Trouble Cooking at Burger King’s Mobile Payments Vendor

Earlier this week, Burger King Worldwide Inc., the nation’s second-largest burger chain, announced that it would unveil an application that will allow for mobile ordering and payments this year.

The app will be introduced next month, and should be in all of Burger King’s more than 7,000 US stores in “a few months,” according to a Chicago Tribune report.

Let’s hope.

It turns out that Burger King is using a company called Tillster for its app development. Tillster, which was rebranded last November from EMN8, appears to have a strong foothold in mobile payments for retail food, with a client list that includes Pizza Hut, Subway and Taco Bell. Tillster also seems to be a miserable place to work.

The company has a 2.1 rating on Glassdoor, the online workplace review site. Only 27% of its employees “recommend the company to a friend.” This compares to Bank of America, for example, which has a 3.2 employee approval rating and a 63% recommendation rate.

Moreover, employees say on Glassdoor that they are not sure Tillster will remain a viable enterprise. Just a couple of weeks ago, an employee who has been with the company for more than a year wrote this about the company and its work environment:

It won’t be around for long. …

Pros – The biggest one is that each day ends. That sounds bad I know, but that really is the best part about working here. There is opportunity for somebody technically strong to come in and make a difference if they can get past the politics and infighting. The pay is reasonable but they should give you hazard pay if you have to deal with senior management.

Cons – It is like working in an active war zone. You never know when a fight will break out or when you will be yelled at. The company is trying to turn a profit and at this point they are about willing to do anything including customizing the product to the point that any measure of scale will be unattainable. The last CEO over the Atlanta division had some vision, but he is pretty checked out.

Advice to Senior Management – You paid off the wrong people. We are left and all the good ones have either been run off or had enough. I am not sure what your real goal and vision is, but please just be honest with us.The Kool-Aid is not working anymore, and I need some hope to hang on.

Let’s hope the Burger King folks don’t read that.

We did not get a reply from Tillster to our request for comment by presstime.