PAR TECHNOLOGY CORP (PAR) Business

Item 1.     BUSINESS

Overview

PAR is a leading foodservice technology company providing omnichannel cloud-based software and hardware solutions to the restaurant industry in three major restaurant categories – quick service, fast casual, and table service – and to the retail industry, including convenience and fuel retailers (C-Stores). Our product and service offerings include point-of-sale, customer engagement and loyalty, digital ordering and delivery, operational intelligence, payment processing, hardware, and related technologies, solutions, and services. We provide enterprise restaurants, franchisees, and other foodservice outlets with operational efficiencies through a data-driven network with integration capabilities from front- and back-of-house to customer fulfillment. Our omnichannel solutions are used in more than 150,000 active restaurants and retail locations across the world.

PAR’s solutions are designed with flexibility and openness at their core and are engineered to scale and adapt with brands at every stage of growth. Our solutions integrate with others, yet deliver significant value when used together across our software, hardware, and payments offerings. With intentional innovation as a priority, PAR’s solutions help streamline operations, drive higher engagement, and strengthen guest experiences for restaurants and retailers globally.

Our Mission and Vision

Our mission is to enable personalized experiences that connect people to the brands, meals, and moments they love; and our strategy to achieve this mission is grounded in delivering a unified experience across our comprehensive suite of subscription services, hardware, and professional services that simplifies our customers' operations, elevates their customer engagement, and drives their continued success.

PAR's vision of unified experience is a single platform that provides seamless connections from our customers' backend systems through to their customer-facing channels enabling our customers to deliver innovation, differentiated experiences, and competitive advantage. It's the setup enterprise restaurants and retailers require to support omnichannel journeys and create a unified view of customer interactions, products, and management systems. We continually strive to enhance and expand our cloud-based solutions to provide full integration of key data points that drive guest satisfaction and operational efficiencies to our customers across our product and service offerings.

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Our Products and Services

Subscription Services

Our subscription services consist of software-as-a-service ("SaaS") solutions, related software support, managed platform development services, and transaction-based payment processing services, and are grouped into two product lines:

ENGAGEMENT CLOUD, offering customer facing solutions:

PAR ENGAGEMENT, which includes the Punchh and PAR Ordering product offerings, is our expanded guest engagement suite of enterprise-grade, AI-powered tools to manage loyalty, marketing and offers, ordering, and guest data across key touchpoints. When used together, these tools power personalized loyalty programs with rewards and flexible, branded ordering experiences across web, mobile, and kiosk, with dynamic upsells and menu logic that make ordering and reward redemption easy for guests and operators. Underneath it all, real-time guest identity and behavioral data unify interactions into a single view, which can then be leveraged through targeted campaigns and personalized offers across email, SMS, web, app, and wallets to increase customer lifetime value.

PAR RETAIL, a digital engagement software solution for convenience and fuel retailers (C-Stores) with an industry-leading guest engagement platform serving major brands in the space. PAR Retail enables retailers to deliver seamless, personalized experiences across mobile, web, and in-store channels. By leveraging data-driven insights, PAR Retail helps businesses increase customer engagement, drive loyalty program participation, and grow same-store sales with innovative, integrated technology solutions.

PLEXURE, an international customer engagement and loyalty platform that delivers hyper-personalized marketing campaigns and promotions in real-time. Leveraging advanced data analytics and machine learning, Plexure seamlessly integrates with existing systems to provide actionable insights and enhance the customer experience. By driving engagement across multiple channels, Plexure helps increase customer lifetime value, boost repeat transactions, and improve same-store sales performance through tailored, data-driven solutions.

OPERATOR CLOUD, offering front-of-house and back-of-house operator solutions:

PAR POS, an open cloud, point-of-sale solution that provides operators with tools to seamlessly integrate with multiple product offerings - including kiosks, kitchen video systems, and enterprise reporting - through PAR's ecosystem of integration partners.

PAR PAY, includes our PAR Payment Services merchant services business that enables electronic payment and processing services for businesses of all sizes to accept electronic payments online or in-person and PAR Pay Gateway, our front-end technology that reads payment cards and sends customer information to the merchant

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acquiring bank for processing. Combined PAR Payment Services and PAR Pay Gateway offer a comprehensive payment processing solution that allows our customers to accept a variety of payments methods including debit and credit cards, near-field communication contactless, mobile devices, digital wallets and gift cards.

PAR OPS, includes Data Central and Delaget product offerings that leverage business intelligence, analytics, and automation technologies to streamline operations. Serving as the central hub of restaurant intelligence, PAR OPS aggregates data from point-of-sale, inventory, supply, payroll, and accounting systems to deliver actionable insights and a comprehensive view of operations. By simplifying complex data into intuitive dashboards and reports, PAR OPS equips customers with the tools to achieve peak operational and financial efficiency, driving better decision-making and performance across their business.

TASK, an enterprise-grade technology solution, delivers powerful solutions to streamline operations and drive efficiency for hospitality and retail businesses. Specializing in point-of-sale, kitchen management, and inventory systems, TASK offers a transaction management platform that integrates seamlessly with existing infrastructure. Designed for scalability and reliability, TASK empowers businesses to optimize workflows, enhance service delivery, and elevate the customer experience through innovative, data-driven solutions.

Our SaaS solutions are extensible and built on open application programming interfaces (“API”) enabling integration by more than 600 integration partners, including leading industry brands, to extend the reach and capabilities of our SaaS solutions and those of our integration partners.

Hardware

Our hardware offerings include point-of-sale terminals and tablets, wireless headsets, drive-thru systems, kitchen display systems, kiosks, printers, payment devices, and other in-store peripherals:

Point-of-Sale Hardware. Our POS hardware platforms are designed to reliably operate in harsh environments associated with food service. PAR terminals, including PAR WAVE and PAR PHASE, and our EverServ® POS tablets are durable and highly functioning, scalable, and easily integrated, offering customers competitive performance at a cost-conscious price. Our open architecture POS platforms are optimized to support our SaaS solutions, as well as many third-party POS software applications, support a distributed processing environment and are suitable for a broad range of use and functions within the markets served.

Wireless Communications, Drive-Thru Systems. Our wireless headsets for drive-thru order-taking provide our customers with another means to deliver their products and serve their customers. The PAR G5® headset provides clear audio and an ergonomic fit. PAR's drive-thru timer systems provide crew and managers near-real-time feedback to improve speed of service and meet performance targets.

In-Store Peripherals. We partner with numerous vendors that offer in-store peripherals, including payment devices, cash drawers, and printers, allowing us to deliver a comprehensive, integrated hardware solution.

Professional Services

We provide a comprehensive portfolio of support services to our customers, including hardware repair, installation and implementation, training, and on-site and technical support.

Hardware repair. We offer depot repair, warranty, and overnight Advanced Exchange services from our office in Mississauga, Ontario and our corporate headquarters in New Hartford, New York.

Installation and implementation. We offer hardware installation and software implementation services.

Training. We offer application training to customers’ in-store staff and provide technical training to our customers’ information systems personnel.

On-site and technical support. We offer on-site support in the continental U.S. through our field tech service network and 24-hour help desk support from our diagnostic service centers located in New Hartford, New York and Tampa, Florida. Outside the continental U.S. we provide our professional services directly or through authorized providers.

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Supply

We have agreements for the supply of hardware products and components, including long-term or volume-based purchase agreements with some suppliers. We have alternative sources in the event one or more of our component suppliers are not able to perform or fully perform; and we hold safety stocks of single source hardware products in quantities that we believe are sufficient to protect against possible supply chain disruptions. To mitigate supply chain risks, we continue to adjust our pricing to reflect market conditions, increase our inventory levels of scarce components, and expand our supplier network by identifying and/or establishing alternative suppliers of our hardware products.

Sales and Marketing

We sell our products and services to enterprise restaurants, franchisees, and other restaurant outlets and to C-Stores and other retail customers, including amusement parks, cinemas, cruise lines, spas, casinos, and other ticketing and entertainment venues. Our dedicated sales teams work closely with potential customers to understand their operational challenges and recommend the most effective solutions. Our sales teams are organized in two main areas: enterprise customer sales, focused on tier-one (brands operating 500 or more sites) and tier-two (brands operating 50-499 sites) customers; these customers are generally driven by requests for proposals and have longer sales cycles, where we aid our sales team with premier support and pre-sales engineers; and sales to customers with small to medium-size businesses, where we focus on providing simplified solutions and quicker implementation of our products. We also leverage a network of channel partners, including resellers, distributors, and integrators, as a cost effective means of extending our selling opportunities. Sales and marketing expenses were $48.9 million, $41.7 million, and $38.5 million, for the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024, and 2023, respectively.

We have longstanding relationships with several of the largest brands in the restaurant space, including as an approved provider of restaurant technology solutions and related support to McDonald's Corporation and its franchisees since 1980, to Yum! Brands since 1983, and to Dairy Queen since 2018. McDonald's Corporation accounted for 21% of our total revenue in 2025.

Competition

The markets for our products and services are highly competitive and rapidly evolving. We compete on the basis of features and functionality, user experience, integration capabilities, method of delivery (cloud versus traditional on-premise software applications), existing and planned product design, quality and reliability, product development capabilities, price, and customer service. Many of our larger customers have approved several suppliers of software and hardware similar to one or more of our products.

Our open integration platform, enterprise-grade omnichannel cloud-based software and hardware solutions, combined with our development capabilities, extensive domain knowledge and expertise, excellent product reliability, direct sales teams, and responsive customer service and support are some of our competitive advantages. We also believe our customer base is a competitive advantage; our customers are primarily enterprise and fast-growing brands and typically choose our products when opening new stores and locations. However, several factors can affect our ability to successfully compete, including rapid adoption of new technologies such as AI in product development and as a component of products and services, the constant introduction of new product and service offerings, and aggressive pricing strategies.

We face competition from companies both within our market segment and from those targeting lower market tiers. Some of these competitors have greater financial and technical resources, more relevant product and service offerings, and larger established customer bases. This competitive landscape can impact our market share and growth potential. As competition intensifies, both from existing competitors and new market entrants, we must continually innovate and adapt to maintain our competitive edge. Additionally, as we expand into new markets, we will encounter established competitors and new market entrants, further challenging our ability to compete effectively.

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Research and Development

Product research, innovation, and product development are an integral part of our business. We continually evaluate customer needs and new technologies to enable us to develop innovative and relevant products and product enhancements. We leverage AI to assist in the generation of code and other product-related artifacts which assists in driving efficiency and innovation in our development process. Research and development expenses were $81.8 million, $67.3 million, and $58.4 million, for the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024, and 2023, respectively.

Intellectual Property

We rely on various intellectual property laws, confidentiality procedures, and contractual provisions to establish, maintain, and protect our intellectual property. We have U.S. and foreign patents filed and issued to protect our discoveries and inventions, registered and common law trademarks to protect our brand, and copyrights that relate to software and various distinctive characteristics of our products. We also rely on a combination of confidentiality and assignment-of-invention agreements with our employees and consultants, and enter into confidentiality and licensing agreements with our customers and other third parties with whom we have strategic relationships. We believe our use and reliance on intellectual property laws and our agreements and licenses protect and maintain our rights in our intellectual property; however, there can be no assurance that our trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property rights will not be challenged, invalidated, or circumvented; that others will not assert intellectual property rights in technologies that are relevant to our business; or that our intellectual property rights will give us a competitive advantage. For a discussion of risks associated with intellectual property, refer to the Risk Factor—"Assertions by third parties of infringement or other violations by us of their intellectual property rights could result in significant costs and materially and adversely harm our business, financial conditions, results of operations and cash flows" in "Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors", which is incorporated herein by reference.

Government Regulation

We are subject to a variety of laws and regulations in the United States and other jurisdictions that involve matters central to our business, including privacy, data security and personal information, content, data retention and deletion as well as U.S. and foreign laws and regulations that impact the operations of our business, including employee matters, import/export controls, trade restrictions, including tariffs, anti-corruption and bribery. A failure, or alleged failure, by us to comply with any of these laws or regulations could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. For additional information about government regulation and laws applicable to our business, refer to the risks described in "Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors".

Human Capital

We prioritize finding, developing and rewarding extraordinary talent. Our employee-first strategy is designed to provide an inclusive and safe environment where our employees enjoy coming to work each day to support our customers and grow our business. As of December 31, 2025, we employed 1,809 people worldwide, 1,800 of whom were full-time.

We value urgency, ownership, delivering outcomes, never settling, and winning together, which we consider to be the foundation for how we operate and make decisions.

Leadership's Role: Our senior management team is responsible for developing and executing our human capital strategy. We seek employees who share a passion for technology and its ability to improve our customers’ businesses. Our mission is to create an environment that reflects our values of urgency, ownership, delivering outcomes, never settling, and winning together where our employees thrive. Our strategy is to seek to hire the best talent, give them the responsibility and authority they deserve, and let them make the decisions on how to best execute. We design our employee compensation and benefits programs to be competitive and consistent with our values, to incentivize and reward outstanding performance. Our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer regularly update the compensation committee of our board of directors on key areas of our human capital strategy, including the following:

Culture: Our commitment to culture is simple: it’s about community and belonging. We want to understand and integrate our employees’ unique perspectives and voices every day. Our employees should feel a sense of belonging and want to be part of the PAR team.

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Employee Engagement and Talent Management/Development: Consistent with our employee-first strategy, we believe that our employees should have the opportunity to communicate their feedback, concerns and suggestions. We conduct annual employee engagement surveys to understand the sentiment of our employees and inform our strategies around employee engagement, retention, and total rewards. In 2025, we continued our quarterly “Living Our Values” awards. Employees submit examples where PAR values are demonstrated by a coworker, enabling them to be selected as a quarterly Living Our Values winner. Winning recipients are recognized in front of their peers for their efforts and accomplishments, in addition to custom swag and spot bonuses.

We offer a variety of programs to support employee growth and development at PAR. In 2025, we launched a company-wide mentorship program as well as a focused rising female leaders summit. We also rolled out a career development management toolkit to enable intentional career discussions between managers and employees, enabling ongoing development of talent and internal mobility across the organization.

Our Annual Talent Roadmap includes a performance review, and 360 feedback annually for all employees, as well as a robust talent review of director level and above employees with our executive team. In 2026, we will invest in the design and launch of an internally focused learning function to accelerate our career development options.

Our compensation philosophy aims to attract, retain, and incentivize top performers in a highly competitive market for talent using short-term and long-term performance targets. To support our meritocratic, pay-for-performance strategy, we reward employees for achieving performance targets and contributing to our culture by living our values day in and day out. We have a robust CEO award program that gives leaders the opportunity to over index on rewarding top performers in their organizations during the annual performance review cycle.

Health and Safety: The health and safety of our employees in the workplace are of utmost importance to us. We regularly assess our facilities to ensure compliance with our health and safety guidelines and regulatory requirements. We continue to offer the Headspace Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to our global team, providing confidential, best-in-class meditation, mindfulness support, and a full suite of work-life services to full-time employees and their families. We also introduced the Benepass Wellness Program and Lifestyle Spending Account, providing additional funding for personalized wellness needs to every employee. Additionally, as part of our dedication to employees' health, safety, and well-being, PAR established the donor-funded PAR-Sammon Family Employee Assistance Fund (EAF) to provide support during times of need.

Talent Acquisition and Attrition: PAR is committed to attracting top talent from diverse sources to meet current and future business needs. In 2025, we implemented a standardized talent selection process to raise hiring standards and introduced AI-powered resume scanning to reduce time-to-fill while helping to minimize bias. To proactively attract diverse talent and broaden our candidate pool, we continue to engage with universities, professional associations, industry groups, and leverage PAR’s robust employee value proposition, which includes our location-flexible philosophy, a collaborative global work environment, and a shared sense of purpose. Our focus on retaining talent is rooted in our employee-first strategy and includes investments in employee engagement, diverse talent sourcing tools, talent management systems, and development. We continue to make appropriate adjustments to help ensure competitive compensation, including the review of our career and compensation framework and the creation of a globally unified total rewards operating model.

Available Information

Our website is located at https://partech.com. Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Proxy Statements on Schedule 14A, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to such reports and statements filed or furnished by us pursuant to the Exchange Act are available, free of charge, on our website at https://partech.com/investor-relations/ as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. Our Corporate Governance Guidelines, Board of Directors’ committee charters and Code of Conduct are also available, free of charge, at https://partech.com/investor-relations/. The information posted on or accessible through our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report or in any other report or document we file with the SEC. The SEC also maintains a website at http://www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy statements and other information regarding SEC registrants, including PAR.