An interesting journey from retail to hospitality IT: How wide experience helped the director of Redcat drive QSRs forward

Redcat's Lawrence Pelletier shares some of his thoughts on the QSR industry.

In today's world, the hospitality industry is evolving rapidly. As a result, companies like Redcat—one of the leading hospitality IT platforms for QSRs—must keep up with industry changes whilst simultaneously staying true to their mission statement: to help QSRs be more efficient and profitable.

We recently sat down with Lawrence Pelletier, Sales and Marketing Director of Redcat, to discuss how his previous experiences prepared him for his current role at Redcat where he has been instrumental in business growth whilst helping QSRs to expand at the same time.

We also explored the role that Redcat, which has been changing the way restaurants operate through its innovative solutions, plays in the QSR industry and how it continues to be a driving force.

From retail operations and merchandising to software and software and technology solutions, and finally, to a hospitality IT platform, Lawrence shared his experience across different industries and how he was able to use that various knowledge to help QSRs and their customers drive their businesses forward.

QSR Media: Please tell us about Redcat and the role it plays in the QSR industry.

LP: Redcat makes it for hospitality businesses to run multiple sites in one system. We're all about unifying their world and making it easy to run across all those different sites. 

The company was founded around 30 years ago, working with cafes and restaurants. For the last 15 years, we have been very focused on QSR.

As a hospitality IT platform, we provide an integrated range of components that help businesses to grow.  For example, Boost Juice started with us when they had three sites. Now, they have over 700 internationally. Grill’d started with us with their very first site and now they have over 150.  

We provide our customers with what we call the loyalty engine and allow them to operate loyalty in the best way for their business. That could be gift cards, coupons, or recognition, but basically, whatever their definition of loyalty,  we support that and help them deploy it across all their channels.  Whether they’re interacting with the customer at the POS, at the kiosk, or through their own online ordering, we help them connect loyalty to that channel. 
What previous experiences/positions have you held and how did they prepare you for your role at Redcat?

I grew up in the retail world which is of course closely related to hospitality. I started my career as an operations manager for my family’s supermarket in Canada and when I moved to Australia about 30 years ago, I stayed in supermarket retail. I joined Coles and worked my way up to a senior position at the head office. That was really good for learning how to run an enterprise retail business and how to solve problems from a headquarters perspective.

I moved from there to ACNielsen, a world leader in data analytics, where I specialised in retail data, including category management and merchandising services.  

Next, I actually worked for three big technology solutions companies: Capgemini, Fujitsu, and Logica (now CGI). My roles were in their retail, supply chain and hospitality practices. It gave me very good experience with solution design and an understanding of how to fix a big problem with technology solutions. 

I have a lot of international experience. I grew up in Canada and have lived in Australia for 30 years, but I also spent three years in Thailand and Hong Kong when I was with ACNielsen. In that role, I  worked with enterprises across more than a dozen countries, which gave me a great international perspective on how operations vary from country to country. 

Then, in the last 15 years, I've been focused on hospitality. I was able to take my previous experience and apply it to the hospitality sector. The invaluable experience and insights I gained from supermarket retail, retail data analytics and management consulting, have given me the ability to work with hospitality businesses to solve their problems and challenges.

What are your key business philosophies?

First and foremost is my approach to partnerships with suppliers and customers. I truly believe that we can work closely with hospitality businesses to genuinely help each other do better business. The same goes for suppliers. You can have better relationships with your suppliers and customers when you work together to understand their business and provide a better solution. It's really important to treat our customer relationships as a partnership and work with people to understand their business and how we can help them.
 
The second one is relationships over transactions. When we work with somebody, it's not about selling them something. It’s about ‘How do we build a relationship with this company that will benefit everybody?’ We want to ensure they'll have a better system that will be able to run their business more efficiently – that they'll be able to build their business by selling more products in a more profitable way. It's a symbiotic relationship and that’s really important.  

The third business philosophy is around management. Five years ago, my three partners and I bought Redcat. We dramatically changed the way the organisation works. Now, it acts more like a start-up, which is reflected in the values of the company: teamwork, learning, respect, innovation, and fun. If we look at those things and how they fit into our business, it actually sums up my philosophy that if you love what you do, then it should be a good place to work, where you enjoy it and you're always expanding it. You're having a good time but you're actually getting stuff done.

What does the future look like for Redcat?

The future looks very bright for Redcat! We’re excited about our expansion in the UK. We’ve hired our new UK country manager, Marc Brown, and are gearing the UK expansion up with all sorts of fun things. That’s a big goal for 2023: to get the UK expansion up and running 

We’re also continuing to grow our team. We’ve already gone from 30 staff to 75, so growing pretty heavily and that will continue, especially with the UK launch.  

And of course, we never lose sight of our focus on the customer. Yes, we’re growing, and yes, we want to run a good and successful business, but our future will be firmly focussed on the most important part of our business – our customers.