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I asked Ellie Katz, founder and CEO of National Retail Solutions, a simple question on today's Coffee with Jon.
How do you keep simplifying your product when your customers keep asking for more?
His answer is what everyone needs to do, but most don't.
He visits 10 to 12 stores a month. In person. Around the world.
Not to sell. To listen.
He said something I won't forget: "I don't have my head in the sand. I go out and I ask them the exact questions no one's ever asked them before."
That's how NRS went from serving independent convenience stores to 35,000 locations across the US and Canada.
Not from a boardroom.
From the field. Where the magic happens.
.
As a business coach, the #1 problem I see: people don't get in the field and talk to the people who buy from them.
If you're building something, get out from behind the desk.
Go find your customer. Ask the question nobody's asking.
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Elie Y. Katz is the Founder, President, and CEO of National Retail Solutions (NRS), a subsidiary of IDT Corporation (NYSE: IDT) and the leading point-of-sale platform for independent retailers across the United States and Canada. Before founding NRS in 2015, Katz owned and operated over a dozen food and retail businesses, giving him an unmatched understanding of the daily pressures facing small business owners. That firsthand experience is what drove him to build a platform designed with the empathy of a small business owner and the power of a major enterprise.
Today NRS serves more than 40,000 independent retailers with a full ecosystem of tools including inventory management, payment processing, customer loyalty programs, e-commerce integrations with DoorDash, Uber and Google, and a patented panic alarm built directly into the POS register. Recognized with ChannelVision Magazine's 2025 Visionary Spotlight Award for Best Emerging Technology Breakthrough, NRS has become the technological backbone for the corner stores and bodegas that serve as the lifelines of their communities.
Elie hopes to help small business owners and independent retailers who may not yet know that enterprise-level technology is accessible and affordable for stores of their size. Beyond that, he wants to shift the broader conversation around corner stores and bodegas, positioning them not as relics of a fading retail model but as essential community institutions worth investing in and fighting for.
DoorDash, Uber Eats, Google, Krasdale Foods, ChannelVision Magazine, and others have all partnered with or recognized NRS, validating the platform's role as the leading technology solution for independent retailers across the United States and Canada.
For reference, this USA Today story does a good job highlighting Elie Y Katz's mission: usatoday.com/story/special/contributor-content/2025/08/20/with-new-tools-integrations-and-partnerships-nrs-is-keeping-corner-stores-in-the-game/85740442007.
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Connect with Elie Katz:
Website: https://nrsplus.com
Twitter: https://x.com/nrsplus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationalretailsolutions
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/national-retail-solutions-nrs-plus-
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NationalRetailSolutions
*E - explicit language may be used in this podcast.
