Taking custodianship of Links House Hotel is no task for the weak-willed. It brings with it a heavy responsibility to respect the tradition and heritage of such an established hotel.

Seeing the potential in their restaurant, it made sense for Links House Hotel to explore how they could harness every ounce of possibility to make the money coming through the doors match the quality of their menu.

They turned to Lightspeed to help them realise this potential: A new POS platform to complement the talents of their new chef.

We sat down with Megan Stone, Venue Manager of Links House Hotel, to talk about their Lightspeed experience.

“I've used it and I knew how good it was.”

Megan was no newcomer to Lightspeed. It was a system she’d used before in her previous venues, so she knew she’d be in good hands.

“We love it. I had a cafe patisserie 5 years ago and I used it in both of my venues. It was just amazing for its adaptability and being able to program it exactly.”

And it was this adaptability and attention to detail which served Megan in this new venture.

“You know all the little tweaks to communicate with the kitchen: what you wanted and how you wanted it. I'm a chef by trade, so setting it up, I understood how important it is to be able to communicate between the front of house and kitchen.”

Product: POS

“I just knew that Lightspeed would be the thing that we needed.”

A good restaurant only runs smoothly when everybody is on the same page, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

“(Head Chef) Jason was always complaining about how he never knew what was going on. Trying to put (information) on the docket to make it seamless was nigh on impossible with our previous system.”

But with Lightspeed’s flexible platform, it’s easy to get the right information to the right people so that everybody, whether they’re FOH or BOH, knows exactly what they need to do next.

“Lightspeed is great because we can apply custom notes. We can make it perfectly tailored to what we need it to do. It's like a breath of fresh air.”

Product: POS

“Cutting out a lot of labour later on in the night.”

With places as established as Links House Hotel, some processes can be deeply-rooted into the day-to-day running of things, and whilst there’s a certain charm in preservation, some things require an evolution of sorts to bring standards up to a modern level.

“Whereas before we were taking drink orders in the bar manually, and then manually entering them into the system to charge to people's rooms, we now have the iPad, so we're just punching it through and sending it straight to their rooms, which is cutting out a lot of labour later on in the night, and making a lot easier.”

And with modern solutions comes modern convenience. Quick changes are no longer fraught with the labours and upheaval of the past. With Lightspeed, the benefits of offering something new to your customers at a moment’s notice are in harmony with the convenience of adding it to your POS.

“The ease of use with programming, and adding new items and having them be on the menu, it's just so easy and quick, it's really nice. You can update the menu really quickly, change anything you need. It's very responsive.”

Product: POS

“The system doesn’t freeze.”

All of the benefits of an improved restaurant platform would be for nothing without an equally-flexible and reliable way to accept payments. Thankfully, Lightspeed Payments is not only more than capable of handling multiple methods, it’s designed for such things.

“Obviously we got Lightspeed Payments. The room charges are seamless, taking payments, it was just painless, so nice. The system doesn't freeze.”

Product: Payments