Andrew Whitney

Review of Lightspeed POS

Been with Lightspeed for about 14 months now. Over...

Been with Lightspeed for about 14 months now. Overall, I have been extremely satisfied.

Acquisition:
The account rep I spoke with was very helpful in the "sales pitch" portion. I have almost 20 years experience in the restaurant industry and have worked with many, many POS systems. Most of my restaurants have used Legacy systems (Micros, Aloha, 2Touch, etc) and this was my first venture in to the modern, tablet based systems. The rep was able to answer all of my questions knowledgeably and efficiently, and there were a lot.

Setup:
After signing on, we were tasked with a tutorial and onboarding process which, at times, was drawn out, but VERY helpful. It was a great learning tool and incredibly useful. They offered additional resources, but given my stubborn nature I set out on my own.

The onboarding process was fairly easy. Painstaking, but simple. There were a few tasks that more difficult than necessary though. Like building the floor plan. I am very meticulous and there were not many options for the design, but I was able to figure it out with assistance from the help desk.

Day to Day:
The overall operation of the system is very easy, but not basic. Ease of use is key to me, especially when training new employees or adding/changing features. Need a new menu item on a certain screen? 30 seconds. Need to reorganize the layout? Just drag and drop. Color code menu items? Sure why not. We change our menu daily/weekly, so this was an important feature to me and my FOH manager.

The back end and reporting is excellent as well. I was able to show the owner how to access the dashboard and view sales and sales vs goals. I can see how many of (X) item I sold when I ran it as a special, or how much of a certain item I sell week to week. We use it as our time clock, and even my BOH with ZERO knowledge of the system figured it out in seconds.

Overall:
While there are pros and cons, the pros far outweigh the cons. It's easy to use, intuitive, and best of all, THEY LISTEN. It doesn't take 10,000 customers complaining to get Lightspeed to make a change. Their support is excellent. The only major complaint I have is that there aren't enough credit card processors integrated in to the system, which is crucial to me.

Andrew W
Chef/GM