WAND Adds Engels To Exec Team

January 16, 2012 by Dave Haynes

WAND Corporation has been working on the Point Of Sale side of the QSR and fast casual restaurant sector for a bunch of years, and more recently has started chasing and winning business in the natural line extension of digital menu boards. The Minneapolis-area company has now hired on a digital signage industry executive to really drive business in that area.

Rick Engels, who was at one point the Chairman and CEO of BroadSign, is now VP Business Development for WAND.

“The opportunity to add Rick to our team was something we couldn’t pass up,” said Dave Perrill, CFO of WAND. “His consistent record of guiding organizations to success is well known.  In addition, his thought leadership in Digital Signage and expertise in developing measurement systems will directly benefit our customers and, as a result, WAND.”   

Engels’ responsibilities will include managing WAND’s sales, account management, and creative services teams.

After leaving BroadSign in (I think) 2009, Engels joined a hedge fund that was investing in several business, including one doing deployment work by plugging into a massive satellite TV install and service workforce. Engels ended up buying that company, rebadging it as TechniqueUSA, and then selling it late last year.

That left Engels free to join WAND, which has it offices about five minutes up the road from his house.

“WAND’s commitment to technology, innovation and service is unequaled in the QSR and Fast Casual industry,” said Engels.  “It’s important that the companies I work for have the same dedication to exceeding customer expectations that I have, and WAND easily fits that profile.  Our accomplishments in combining POS, BOS, and Digital Menu Boards into a Total Restaurant Management (TRM) solution put us ahead of our competitors.  And the analytics and reporting capabilities support my philosophy driving success through information.”

BOS? New one to add to the acronym decoder.

Engels was my boss for a couple of years during my own tenure at BroadSign. Nice, smart guy (also ex-special forces, so I doubt he’s intimidated easily). He ended up on a pretty wild rollercoaster ride while there, closing in on major funding for BroadSign just as the recession hit in 2008. Withe money well abruptly dried up, Engels instead had to start a series of layoffs and chase a very different kind of funding.

Then he had a whole industry staring at him as his ex-boss at Petters Group Worldwide, Tom Petters, was arrested and eventually convicted of fraud in what was termed a massive Ponzi scheme. Petters got 50 years and five others pled guilty of various charges.

Big, big mess, but Engels was not part of it.

This is a nice fit for both Rick and the company, which is family run, with three brothers in the C-level jobs and the founder/dad still involved as an advisor. From what I can tell and have read, they’ve got a nice business shaking already. In Engels, they get someone really well connected, who knows the nuts and bolts stuff but is entirely at home in big money boardrooms.


  1. ex wand says:

    Poor Rick,

    He obviously didn’t do his due diligence in investigating the company before he took the job:

    http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wand-Corporation-Reviews-E113063.htm

    What a depressing place to work.

  2. observer says:

    Perhaps that is why they brought him in, to help remedy the ‘depressing’ atmosphere. From what I understand moral is now at an all time high at Wand (per my wife).

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