How Lightspeed helps Sydney’s newest hatted restaurant deliver impeccable service
Longshore is one of Sydney’s newest hatted restaurants, and its relaxed take on traditional fine dining is causing a splash. The seafood-inspired restaurant opened its doors in mid-2023, and after a few short months, Longshore was awarded one hat in the coveted Good Food Guide 2024 Awards. Since opening its doors, Lightspeed has powered Longshore every step of the way, helping the team to deliver exceptional service time and again.
Business type
Restaurant
Customer since
2023
Locations
Sydney
Longshore + Lightspeed
As a new restaurant with an eye for detail and a drive to offer impeccable service, Longshore needed a POS platform that could boost efficiency and enhance service, as well as manage all day-to-day operations from one centralised system.
We spoke with Dorothy Lee, General Manager of Longshore, who took us through her experience with Lightspeed.
At a glance
Lightspeed provides Longshore with a powerful yet easy-to-use POS platform that offers all the tools they need to manage and grow the business.
- Easy-to-use POS makes it simple for new staff to learn and start serving
- In-depth sales reports allow for strategic decisions
- Embedded payments make it easier to turn tables
- User-friendly POS makes it easy to manage staff
- Smart workflows allow for easy communication between front and back of house
Easy-to-use POS
“Very clear and easy.”
One of the things that Longshore loves most about Lightspeed is how easy it is to use - no matter if you’re selling using the front end of the POS or making changes in the back office.
“We constantly are so grateful for how easy it is to use… The front office has a lot of flexibility for new staff and for us… Back office wise, it’s also very clear and easy for us to use compared to a lot of other systems that we've [used] before.”
Plus, another benefit of being such a user-friendly system is how quick and easy it is to train new staff, so they can get serving as soon as possible.
“Training new staff with Lightspeed has been the easiest training ever for us. Because it looks like their phone. It's very user-friendly. I think that is the biggest plus with Lightspeed.”
Strategic decisions
“We make changes every month.”
Dorothy and the Longshore team regularly use Lightspeed’s analytics tools to make strategic decisions based on what’s selling and what’s not.
“You can look at the drink's report and then the food reports that break down each night into how much we make from beverages that week.”
“We’re tracking how the stock is moving… Let's say this wine by the glass is not moving as much, or even cocktails; if it's not selling, then… we make changes every month to strengthen the list, depending on how much they sell.”
“So all of the reports and figures help us to determine and to project a proper beverage spend each week.”
Quick, easy embedded payments
“It’s been quite amazing, honestly.”
The Longshore team love how Lightspeed Payments makes transactions quick, easy and accurate every single time.
“We love that it is integrated with our payment terminals as well, so that saves us a lot of time, and there's less mistakes.”
Another great thing about Lightspeed Payments is the ability to quickly split the bill - something that customers love and also allows the Longshore team to turn tables more efficiently.
“We always have customers that want to split bills, and [Lightspeed] makes our life so much easier because we can just bring the POS with us and do it at a table, and even the customer seemed really impressed.”
“They'll be like, oh, how do you do that? I was like, I don't do it [Lightspeed does], and they left happy. You get the correct amount of money, and you manage to turn the table a lot quicker."
Easier to manage staff
“Really good.”
In the fast-paced world of hospitality, time is money, and even the smallest of mistakes can cost precious dollars. In the past, Dorothy has found that sometimes staff can make mistakes on the POS that then have a knock-on effect on managers and the business.
However, thanks to Lightspeed’s ease of use, Dorothy can train her team and trust that they won’t make mistakes, as the system is so easy to navigate.
“With Lightspeed, what I like the most as a manager… I don't need to check on my staff at all or worry about my staff making any mistakes with Lightspeed. So that's really good.”
Efficient communication between FOH and BOH
“Help us communicate as a team.”
The team at Longshore love how Lightspeed allows the front-of-house and back-of-house team to communicate efficiently. Lightspeed’s flexible features can be customised to fit each restaurant’s workflow to ensure seamless communication and an efficient order flow.
“We added the ‘Waiting for drinks’ button, which is sent to the kitchen. And because we have pairings as well, we have ‘Waiting for pairing’. So these are the little features that we added on the POS to help us communicate as a team.”
