Lavu POS Reviews

Pros

Wow! What a great experience switching to Lavu. After an eight year relationship with Toast we have upgraded to Lavu. As a very busy restaurant and bar we were nervous to make such a big change, especially in the beginning of "our season." We can't say enough wonderful things about our experience with Lavu and their incredible support staff. We got to spend the week with [sensitive content hidden]
and they confidently and patiently have trained our entire staff. It has been so helpful to have such a hands on experience. Every single question, request, and concern has been handled immediately. The hardware and network are state of the art. Everything works seamlessly without a glitch. Lavu is extremely efficient. We couldn't be happier with the onboarding experience and all the support from [sensitive content hidden]

Cons

Since we have to say something here, we don't like that they outsource the KDS screens and networking. But they make up for it for sure so it's really not an issue.

Alternatives Considered

Heartland Restaurant, Skytab POS, Square Point of Sale and TouchBistro

Reasons for Choosing Lavu POS

We had absolutely no support and have had major invoicing issues over the past few years that they've never been able to resolve.

Switched From

Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to Lavu POS

Support, cost, functionality, efficiency.

Pros

I liked using Lavu because it was the first POS for the restaurant where I worked. While I was employed there I used the system for 2 years. The set up was easy as the dealer came to the restaurant and set it up and did a one day training for the staff.

Cons

They system seems to have alot of glitches. Recently, the restaurant reported to me that they had a glitch and lost printers. Tech support finally helped and got the printers up but somehow lost half the menu. Also, I have witnessed personally that the sales tax is charging out properly.

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing Lavu POS

We needed better reporting and labor tracking.

Reasons for Switching to Lavu POS

The fees and support were better by Lavu at the time.

Pros

i don't remember why I chose them over the three other ones I tried a couple of years ago.
I think because I could use my own credit card processor.

But its easy enough to use for the features that i use which are basic operation of cash register
it is intuitive and takes little training

Cons

things go wrong, the printer drops offline a lot and needs help getting back. sometimes its the wifi that reconfigures to a different wifi, sometimes the printer just randomly stops working.

I can't use the staff scheduling because they insist that work week starts on sunday, yet that is halfway through the weekend. our schedule and pay period run monday- sunday
but I am now looking for a system that can organize cake orders for a week or a month after the order is taken, which most systems don't do.

Also they said that my gift cards would integrate, but they did not

Pros

No costs for hardware, ease of use once set up, availability of [sensitive content hidden] and his team during the launch. [sensitive content hidden] has also been very accessible after the set up with follow up questions and concerns.

Cons

hardware. cash register is bulky, credit card reader requires an actual port to work. i would prefer an all in one, wifi unit with a display screen for the customer.

Pros

Its customizable and makes it so that it can be easily trained upon

Cons

It requires internet access for its use and wont.print a receipt if you are disconected

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to Lavu POS

Cost and costumer service were the 2 biggest factors

Pros

The iPhone app. Really nothing else, really.

Cons

WOW! Where do I begin? Should I start with how they outright lied to me to make the sale? How about sending a completely incompetent tech support personnel company to help me with my network? Maybe I should start with the fact that they billed me today for Quickbooks integration that I DON'T EVEN HAVE!
Let's start with the outright misrepresentation of their product. I specifically asked if they had online ordering and I was told yes we do. After I had purchased the system and went to set it up I asked "Well how do I set up the credit card integration for the online ordering?" Then I was told "Oh we have online ordering but we don't have online payment" WHAT!!? This is 2017 not 1999 what do you mean you don't have online payment? "We had a problem with it and had to take it off line, we should have it back up by Nov."
Well today is 08-21-2018 and guess what I still don't have? You got it - online payment.

Pros

A robust, yet very easy to learn POS. It has all of the functions that busy restaurants needs

Cons

Potentially being locked out of the iPod occasionally

Pros

They are very helpful. I love the customer service

Cons

Nothing I didn’t have any other one .

Pros

[sensitive content hidden] our on board hostess. [sensitive content hidden] is one of the best with a real desire to make sure she delights her customers.

Cons

Fees associated with product it's not until after you have the product do they introduce other associated fees that make little sense.

Pros

so far love everything about lavu no problems what so ever.

Cons

nothing at all. The entire experience has been smooth and transparent.

Pros

We're a small restaurant operating outside the US, and Lavu is a great option for us. Easy to use, with lots of customer support in setting up and deploying the system in multiple langauges!

Cons

So far, we have no complaints and are really satisfied with the system and the support.

Alternatives Considered

Lightspeed Restaurant, Square Point of Sale and TouchBistro

Reasons for Choosing Lavu POS

We not satisfied with the capabilities of the former system, and were not feeling proactive support from the company.

Switched From

FoodZaps

Reasons for Switching to Lavu POS

Lavu's price point was better for us, especially since the payment processing functions are not available in our country -- the other companies didn't offer any price adjustment for this. Also, Lavu is made for restaurants specifically, and offers integrated inventory management as well as add-on accounting integration. As a package Lavu is the best for us.

Pros

Only cons. Wanted to switch to this in January. Start date was to be around the 5th. However saw they started our contract on November 20. Contacted our on boarding person, [sensitive content hidden] and he turned HATEFUL!!!

Cons

The fact that everything they said in sales in a LIE!!!!
Onboarding person turned ugly when I questioned dates.

Pros

We tried other POS systems but customizing was expensive and they didn't work as we wanted them to. Lavu system multi purpose-built with the features and reporting were right on and we were able to merge it to our own easily and they work great.

Cons

So far anything we have ran across we have been able to solve rather easily and smoothly. We haven't encountered a true negative.

Alternatives Considered

POS Nation for Retail and Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to Lavu POS

Easy to operate, smooth transition, pretty much plug and play with less cost.

Pros

I like the simple interface, it is easy to use and simple to implement

Cons

99% of the time the software works well however we have had consistent problems with the system going offline in the middle of very busy nights. We will have a restaurant full of people 30+ tables with open orders and the system completely stops working (it always happens at peak times when we should be making the most money when we are the busiest, they have not invested enough to function at the scale they are selling for). Servers cannot send orders to the kitchen, we cannot run cards, servers loose track of what the final cost of the bill is for the customers and what their order is. The 1% of the time when Lavu goes offline has irreversible damage to our business. It creates chaos among staff members, it disrupts our reputation as a legit business and damages our relationship with our customers, and it causes us to loose money on tickets that do not get rang in right or when we have to jot down credit card numbers instead of running them to learn the card is no good once Lavu is back online. This has happened to us at least 8-9 times in the 1 year we have had LAVU. Not only is it unacceptable for this to ever happen but we do not get any compensation for our trouble or loss of income and the Lavu team will not return our calls or explain what is happening or reassure us that it wont happen again. There is no backup plan or support on help coming. Unfortunately I feel we are going to have to look for something else.

Pros

I was an existing customer since the inception of Lavu in 2012.

Cons

I purchased the system in 2012. Lavu offered a wireless system when they first came out. I soon learned if you sent a big ticket to the kitchen, it wouldn't print. Lavu advised the system needed to be hardwired for the printers to work properly.
I was a gold member when I signed up. I was told my price would never be higher than [Sensitive Content] per month. This turned out, not to be true.
The system worked flawlessly until about 2018. Lavu would frequently go down, offline, drop printer IP addressees, rogue attacks etc. In 2018 and 2019 I lost a lot of money thanks to Lavu.
I closed as most restaurants did in 2020 due to Covid. During the months I was open I noticed one month Lavu would auto debit my account for [Sensitive Content] one month, [Sensitive Content] the next. In March of 2021 to avoid these random charges I paid Lavu a year in advance. It was around [Sensitive Content] for service and a monthly charge for using up to 5 devices. In June 2021 I had to close and sale the business for a loss. I contacted Lavu to refund my money, and they refused. Don't do business with this company.

Pros

The interface is user friendly, and tickets get sent to kitchen without many problems. But we could do this with paper

Cons

Everything else! Whenever we have a issue they send it to the "developmental team" also known as the black hole. When we signed up they said "offline processing was in the works" that was 2 years ago. Reports are literally ALWAYS wrong. If you look at sales on two different reports they never are the same. For a span of about three months they miscalculated sales tax, having us over pay hundreds of dollars! For a long time they randomly doubled numbers on server reports, and now there is a random .50 added to numbers on servers reports. I have a tax background an I informed them the liability they were putting on us and our servers by misreporting so they showed me on the IRS website where they were right, THEY SET UP THERE SYSTEM BASED OFF THE WRONG PART OF THE IRS CODE. Not to mention that it randomly opens tickets from all different times that we have to re-close and I'm not sure we get paid for them or not. When we call customer support they are really nice, but our issues always get sent to the "Developmental Team" to never be heard about again!

Pros

It is very intuitive with a simple and easy to use layout. Pretty much everything is easy to find and easy to customize. It feels light and responsive where other, more expensive options often feel cumbersome. The chat and phone based service have also proven very useful at times

Cons

The online ordering platform didn't work very well for us, unfortunately, so we abandoned that. We love the everything else, though

Pros

The cost was the only benefit of this software when I launched it 2 years ago. After they increased the pricing (with absolutely no warning) it was inline with most of the other softwares which are much more robust.

Cons

Where do I begin. Honestly, we had so many issues I don't know where to start listing the problems. There are many.

Pros

Everything! It's so user friendly. Reports are amazing. Makes book keeping a breeze. This system will track everything from sales, inventory, hours worked into great detailed reports. Our bartenders love it. Screen are easily read, and so easy to use.

Cons

There are a few problems we found with splitting and merging tickets. A simple call to tech and was fixed with in minutes. We also have a few things that we can't charge taxes or credit card fees on. You will have call tech to remove these these charges.

Pros

Menudrive is easy to program; took some time but our menu is large and we being a breakfast diner we had many options for customers ie: how do they want their eggs cooked, meat type, bread type, etc. Menudrive allows an unlimited amount of items & required info

Cons

when entering items it was redundant having to enter the time available (if it wasn't an all day availability). Lots of key strokes but once it's done, it's done.

Pros

Always someone answer it in india
They always take the notes of problem and promiss someo e will call you. Nobody ever calls

Cons

I had 3 different tickets of issues with lavu one was about chipreaders that they send it and themselve couldnot activate it. all i got was that someone will call me soon and after 2 months all i had was excuses and the person who was supposed to call never did. Now they are saying that i cant return the items because it passed the 3p days even though it was never ooend or used. The raise the price without letting me know or get my approval ( apparently they send an email whicb is proabably still in my spam folder ) and charge my auto pay 5 times more than what originally were supposed to do. After i complain the shut down the system and refuse to give me the information i needed to do payroll and tip calculation.
The worst pos company. Do not buy this junk

Pros

Used the software for 9 years, pretty easy to use and setup decent feature set, great that it was Ipad/iphone based instead of having to buy specific hardware.

Cons

Light to non-existent integration to Square for credit card processing.

Pros

Easy to use, easy to set up and it is self-explanatory. You can go into the backside of the program and checks your sales for the day, how many customers you yourself have waited on.

Cons

Not much about the software that I didn't like. Sometimes though I would have a hard time getting connected on my Ipad.

Pros

iPad capability, informative and [SENSITIVE CONTENT] is deeply appreciated

Cons

One location at a time we have to input only one location at a time this is frustrating

Alternatives Considered

Revel Systems

Reasons for Switching to Lavu POS

Ipad

Pros

Easy to set up and use. Love it! Would recommend

Cons

The inventory part it needs to be changed and or updated

Alternatives Considered

Clover and Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to Lavu POS

Easier and customer service