Lightspeed Restaurant

Pros

Being a Hospitality professional for 20 years I have dealt with numerous POS systems. Kounta is relatively straight forward and has the functionality and flexibility to run your business with ease.

The support offered by Kounta day and night has been at an exceptional standard. The understanding and support during setup, implementation and to now has been a suprise in this all to modern world. This holistic approach will keep Kounta ahead of the pack for quite some time.

Cons

Some of the language with respect to Hospitality is not not necessarily how we refer to how things are done in my experience however it is only a minor issue.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Restaurant

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Restaurant

Pros

Nothing to say here. There is nothing good about this system except for the promptness of my customer service, who usually has bad news. But as I now understand my customer service rep doesn't ACTUALLY work for Kounta, she works for the company that sold it to me. I wish they would have sold me one of their other POS options.

Cons

Server level order control is an upgrade, they don't tell you that when purchasing, even though that is one of the most basic things. Check splitting is the most laborious I have ever experienced, if you have a table that needs multiple splits get them a refill of their coffee because it will take a while. No over all system close out, no way to re-open a check. In lieu of that simple option they have a refund button, but, guess what if you had multiple pay types IE Cash and CC that doesn't work, can only refund whole amount to one pay type, which then screws up the server report(one of the biggest reasons to have a POS system) Integrated credit card system has worst customer service ever. If you need to get someone after 9 good luck. Randomly loses checks! Have no idea how that happens but if you are on a check and the system reloads(which it does a lot) bye bye order!

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.

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.