Social media and your POS:

POS. 
While planning the brand's digital marketing campaign that would launch the company's first go at a regular Family Night promotion, we quickly realized that coming up with accurate reporting that would tie social media marketing activities to increases in the average guest check as well as bottom line dinner sales was going to be well ... next to impossible.
Legacies that restaurants should soon forget
Like a lot of chain Fast Casual and Family Dining restaurants, our Point-of-Sale system at Bob Evans was what is known as a "legacy system"-- one that had been home-grown over the course of a few decades by an entire department of IT professionals who worked 'round the clock to support,maintain and ensure that everything worked properly across more than 500 restaurants.
From a technology and marketing perspective, legacy POS systems can create significant roadblocks for digital marketers working to promote the brand online and track the results:
Marketing initiatives and campaigns are not typically high on IT's priority list. And for good reason too. Internal IT folks are tasked with making sure that a POS system works properly across all locations so that money comes in the door with no issues. If one location's point of sale goes down, it can me tens of thousands of dollars of business lost.
Corporate IT staff is usually limited. Most IT departments are understaffed. A director or VP must prioritize the support workload across the department making choices as to what issues get attention first. With bullet No. 1 in mind, marketing initiatives usually fall to the bottom of the list, meaning that it could be weeks or months before your request ticket is even tasked to a developer for attention. You and I both know that digital marketing opportunities often move at a much faster pace
For the most part, legacy POS systems don't easily integrate with social API's.Most social media and social media tools today function on what it called an API or Application Programming Interface. That simply means that you can see their code, and make your code with their system. That is, unless your code is not open source friendly.
Is socializing the Point of Sale merely an Urban Legend?
One of the things that stood out to me when I visited Food Service Social Media Universe in 2012 was that none of the amazing restaurant marketing software vendors who exhibited their products had developed any integrations between their systems, and their client's Point of Sale.
Sure. There were 8 killer applications for restaurants that had all the bells and whistles of leading social media management systems, and they had even been outfitted with special customizations designed to meet the unique needs of the food service business.
But pulling POS data into the social media marketing equation? Well ... it was kind of like the popular urban legend of Big Foot -- lots of people talked about it, but no one had really ever seen one face to face and lived to tell the story.
Roughly six months later, I finally encountered Big Foot, but I learned that his friends called him eThor.
How eThor integrates social media at the Point of Sale
Founded by CEO Gary Ziegler and backed by everyone's favorite rich guy Mark Cuban, eThor started out as online learning, consulting business.
Around 2010, Gary embarked on his own quest for Sasquatch. Recognizing the disconnect between the social media marketing efforts and lifts in same store sales tied to those promotions, he and his team shifted their focus to developing a company and product that would break down the silos of data between Point-of- Sale systems, online ordering, social media marketing, email and SMS campaigns.
In 2012, once the initial dashboard had been developed, Gary and his team approached SpeedLine Solutions, a POS system serving the Pizza segment --to see if the company would recognize the same opportunity he and his team had in sight, and be brave enough to give the integration a try.
SpeedLine rolled the dice and became eThor's first POS integration partner. Smart move, too. As of late last year, the POS company is now rolling out the eThor MaPP (Marketing and Promotions Platform) to all of their existing customers.
This video will give you some basic details on what their integration means for restaurants: