businesses around the country on the way to taking his company public.

But, as the lengthy BusinessWeek article explains, Mason's self-education efforts aren't aimed so much at making Groupon's existing coupon business more merchant-friendly, but at launching a whole new set of products and services. Groupon wants to get into the point-of-sale business:

Of course, Groupon isn't the only tech company looking for a way to "own the entire consumer space."

The BusinessWeek piece is a fine read, with a lot of gems like this one:

cashed out
opened
$20
Right now
$7.40
death watch

WWeek 2015

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