Delivering on its commitment to expand into new geographies and markets, Lightspeed, the commerce platform for retailers, today announced its entry into the hospitality industry with the launch of Lightspeed Restaurant.
Lightspeed, which now serves 21,000 businesses processing more $8.2 billion in sales annually, also announced that it acquired Belgium-based POS company POSIOS.
Lightspeed Restaurant, available immediately, is a new cloud-based product line offering cafes, bars, nightclubs, and fine dining and chain restaurants the type of mobile point of sale, business management, and customer analytics technology that Lightspeed has been delivering to independent retailers for almost 10 years.
"Lightspeed's strength is in creating technology that improves business operations and enables superior customer experiences," says Dax Dasilva, founder and CEO of Lightspeed. "Expanding into hospitality responds to the massive demand we have seen in the past two years for a restaurant solution from Lightspeed, and furthers our vision to bring sophisticated, yet accessible, technology to all of Main Street.
"The addition of the POSIOS team brings a deep understanding of the complex hospitality industry to Lightspeed Restaurant and further underscores our commitment to investing and expanding in Europe," Dasilva adds.
Leading Lightspeed Restaurant's product strategy is LightSpeed's newly appointed director of hospitality and POSIOS co-founder, Zhong Xu, who will work from Lightspeed's new European development headquarters in Belgium .
Lightspeed Retail and Lightspeed Restaurant will both operate under the Lightspeed POS umbrella, and will process transactions through the Lightspeed Payments platform announced in September.
Lightspeed's Features
Lightspeed Restaurant makes it easy for restaurateurs to get up and running on a flexible, low-cost system that can expand with their changing business needs. It offers tools for every part of the business, including:
Back of House
- Single view of data, giving owners a single, anytime/anywhere view into sales and inventory across locations and with any device
- Customer insights to personalize service and reward repeat customers
- Instant menu updates, making it easy to update listings, images, and prices across restaurants and websites, as well as communicate inventory
- Advanced API's allowing easy integrations to Accounting, ERP, and other business applications
Front of House
- Mobile tableside ordering, table-to-kitchen integrated workflow using an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch
- Visual menu with descriptions
- Quick opening and closing of bar tabs, activated by a credit card swipe
- Live visual floor management tools, to help manage seating and table status
- Ability to reward customers, transforming them into brand ambassadors
- Easily accept payments and split bills
