About Us

ThriveSpot is a program unlike any other in the restaurant industry.

Our team understands the restaurant business and is well qualified to deliver a unique ThriveSpot experience for all its constituents. We are a group of innovative and seasoned professionals with decades of experience in both the restaurant business and in building technology solutions that solve business problems, improve workflow and bring results to the bottom line.

We look forward to working with you!

Our Team

Jeffrey Katz

Jeffrey Katz serves as Chairman

Jeffrey Katz specializes in building new enterprise ecosystems by aligning business interests and user experiences and creating sustainable systems. Jeff’s strategy is based on his success in founding Mercury Payment Systems (MPS). In 2001, he saw that by creating significant benefit for merchants through the POS (Point of Sale) System (delivering 2 second transactions, in this case) would provide a key point of differentiation. He worked with POS Developers and Dealers to create a strong set of alliances and shared benefits of the business, making them true partners. He continually improved the business, making a calculated decision to assume the risk during processing outages when third party processors systems failed, creating great customer service with minimal financial risk for the business.

Building MPS on strong channel partnerships and shared value has driven the fastest growth in the payments processor industry for the last six years. Currently, MPS is ranked in the top 30 of the Nilson Report’s list of top 100 acquirers of merchant contracts based on its processing volume of more than tens of billion per year, and the company continues to grow ahead of the market. Silver Lake Partners, the leading private investor in technology and technology-enabled industries, recognized the continued growth potential of these innovations and made a strategic investment acquiring a 61% interest in 2010. Jeff continues to serve as a Board Director for MPS.

eff is a visionary and seamlessly brings together innovation through new financial models, channels empowerment, product evolution, and enhancing the customer experience. Jeff has 16 years of experience in financial planning and credit card processing where he first saw the need to offer distinctive value throughout the payments ecosystem. He recognized that partners and alliances could be powerful in delivering solutions through an existing channel.

Jeff holds a B.S. degree in accounting from Binghamton University in Binghamton, NY.

 

Chuck Ellis

Chuck Ellis serves as CEO

Prior to taking over the helm for ThriveSpot, Mr. Ellis was President, COO and CTO at Bluestreak, Inc. (Providence, RI). From 2004 thru 2007 he turned around the struggling online advertising and marketing company until its successful sale to Aegis, PLC (London, UK) in an all-cash transaction. While at Bluestreak, Mr. Ellis built a large-scale email marketing engine used by hundreds of organizations throughout the world, and led the re-engineering and expansion of the company’s ad-serving engine to active delivery of over 6 billion online ads per month.

From 1997 through 2003, Mr. Ellis was Chief Technology Officer at Gazelle Systems, Inc. (Newton, MA). At Gazelle, he led the creation and operation of the food and beverage industry’s first transaction data warehouse and consumer segmentation systems. He also directed the development of the industry’s first-ever dynamic consumer messaging system under a contract with Catalina Marketing Corporation (NYSE:POS).

Prior to joining Gazelle Systems, Inc., Mr. Ellis founded America.dbf, Inc. in 1990. The company was one of the first providers of geo-demographic content to the burgeoning GIS industry. The company’s clients included the CIA and FBI, Exxon, Microsoft, ATT and many other large organizations. In 1994, America.dbf was merged with Macon AG to form MaconUSA, LLC.

Mr. Ellis has deep experience in the restaurant & bar aspects of the restaurant business. In addition to his years at Gazelle, he spent the first ten years after college working in every major role within the restaurant business, from bussing tables to bartending to marketing to managing.

Mr. Ellis is a graduate of Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). He holds one U.S. Patent, and has 3 more in process at the PTO in the areas of privacy protection, consumer messaging, and remote transaction monitoring.