Bring Your Best Game. We’ll Bring Breakfast.
Friday eggs, competitive intelligence and the practical business of winning retail-technology customers.
Don Gunter — a personal account. November 5, 2026.
Before we begin, a warning: this story contains competitive enthusiasm, a scarecrow and management personnel operating a stove. Exagegerated fish stories. Tall Tales of Retail
Some readers may find the last item difficult to believe.
I assure you, we washed the dishes too.
It didn’t start that way.. First it was the owners treating us to breakfast…A long time tradition their father, Curtis Fuller may have started? But David and Len? Set the standard.
John Stilley took the lead when we had grown into a new office with a kitchen. He lead the way.. He set the standard. I could merely follow in that great man’s footsteps. It was so bad the Boss and his mother joined in. Heaven. Every Friday Morning.
Soon? Nora joined the team. OMG.
Every Friday morning, the leaders cooked breakfast for the team. We served. We cleaned. We listened.
Then we discussed how to win.
I remember those mornings with considerable affection. The food mattered. So did who was carrying the plates.
It is easier to take a speech about service seriously when the person giving it has just asked whether you would like more coffee.
A small team with an appetite
We started small: about twenty people, in my recollection. Starters. Mavericks. People willing to carry more than one job when the work required it.
Over roughly seven years, I remember the business growing to around 120 employees, with annual sales moving from about $1.4 million to about $24 million. Those are my recollected figures, not numbers extracted from financial statements for this article.
The numbers describe the scale. The Friday mornings explain something about the method.
We had a weekly communications meeting with the energy of a pep rally. Everyone needed to understand what we were trying to accomplish, what customers needed, where a competitor was strong, where an opportunity existed and what we had promised to do next.
There were props. A scarecrow wearing a competitor’s merchandise. A hat. A shirt. A mug. Mock wanted posters were part of the internal theater.
The mug had no operational responsibility. Its performance review was therefore brief.
The people had assignments.
That was the important difference between a rally and a room full of people enjoying their own noise: when the meeting ended, somebody knew what to do.
The engineer still has to deliver
At Cash Register Services, I was recruited to engineer WIC EBT integration. I brought chemical-plant commissioning experience, military service and a programmer’s determination to make the actual system work.
Before my 2002 deployment to Afghanistan, I had an integrated prototype. I took my laptop with me and continued working while deployed. After returning, I completed the work; other members of the team carried the commercial effort and deployment across the finish line.
That is my firsthand account of my role. It deserves to be told with the engineering contribution and the team’s other contributions both intact.
A useful project history names the requirements, design, code, tests, release, training, deployment and support — and the people responsible for each. Several people can lead important parts of a project. Those contributions need not be flattened into one convenient sentence.
An organization chart is not a build log.
There is also a public commercial record. A Defense Commissary Agency justification describes CRS’s 2006 competitive award and its installation of WIC EBT with ISS45, followed by a proposed maintenance and upgrade contract. That is evidence of the company’s delivery history; it does not identify the individual developer. The federal procurement document.
I take pride in having helped build something that had to work after the presentation ended.
That remains my preferred specialty.
By the bye:
I do hold evidence in the form of source code that clearly shows one name. Don Gunter. was responsible for every single line of code in the integration for WinPOS.
The three fronts
The competitive approach I remember had three practical fronts: people, customers and the standard of operation.
People. Become the employer a capable person would choose. Better support. Better tools. Better development. A fair opportunity to contribute. Management that listens and acts.
Customers. Become the provider a customer would choose. Answer the call. Diagnose the problem. Keep the appointment. Complete the conversion. Train the operator. Stay accountable after installation.
Standards. Make the quality of the operation visible. Know the equipment, procedures, service history, training, controls and outstanding obligations. Be able to show how the work is managed.
That is competition with substance behind it.
If another provider leaves an important need unmet, I intend to offer a better answer. I do not feel obliged to leave a customer dissatisfied so that a rival can enjoy a quiet afternoon.
Here is my challenge to any provider: defend the account with service. Bring the better offer. Make the customer want to stay. I intend to give that customer a reason to compare.
The customer gets a choice. So does the employee.
Neither belongs on someone else’s trophy shelf.
The operating rule I would put in writing today is simple: recruit people for their ability, experience and judgment; build customer relationships through authorized contact and earned service. Protected files and another employer’s confidential material are not recruiting bonuses.
You want a stronger team. Start by being a team worth joining.
Intelligence earns its breakfast
At the weekly meeting, competitive information had to become useful work.
Which product could meet the requirement? What did the customer actually ask for? What could we support? Where was the incumbent genuinely capable? What obstacle would prevent a migration from working?
An answer might come from a public product specification, an authorized customer conversation, a demonstration, a field observation or a service result. Its source and limits matter.
Rumor can start a question. It cannot finish the engineering.
I want the team alert, enthusiastic and difficult to beat. I also want its next decision to survive contact with reality. A poor assumption can outrun a good salesperson and arrive at the customer first.
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The meeting should leave behind an owner, an action, a due date, an expected result and the next check. At the following meeting, bring the result — or the unresolved condition and what you are doing about it.
High-frequency nonsense is still nonsense. Communication becomes valuable when it is accurate, understood and followed through.
The scarecrow was there to focus the room. It was not there to approve the installation plan.
Win the account. Then earn the next day.
People sometimes describe this as “taking” an account.
I understand the sporting language. I use it too. The operational event is a customer choosing a different provider, followed by an enormous amount of work that had better go well.
A service-account win is different from buying the rival company or its assets. If you purchase a business, equipment, intellectual property or contracts, that is a separate transaction with its own ownership, liabilities and transfer terms.
For a customer transition, here is the sequence I would put on the board:
- Qualify the opportunity. Establish the customer’s need, the decision authority, the actual scope and the commitments already in place.
- Prove the fit. Demonstrate the required workflows, interfaces, support model and known exceptions against agreed acceptance criteria.
- Price the whole obligation. Include conversion, equipment, training, coverage, travel, support and recovery. Revenue is not profit; an account can be won at a loss.
- Plan the handover. Inventory what is moving, establish authorized access, assign responsibilities and keep a return path for failed steps.
- Convert and reconcile. Map identifiers and units, retain source records, check counts and totals, and resolve exceptions before treating them as completed work.
- Rehearse. Test representative sites and difficult cases. Determine who can stop the change and what evidence permits it to continue.
- Deploy and accept. Use explicit site-level acceptance. Support the people doing the work; do not make them improvise the missing part of your plan.
- Stabilize and retain. Watch service demand, defects, unresolved conversions, customer outcomes and the cost to serve. The relationship continues after the signature.
That is a proposed working sequence, not a description of a particular confidential transaction.
The victory dance is allowed. The support roster must still be covered.
Nobody at a busy checkout wants to hear that the technician is unavailable because management is still doing its end-zone choreography.
Make the comparison count
Service and quality claims need measures that can be checked: response and restoration times, repeat visits, unresolved tickets, reconciliation results, training completion, availability and the boundaries of coverage.
Compare equivalent work. Keep the time period and source. A good result at one site does not automatically describe a chain. A promise in a sales presentation is not an observed service level.
The FTC’s business guidance permits truthful, non-deceptive brand comparisons. Its substantiation policy addresses the basis needed for objective advertising claims. That is a useful discipline for any team determined to be confidently competitive. Advertising guidance; substantiation policy.
The same discipline applies to compliance. Define the applicable requirement and examine evidence against it. Establish your own controls. If a serious concern requires formal review, provide the facts to the appropriate people and let the process do its job.
A pep rally can be wonderfully unreasonable about enthusiasm. Its factual briefing has to be sound.
The jersey I wear now
Today I work with DSI and RDS West. Retail Data Systems identifies Data Systems Inc. as its parent company and lists its California West operation publicly. DSI’s corporate page; RDS West.
For readers who remember the “other” older company name, CRS announced its TRUNO brand launch on August 1, 2014. That connection is in the company’s own announcement. The brand-launch record.
These are familiar names in an industry where former teammates can become competitors, partners can meet again under different banners, and the people behind a checkout installation may have known one another for decades.
I enjoy the competition. I enjoy a well-earned win. I enjoy being on a team that intends to earn the next one.
I also know who ultimately decides whether the work deserves another contract.
The customer.
See you on the show floor
Rudy Olivarez, Bobby Ramos and Joe Cabello: Donnie G sends his love. I would enjoy catching up, comparing notes and meeting you on the court again.
Bring your best game. I intend to bring mine.
The RSPA has announced RetailNOW 2027 for July 25–27 at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas. I am looking forward to Las Vegas; my meeting and booth details can follow when confirmed. The organizer’s announcement.
IF, I don’t make it this year? I will see you soon…Much Love. Give David Fuller, Mike Wiillard, Len, and Brad and Steven of course, my condolences on loosing the 700 Store Grocery Outlet Account.
The best team won this time. You didn’t Loose the account. We won it.
Endzone.. Score… Direct Hit.
“How does it FEEL?”
“You sank my Battleship!”
“You ain’t seen nothin yet. No no no baby. you just ain’t seen nothin yet. here’s something that you never gonna forgeeeeeet. you just ain’t seen nothing yet.”.
“Does this remind you of Hawaii? We got both Don Quixote and I believe Times? How Many Stores Times how many POS?”
“Heres something that your never gonna forgeeeeeet.. 😎😁. you ain’t seen nothin yet.”
“Let’s let’s Let’s. “Let’s get ready to rumbleeeeeeeeee”
There will be familiar faces, better tools and, I hope, a few excellent arguments about how to serve a grocer properly.
I remain willing to settle the most important dispute personally:
Who is buying the coffee?
Money can keep part of the score. The customers still need service, and the people who earned the result deserve their names in the story.
Cook the breakfast. Serve the team. Clear the barriers. Do the work.
Then, if you have earned a little celebration, put the x competitor’s branded bling, it’s mug, or hat, on the Trophy Shelf at your “Home” Office.
Just remember to answer the phone.
