Lightspeed Restaurant

RATING:

4.4

(201)

About Lightspeed Restaurant

Lightspeed Restaurant is a cloud-based point of sale (POS) solution for restaurants suitable for full-or quick-service restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotel restaurants, cafes and more. Key features include floor management, customer tracking, inventory tracking, gift card support, offline mode and an iOS mobile app. Lightspeed Restaurant enables users to create and update menus with photos and descriptions and incorporate cooking options and toppings into the menu, which will automatically factor into the cost of the product. The system links communication between the kitchen, wait and host staff in real time and management can control stock levels, track labor and monitor sales reports. Each customer can be assigned to their own seat, and staff can merge or m...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2023
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.
Lightspeed Restaurant
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Lightspeed Restaurant Reviews

Overall Rating

4.4

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4.5

Value for money

4

Functionality

4

Most Helpful Reviews for Lightspeed Restaurant

1 - 5 of 201 Reviews

Ondrej

Verified reviewer

Sports, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2022

Best POS I've used

We wanted a simple to use, reliable and feature rich application and Lightspeed delivered, only wish we could write our own extensions a little easier.

PROS

The ux is absolutely straightforward and intuitive, you hardly even need the manual from set up to production

CONS

API behind a pay wall. As a software developer who casually wrenches and has set up lightspeed in multiple businesses, I'd have liked to get in deeper on the nerdy side. From a regular user perspective that's not an issue though.

Joe

Food & Beverages, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed December 2021

Lightspeed POS for Restaurant

Overall, our experience has been great, but no software is perfect. Their rates are comparable, but the customer support is phenomenal.

PROS

Lightspeed is sleek, very professional look and feel. Although it does take a number of buttons to run through a transaction, it's definitely an upgrade to what he had prior. The loyalty program integration is amazing, as customers earn points on the spot without any manual entry.

CONS

Although not directly related to POS, their payment processing dose not allow partial refunds which causes us headaches at times.

Reason for choosing Lightspeed Restaurant

Better reviews and integration with their loyalty program

Reasons for switching to Lightspeed Restaurant

Spotting connectivity, card reader wouldn't work.

Clif

Retail, 2-10 employees

Used more than 2 years

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed July 2017

Not interested in much other than sales

Implementation was terrible. The salesman made onboarding sound very simple, but when I was putting my items into the system, it was no better than square to do. The company's idea of helping you seems to be to create videos for you to figure out their software so that they don't really have to help you. The few times I called to try to get help with items, the support staff was very short and seemed more interested in just getting you off the phone and moving on. Perhaps there performance reviews are based on quantity of clients "helped". I was very clear with the sales team about what I needed for my business. I messed up when I quickly glanced at the invoice of equipment they sent me and didn't see the discrepancy in the quantities. Also, I came to find out that their claim that none of the equipment that I already had with square would be compatible with lightspeed is completely false. They basically sent me the same star printers that I had with square and cash drawers that I could have used with my current printers as well. While the pricing online says the monthly fees, their salesman knew that I needed more registers than they sent me. Some time later, I requested that they send me the rest of the registers that I needed as I had originally requested and chalked the wrong number up to a mistake. They sent me the hardware and threw a bunch of additional software charges in the mix without even mentioning them. All charges were made before I even saw an invoice. I confronted them about it and the initial response was "all sales are final". At that point, I told them that they had two weeks to get back to me on how would reconcile the mistakes made by their company to retain me as a customer and mend our relationship. I didn't hear from them at all during that time. When they finally got back to me, I told them that I did not want to continue my relationship with them anymore, and and that I understood that I'd incur some costs in severing the partnership, but I thought it should be fair. I'd eat all shipping costs and hardware from the first order, but I wanted a refund on the unauthorized charges and for software to be prorated to time elapsed only. I understood I would be out several thousand dollars. I was told "there is nothing we can do" by multiple managers. Finally, just today I received an invoice concerning my refund for the second order of hardware and the refund did not include any of the software as discussed with their managers, and they want to charge me a 20% restocking fee for hardware that never even made it to my place of business. The refund that they are supposedly giving me for absolutely no services rendered. This company is totally crooked. Do not make the same mistakes that I have. I will likely be perusing legal action against this company if they do not respond appropriately.

PROS

I thought this product was going to be a great way to more easily keep my books up to date and get pricing and inventory dialed in as compared to square. It has a lot of functionality compared to a product like shop keep or square.

CONS

Service - Limited concern for the customer's problems. No effort to actually work through and understand a client's business. Sales Team - Arrogant and dishonest Billing - Sly and deceitful. Invoices serve as contracts as they contain fine print at the bottom that refers a client to the company's actual contract and product terms that the client must hunt down for themselves. Management - No concern for clientele.

Andrea

Hospitality, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed March 2021

User friendly!

Overall, it is a good experience. The customer service is suitable and helpful. The system itself is easy to figure out.

PROS

I most like the "easiness" it has on the eye. For service, the floor plans, menus, and payment buttons are all easy to see and use. Makes for a faster and more efficient service every night. The reporting is in-depth and also easy to find/consume. The reports are visual and make it easy to "at-a'glance" understand how the service is performing.

CONS

The difficult components were in the initial set up of the floor plans for us. In order to make our floor plans look professional and aseptically pleasing we had to reach out to an outsourced consultant for aid in designing. Also, we integrated Lightspeed with our PMS (for our hotel) so that guests could seamlessly add products from the bar to their hotel reservations. This set up process was early in the stages for both companies - it may be more figured out - but the process took many months. Back and forth conversations with both companies. We are successfully using it though as of now - and the systems are interfacing seamlessly.

Reasons for switching to Lightspeed Restaurant

We wanted the PMS and POS to interface.

Daniel

Restaurants, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed November 2018

The POS We've Been Waiting For

PROS

I manage a restaurant called Eclipse Chocolate, and I was uncertain that Lightspeed would be able to meet all of our needs. We're a full service dining concept with brunch and dinner daily, a cafe, a bakery, an event space, a confectioner, and a wholesaler; we needed a POS that would be intuitive and adaptable to a very dynamic menu, and usable by professional servers, as well as kitchen and production staff. We got it! The customer service is outstanding, and offered hands-on support with our setup. We'd had some initial miscommunications and misunderstandings, and we found we needed some additional functionality out of the software. However, the team has always been very helpful and fast to respond; I'm also very pleasantly surprised how much development is being done with the app. This is definitely a well-supported POS that is constantly being improved. I'm extremely impressed by how well it works for our unique "combo based" menu. Lightspeed has helped close a lot of simple human error loopholes! We also decided to invest in the "Liteserver," which was an expensive piece of hardware, but a welcome relief during internet outages. Losing WiFi during a busy brunch was disastrous with previous cloud-based POS'es, but now we don't even miss a beat (or a ticket).

CONS

There are some minor missing features I would still like to see, like better development of Labor Reports to help calculate overtime, but I have confidence that they will be added in time. I see an update every couple weeks, so I do believe the dev team is working through a list.