Lightspeed Restaurant POS Review

In my review of Lightspeed restaurant POS, I’ll look at all the pricing, pros and cons, features, benefits, awards, and testimonials and give you my professional opinion on whether Lightspeed is a viable solution for your restaurant.

Whether you’re a new business owner or a seasoned veteran, you know how hectic your peak times can be, and you probably face the same challenges trying to manage and process orders. Fortunately, many new point-of-sale (POS) systems have entered the market to help you better organize your restaurant and payments.

I consider Lightspeed to be one of the most exciting newcomers. Lightspeed is well known for its retail POS system (Lightspeed Retail), but they also have Lightspeed Restaurant POS, a platform dedicated to restaurant owners. I’ll take a look at this unique platform in my today’s review!

Overview of Lightspeed Restaurant POS

Lightspeed is a Canadian-based POS company with offices in the USA and Europe, offering POS and payment solutions for retail stores and restaurants. Lightspeed is somewhat new to the mobile POS industry, but it originates from another famous system called ShopKeep. 

It first began gaining traction as a mobile platform back in 2012. In 2014, Lightspeed purchased a Belgium-based POS company called POSIOS, rebranded and redesigned as Lightspeed Restaurant POS.

According to Lightspeed, their system’s goal is to provide restaurant owners with a comprehensive, low-cost POS system that can take care of every component of order tracking and payments. The software has built-in tools that can help you manage your restaurant’s front-of-house and back-of-house with just a few touches of the screen.

Lightspeed Restaurant is an app built for the iPad, one of several types of POS systems. It can be carried on the go or placed in a fixed register set-up and offers plenty of features that can help you better manage your current or future restaurant.

Let’s dive into the details below!

Lightspeed POS Pricing

If you’re starting a new restaurant, it’s essential to keep costs down while you try and build your cash flow. Investing in an expensive POS system may seem like a good idea, but the price can become overwhelming if you need many stations and software licenses. 

So, does Lightspeed offer affordable pricing options for its customers? I’ve analyzed the Lightspeed Restaurant’s costs in more detail below:

Lightspeed Restaurant Starter (1 Register)

The most budget-friendly option with basic features:

• Monthly – $69/mo
  • Customizable POS
  • Floor plans
  • Advanced insights
  • Integrated payments: 2.6% + 10¢
  • Single-view reconciliation
  • Menu manager
  • Pre-auth bar mode
  • CRM and Loyalty

Lightspeed Restaurant Essential (1 Register)

The complete hardware bundle for your new, one-location restaurant:

• Monthly – $189/mo
  • 1 register (Additional registers +$34/mo)
  • Up to 2 printers
  • Personalized onboarding
  • 24/7 support
  • Free updates
  • Secure cloud backup
  • Basic reporting
  • Floor plans
  • Advanced insights
  • Integrated payments: 2.6% + 10¢
  • Single-view reconciliation
  • Menu manager
  • Pre-auth bar mode
  • CRM and Loyalty
  • Online ordering
  • Contactless ordering
  • Order and pay at table
  • Lightspeed Live app
  • Multi-location management
  • Advanced inventory management

Lightspeed Restaurant Premium (1 Register)

Comprehensive, top-notch bundle with all the best features:

• Monthly – $399/mo
  • 1 register (Additional registers +$34/mo)
  • Up to 2 printers
  • Personalized onboarding
  • 24/7 support
  • Free updates
  • Gift Card
  • Order anywhere
  • Advanced Insights
  • Advanced Inventory
  • Floor plans
  • Integrated payments: custom rates available
  • Single-view reconciliation
  • Menu manager
  • Pre-auth bar mode
  • CRM and Loyalty
  • Online ordering
  • Contactless ordering
  • Order and pay at table
  • Lightspeed Live app
  • Multi-location management

Lightspeed Restaurant Enterprise

Customizable plan to power your business:

• Personalized software and hardware package
• Unlimited launch and consultation services
• Dedicated support team and customer success manager

Add-Ons (Starting at $12/month)

• Customer Facing Display
• Kitchen Display System
• Advanced Reporting
• Self-Order Table Menu
• eCom for Restaurant

Premium Add-Ons (Starting at $39/month)

• Accounting
• Loyalty
• Loyalty App
• Self Order Kiosk
• Delivery Integration

Lightspeed for Restaurants starts at $69 per month, and you’ll gain access to its services on one register, free updates, cloud storage, setup assistance, basic reporting services, and more. In my opinion, Lightspeed’s services are affordable, but admittedly, they do not have the lowest POS prices in the industry.

Keep in mind that these prices are more of a guideline than a set structure. If you have a large restaurant chain or need multiple registers, you can work with Lightspeed to find a suitable price point. They provide quotes depending on what you’re looking for. I found their representatives to be friendly and open to customizing your plan.

Take into account that you’ll also need to purchase an iPad and additional equipment to get up and running. This means that you may be looking at a decent amount of investment to get started. However, according to my research, Lightspeed used to be $99 per month, so the recent drop in price does save you money.

To benefit from this platform, you’ll need to commit to one year. While this isn’t nearly as long as some of the industry’s standard contract lengths, I think it’s still not ideal if you want to avoid financial obligations. For this reason, I was happy to see that Lightspeed Restaurant does offer free demos and a 14-day risk-free trial.

Demo Video

Lightspeed Restaurant Quick Service Walkthrough

Key Features

If you want to get to the heart of any POS system, it’s essential to look at the key features. In this section, I’ll explore all the advantages you’ll receive if you use the Lightspeed point-of-sale system for your restaurant.

Design Your Digital Restaurant

Lightspeed Restaurant allows you to build an extensive restaurant model so you can control every component of your venue via your POS system, which is very beneficial for restaurant owners. You can create a physical representation of the tables and seat numbers within your restaurant – this can be used to track orders, reservations, bill payments, availability, and more.

The table management feature is an excellent tool for your staff members, who can access any table via the app. Servers can keep track of their tables and help out with others — it’s the perfect way to manage your entire floor space.

Lightspeed Restaurant POS also offers its users various restaurant templates that can help you build your restaurant’s outline within the system. I found this extremely helpful!

Ease of Use

Many newcomers to the POS industry have made it a primary goal to improve their platforms’ ease of use. Hard-to-use systems can cost time and money, and it can also take ages to get new staff used to a sophisticated platform. 

Fortunately, you can customize the Lightspeed Restaurant interface to include color-coded menus, categories, tables, and more. You can make the entire platform an interactive hub for yourself and your staff. It was very intuitive for me to use, and I was very happy to see that I could adjust it to my personal preferences and needs.

Excellent Stock Management

I was truly impressed with the stock management feature in the Lightspeed Restaurant POS Essential and Premium plans.

You can add ingredients to each food you serve, which I find amazingly helpful for informing about the allergens whenever necessary.

What’s more, it also allows you to track ingredient availability in real time so that your employees can inform customers of any shortages immediately.

With this feature, you can also automatically generate purchase orders via email. They are based on your par levels and allow you to attach the invoice, accept products, or add changes in the system easily.

Employee Management

Another feature I appreciate in Lightspeed Restaurant POS is the ability to manage the staff easily. Namely, you can create multiple accounts for your employees with different permissions.

They can mark their shifts with simple clock-ins and clock-outs, or you can set up specific shifts to control rotas more effectively.

Modifiers and Messages

I know how hard it can be to fulfill all the customers’ wishes in a restaurant, so I appreciate that Lightspeed Restaurant POS allows me to add customization to any order.

For example, there may be a choice of dips or side dishes, with or without additional prices added. What’s more, a customer may ask for the dish to be served without a certain ingredient or to be made less or more spicy.

Thanks to this feature, you can add notes to your orders, quickly and clearly informing the kitchen about the necessary adjustments.

Discounts

My tests have shown that Lightspeed Restaurant POS works great for applying discounts. You can manually add a fixed amount or percentage discount to any product in your offer.

However, I’ve noticed that it is not possible to set timed promotions (like Happy Hours).

Customer Loyalty

No matter which Lightspeed plan you choose, you can add customers to a library to benefit from customized service and customer analytics. Moreover, you can add contact details and custom notes to these profiles, track what they buy, and get other useful information.

Another benefit I appreciate is that I can integrate the profiles with external software that operates marketing campaigns and customer loyalty programs.

Deployment Type

Lightspeed Restaurant is an app that is locally installed on your iPad device, but there is a cloud connection between your hardware and a central online reporting system. In this regard, Lightspeed is a hybrid between cloud-based and locally installed. This is the same format that many modern POS systems follow, and I really like it as it allows me to get the best of both worlds.

Unlike many cloud-based systems, the offline mode built into Lightspeed Restaurant POS, with the help of a little hardware device called Lightserver, helps prevent data loss and gives me peace of mind. 

If your hardware device is disconnected from the internet, it will operate normally and store data until the internet connection is detected again. Your system will then synchronize with the cloud. 

Keep in mind that you will not be able to accept credit card payments if your internet is down.

Industries Served

Lightspeed Restaurant is specifically geared towards the restaurant and hospitality industry. While Lightspeed offers other POS solutions for different sectors and eCommerce, this particular POS platform should only be used by restaurant owners. In many ways, I consider it a significant benefit—it ensures all the package’s features are specially geared towards restaurant owners’ exact needs.

In terms of business size, Lightspeed Restaurant can be scaled to fit any restaurant or restaurant chain, but my tests have shown that the app is probably best suited for small to medium-sized businesses. The ability to view all of your locations from a central portal ensures that you can manage many restaurants with this POS system. 

Sign in to Lightspeed’s dashboard, and the cloud data reporting system provides you with the tools you need to obtain an overall snapshot of your business’s performance.

Here’s a general list of restaurant types mentioned on Lightspeed’s website where the software is capable:

• Full-Service
• Bar/Nightclub
• Quick Service
• Cafe
• Hotel Restaurant

Hardware

One of Lightspeed’s primary downsides I noticed is its restricted platform requirements. Unfortunately, if you want to use a tablet to engage with Lightspeed, it must be an iPad. The company doesn’t currently offer any Android support. iPads can often be much more expensive than standard Android products, so keeping this in mind is essential.

Regardless, its capabilities with an iPad mean that you can carry around your POS system with you. Also, you can access Lightspeed Restaurant POS on an iPhone, though you won’t be able to accept payments on anything other than an iPad platform.

As always, I recommend getting all your equipment directly from the POS company so that everything is compatible and works nicely together. 

Fortunately, you can get all the hardware individually or in complete kits directly from Lightspeed. If you want to get a customized plan for your business, you need to contact Lightspeed directly for a quote.

Integrations

The Lightspeed point-of-sale system has a long list of integration partners with unique services that seamlessly integrate with the POS, allowing you to run your business based on your requirements. There are too many partners for me to list here, but I can assure you they have everything you need, from employee scheduling to inventory management.

You can sync your reporting data with a wide range of accounting platforms, such as QuickBooks and Xero. Those who want to add a loyalty program can integrate it with third-party apps or use the loyalty add-on mentioned in the pricing portion of my review.

Payment Processing

Lightspeed Restaurant POS has different credit card processors depending on the country where your business is located. For US-based customers, you’ll be able to choose between Lightspeed Payments, Vantiv triPOS, Cayan, Element Express, and Mercury Payment Services.

This means that you’ll be able to accept most major credit cards and contactless payments (such as Apple Pay and Android Pay). However, you’ll need to pay attention to the transaction fees associated with each of these credit card processors.

Customer Service

While you won’t contact Lightspeed on most major holidays, they do typically have 24/7 telephone support. This is a significant advantage — if you run a restaurant with long opening hours, you may need to speak to someone if something goes wrong overnight. 

Being caught without the ability to process payments can be extremely damaging to your company’s revenue. Believe it or not, this level of support is absent from many of the other leading POS providers.

Another critical customer support benefit that is afforded to Lightspeed Restaurant customers is personal onboarding. This process will help you get to grips with your new POS system — you can ask your onboarding specialist any tough questions you may have about it. I advise you to have possibly all your staff present during this process so that everyone understands how to use it.

As with any large company, there are a few negative comments about Lightspeed on some consumer watchdog groups. Most of these comments suggest that Lightspeed can be glitchy and that the company binds you into a contract that you can’t exit. 

However, I would like to mention that this type of feedback is often associated with companies that have legally binding agreements. For this reason, I think it’s critical to review the agreement before signing it—make sure you can afford to leave the contract if you must!

How Can You Benefit from Lightspeed Restaurant POS?

Here are some of the most important Lightspeed benefits for restaurant owners I noticed during my tests:

• As the app is very intuitive, you can reduce the risk of errors during operation.
• With the training the provider offers, you can easily teach your staff how to use the app.
• You can map the design of your restaurant in the app precisely for easy management.
• You can customize the menu so that it reflects your offer precisely and reduces misunderstandings.
• You can track your inventory in real-time to monitor stock levels, avoid costly stockouts, plan your menu more effectively, and reduce waste.
• Thanks to detailed reports, you can make more informed decisions about your business strategy.
• With 24/7 customer support, you can get the necessary help whenever you need it.
• You can clearly and quickly inform the kitchen staff about necessary order customizations.
• You can easily access the ingredients list and inform the customers about the allergens whenever necessary.
• You can manage your staff more effectively by creating their accounts with different permissions.
• You can track your stock and automatically generate orders based on your par levels.
• You can use the cloud-based system both online on multiple devices or offline if necessary.
• In the Essential and Premium plans, you can enable online and contactless ordering and reduce waiting times.
• You can easily split bills and manage tables to meet the customers’ expectations better.

You can get a free trial to check whether this POS is suitable for your business.

How Has the Lightspeed Point-of-Sale System Adapted to the Recent Market Changes and Trends?

• Using Local Products from Sustainable Sources: More and more customers pay attention to where the ingredients are sourced from. Thanks to Lightspeed Restaurant POS, you can facilitate the process of getting products from local suppliers and send automatically generated orders.
• Order Customization: There is a lot of emphasis on order personalization nowadays, and with valuable insights from Lightspeed, you will be able to prepare your offer more flexibly. What’s more, thanks to instant messaging within the system, you can easily inform the kitchen about your customer’s particular preferences.
• Contactless Ordering: The COVID-19 pandemic made customers more used to contactless ordering, and it continues to be the preferred method for many. By choosing the Essential or Premium plan, your Lightspeed Restaurant POS can be enriched with features enabling you to take orders this way and attract more customers.
• High Flexibility: The more flexible your business, the more customers it can acquire. Lightspeed helps your restaurant accept orders in various ways and integrate multiple payment methods, increasing its adaptability.

Lightspeed Restaurant POS Case Studies

Taverne Atlantic

Taverne Atlantic is a medium-sized restaurant and bar in Montreal that specializes in pizza and snacks and offers an outstanding beer selection. When it gets warmer, the restaurant experiences a constant flow of customers, both indoors and outdoors, as it also operates on a rooftop patio. 

It was very hard for them to manage the summer season’s influx of guests, so they decided to invest in Lightspeed Restaurant POS. And it gave them the flexibility they needed! They were able to create floor plans reflecting the actual design of their restaurant so that their employees could find their way easily. With a fast-working POS, the restaurant operates more efficiently, and orders can be served quickly, even during busy seasons.

Miriam

Peter Marzulli owns three casual-dining Miriam restaurants in New York City, plus a new concept, New Orleans-inspired 1803, under the 6R Hospitality Group. It was difficult for him to handle the operational complexity and multiple sales channels, so he needed a customized solution that could be adjusted to the group’s ambitious growth plans.

Thanks to Lightspeed Restaurant POS, Marzulli can manage all his operations in various locations with one fully integrated solution. He has integrated it with all the tools he uses for his business to make his work easier.

As he uses the Pro Services, he can access the raw API and adjust the system to his needs even more easily. What’s more, he receives advanced insights from all the locations, allowing him to make more informed business decisions.

Maynard

Maynard is a small, quick-service vegetarian and vegan restaurant in Montreal. Its owner and chef, Brodie Somerville, tries to source as many ingredients as he can from local suppliers. As a result, the menu can change even up to three times a week, which, combined with frequent takeout and delivery orders, requires a lot of juggling and makes the operations really difficult.

The Lightspeed point-of-sale system allows Somerville to facilitate cooperation with suppliers, as he can easily assign them to products and keep track of their arrivals. What’s more, he has integrated delivery orders with the system so he no longer has to manually input every single one of them. Whenever something goes wrong, he can easily access customer support and get the necessary help, no matter what time of day or night.

Expert Opinions on Lightspeed Restaurant POS

Lightspeed Restaurant POS Awards

• Experts’ Choice Award in 2017: FinancesOnline awarded Lightspeed in the POS software category in 2017 (source).
• 19 Lightspeed Customers as James Beard Awards 2022 Finalists: Thanks to improving their operations with Lightspeed Restaurant POS, 19 businesses made it to the final of the James Beard Awards in 2022 (source).
• Omnichannel Payment Platform of the Year in 2023: Lightspeed won Omnichannel Payment Platform of the Year as part of the 2023 edition of Juniper Research’s Future Digital Awards (source).

Pros vs. Cons

My Verdict

After my thorough tests, I can say there’s plenty to like about Lightspeed Restaurant POS. It offers some of the most useful features in the industry—it’s one of the best options for people looking for an iPad POS system purely devoted to the restaurant industry. Its ability to create a virtual restaurant, track staff, manage orders, and record data helps you better manage your restaurant.

Lightspeed’s subscription and hardware requirements can add up if you’re starting a new business. Also, you’re locked into a one-year contract. Fortunately, part of this problem is solved by the company’s 14-day free trial. I recommend you utilize this trial period to ensure it’s the right platform for your business.

Overall, I strongly recommend the Lightspeed point-of-sale system. You can request a demo via the company’s website—it’s definitely worth your time! If you don’t think this is the right POS system for your restaurant, make sure to check out some of my other reviews on our site.

My Verdict: 4.5/5

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