Deliveroo announces integration with Lightspeed ePOS system

Food delivery market leader Deliveroo and ePOS vendor Lightspeed have announced their integration. Lightspeed customers will now be able to see and process Deliveroo orders directly in their ePOS system.

The integration can help entrepreneurs easily incorporate delivery into their business plans, and will empower restaurateurs to become more efficient and increase their profits. This integration will be available to Lightspeed customers only.

An end to chaos, mistakes and extra costs

This integration is the innovation hospitality operators have been waiting for. Previously, offering food delivery meant having to deal with too many iPads behind the counter and the additional work of manually re-entering delivery orders into the ePOS. Not only was this a time-consuming and inefficient way of working, but it was also costly as most restaurants would need a full-time employee to take care of processing delivery orders. This integration solves both problems, eliminating the need for multiple tablets and ensuring that stock updates automatically.

Jerome Laredo, VP EMEA of Lightspeed, states: “At Lightspeed, we have always had a vision of a connected hospitality world and we strive to make our restaurateurs’ lives easier by providing them with the tools they need to grow their business.

We want Lightspeed to be the management hub for restaurants. This integration with Deliveroo is a great example of how we can give our customers an incredible opportunity to partake in the rapidly growing food-delivery market while making their operations a lot more efficient, and we are particularly pleased with that.”

Deliveroo is the first food-delivery company taking a step towards partnering with ePOS providers and remain enthusiastic about the possibilities the integration offers.

Mathieu de Lophem, General Manager, Deliveroo Benelux: “With the goal of helping restaurants thrive, Deliveroo is constantly innovating. Our partners have told us that integrating with their sales systems is such an important step in them being able to provide delivery services – that’s why we’re excited to partner with Lightspeed globally.

Through this partnership, we help restaurants cut out needless time inputting orders into sales systems. This allows front of staff to focus on delivering an amazing dine-in experience, while enabling restaurants to boost revenues through delivery orders.”

For restaurants and other hospitality operators the benefits are clear:

• Staff processing delivery orders can be reallocated to front-of-house roles, improving the customer experience in store
• Huge time saving, allowing restaurants to quickly process more orders
• Reduced risk of errors when inputting orders, providing a better experience for customers
• More counter space, decluttering the working space for restaurant staff

Nicholas Steiner, Lightspeed customer and owner of Yoobi in London is already using the integration. He says: “Up until now, each delivery order had to be manually transcribed from Deliveroo into Lightspeed by one of our team members. This process was laborious, and opened us up to mistakes which resulted in customers getting an incorrect order and making accurate reporting a challenge.

The integration is exactly what we needed as orders arrive into our Lightspeed system seamlessly. This now allows us to make orders quicker and with greater accuracy for our customers and allows us to have accurate reporting. Not only is the system faster for us, it has also allowed us to reduce our labor costs as at the volume of orders we had on a daily basis, we needed to employ one person just to enter orders into our system. Team is also happy as entering orders into the system all day was not very popular.”

About Lightspeed:

Lightspeed is a Business Partner of the Institute of Hospitality. It is the UK’s leading cloud-based management system for hospitality and retail. With more than 50,000 retailers and restaurant owners, Lightspeed processes over £12 billion in transactions per year in more than 100 countries. Lightspeed customers see on average a 20% increase in their sales within the first year. Lightspeed was founded in 2005, with its headquarters located in Montréal, Canada, and has offices in the Netherlands, Ottawa, New York, Ghent, Brisbane and london.

More information, please visit www.lightspeedhq.co.uk

Dynamic pricing for restaurants?

Bob Bob Ricard is using dynamic pricing

Some restaurants are starting to follow more closely the revenue management practices used by airlines and hotels. Dora Furman reports

Consumers are most familiar with the use of yield (or revenue) management in the travel industry, as airlines, hotels and car rental companies constantly alter rates based on revenue channel, day of booking and date of future use.

Consumers continue to be extremely savvy shoppers, adapting the way they shop, from changing the time of travel departure (“I can save £200 if I leave at 5am!”) to managing the time and place of booking. Now, they’ve got it down to a fine art.

Businesses such as Uber are leveraging similar yield management tactics, using dynamic pricing to adjust rates by the minute. What sets them apart from the airlines and hotels is the immediate need their services fulfil for customers. Although a customer can book a future journey, the service is most commonly called upon for instant use.

Interestingly, while restaurants have historically utilised yield management through tactics such as printed coupons, app-based offers via the likes of Groupon, day-of-the-week promotions and early-bird menus – the techniques are less advanced compared to what has been happening across the wider hospitality industry, reflecting a more static and less flexible pricing strategy.

The above raises the question, are restaurants leaving money on the table? Should operators be invoking a more flexible pricing structure? Additionally, should they charge a different price for the same product on different days or during different hours of the same day?

Norse in Harrogate is experimenting with variable discounts

Already popular in the US, some UK restaurant operators have recently started trialling dynamic pricing. One such example is the high-end London eatery Bob Bob Ricard, which is cutting 25% off its bill for off-peak diners, whilst independent operator, Norse, based in Harrogate, is experimenting with set discounts that vary according to the day of the week. Norse has now moved the trials on to Tock, a booking platform which enables customers to choose from a four or eight-course menu at £40 and £60 respectively – booking via two methods. The first option is to leave a £15 deposit, which is removed from the final bill. The second is a ticket-based system for diners who want to secure additional value by obtaining a table at a reduced rate and then finding a date to use it when slots are released. Advance tickets range from £25-35 for the four courses and £40-55 for the offer to try eight. Prices change based on demand, as well as by day and time.

Dora Furman is Vice President, Revenue Management Solutions
For further information about Revenue Management Solutions (RMS), visit www.revenuemanage.com or call 020 3755 0960

Green Earth Appeal and Lightspeed ePOS host Carbon Free Dining event

Lightspeed ePOS and Green Earth Appeal have partnered to host the first event for Carbon Free Dining, a ground-breaking initiative aimed at introducing a more sustainable model for UK restaurants.

Under the programme, Carbon Free Dining plants a tree on behalf of a restaurant for every bill they present. Lightspeed ePOS then provides their platform to any restaurant under the initiative, subject to the number of trees a restaurant plants.

The initiative is already revolutionising the way local businesses and their customers give back to the environment in the fight against deforestation, extinction and global warming, having planted over 500,000 trees in more than 17 countries.

It has received support from three-Michelin star celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, James Martin and Gregory Marchand, who have since signed up their respective restaurants to Carbon Free Dining.

As part of the launch, Lightspeed and Green Earth Appeal are inviting the hospitality industry to Haz restaurant, East London, on 19th June, for an event focusing on how to create a sustainable restaurant model that will increase profitability by responding to the needs of today’s consumer. Members of the panel include Peter Hemingway, influencer and community manager at the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA), and Sandy Jarvis, sustainability advocate and Head chef of the renowned Culpeper restaurant in Shoreditch.

Lightspeed ePOS and Green Earth Appeal provide a cost-effective way for restaurants to showcase their corporate social responsibility at zero cost to the business.

Satinder Bindra, former director of communications for United Nations Environment, has been a strong advocate of the collaboration, stating, “[This is] an outstanding initiative which successfully merges the luxury of eating out with the joy of knowing we are simultaneously giving something back to nourish our planet”.

 Similarly, CEO and Founder of Lightspeed Dax Dasilva has also commented that, “Lightspeed was founded on pushing boundaries, empowering business and putting culture before code. By defining a new paradigm, we are redefining the industry. Carbon Free Dining is just one more step towards offering our ePOS partners and their customers a seamless way to achieve their own goals”.

 Register here for your free ticket here.

About Carbon Free Dining
Carbon Free Dining is a ground-breaking environmental certification programme managed by The United Nations Environment partner, Green Earth Appeal in partnership with Lightspeed. Simple to implement, Carbon Free Dining offers certification to those restaurants who demonstrate their passion for the environment. Carbon Free Dining-certified partners empower their diners to plant a tree in the developing world to counterbalance the environmental impact of their meal.
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About Lightspeed ePOS
Lightspeed ePOS is a cloud-based solution for independent restaurants and a Business Partner of the Institute of Hospitality.
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