POS Industry Blog

Automated Coupon Delivery Service For Small Businesses

Culminating what the executive team at the automated customer service management service provider FiveStars calls three years of development work, the company is launching its latest feature — AutoPilot.

The new product FiveStars is selling automates the distribution of coupons and discounts based on a customers’ previous purchasing behavior at a store.

The new feature rolls up and replaces different services that FiveStars used to offer with a single bundled service that retailers use to communicate with customers’ mobile devices via SMS, location-based, geo-targeted push notifications, and email.

For instance, the store can send alerts or special discounts based on events in a customer’s life, like setting foot in the store, celebrating a birthday, follow up recommendations to specific purchases, or even a coupon if a customer hasn’t frequented a shop for a certain period of time.

The company boasts that it currently is responsible for 1.2 store check-ins per month through its platform for vendors, a rate that’s four times as high as retailers derive from Facebook check-ins.

Seven Steps to a Successful Restaurant Launch

If only our customer's customers found that operating a restaurant was this simple. The fact is, if you own a self-sustaining restaurant and have been in business for more than two years, you are in an elite group. Good job!!

Priceline's Acquisition of OpenTable for $2.6B Investigated for being too Low

Travel behemoth Priceline this morning said that it planned to gobble up restaurant booking service OpenTable for $2.6 billion in cash, news that sent OpenTable’s share price skyrocketing by nearly 50 percent to over $104 per share. But, a little like a belch after a big meal, swiftly on the heels of that news comes another development: Former SEC attorney Willie Briscoe and securities litigation firm Powers Taylor say that they are going to investigate the deal for being priced too low.

“The investigation centers on whether OpenTable’s Board of Directors is acting in the shareholders’ best interests, whether the board is properly negotiating a higher share price for the shareholders, and whether the board has employed an adequate process to review and act on the proposed transaction,” the firm writes in a statement.

Love with Food Raises over $1 Million for their Subscription Snack Box Service

Remember when every new startup was about shipping you things in a box once a month for a small monthly fee? Well, some of them are still around — like Love With Food, which is focused on sending boxes of healthy snacks to subscribers once a month and just raised $1.4 million in funding.

The new funding for Love With Food brings the total amount raised to just over $2 million and comes from a group of investors that includes Kapor Capital, 500 Startups, TEEC Angel Fund, Angel List Syndicate led by Yun-Fang Juan, Ironfire Capital, Scrum Ventures, Tom Peterson of El Dorado Ventures, and Talmadge O’Neill of Juvo Capital.

Drop Promotes Cooking as a Joyful Experience with their Scale Connected iPad Application

Though being connected to a food scale sounds interesting, the power will need to be in the software to engage users.

Drop, the creators of a new interactive recipe platform that works with an app and iPad-connected kitchen scale to improve the skills of home bakers, today launched its pre-order campaign at getdrop.co. Drop also announced that Stephane Stocki, product development manager, La Boulange, has joined Drop's advisory board to help guide the Drop team in sourcing and testing the highest quality recipes.