Run your whole restaurant or food service business with one software platform
- POS & self-ordering
- Kitchen Management
- Tables & Menu
- Inventory
- Guest loyalty
- Reporting
- ERP
POS & self-ordering
Connect your front of house and kitchen digitally, so servers can input orders and dishes and send them straight to the kitchen, access the entire menu including ingredients, and check if an order is ready directly from the POS.
- Run the LS Central for restaurants POS on a computer, tablet, stationary POS hardware, mobile device, or self-ordering kiosk. You can select any number of devices that best fits your restaurant flow and atmosphere for maximum convenience.
- Take orders and payments at the tableside, give guests menu information including ingredients and allergens, easily add or subtract ingredients from orders, and split bills or transfer bills between tables directly from the POS.
- Reduce the risk of wrong orders with direct two-way communication between the POS and KDS. Send orders automatically to the correct KDS screen or printer, set the prep status for dishes, and allow staff to see when orders are ready at the POS.
- Seat customers faster and more efficiently using the POS. The software allows your staff to quickly see free tables, seat guests according to number of people, and take orders. You can also track table status to ensure all guests have been served promptly.
- Use add-on Bookings for LS Central to book reservations online, on the phone, or at the POS. Allocate reservations automatically or manually, set longer or shorter time slots, add reservations to the waiting list, and add notes to mark for allergies or special occasions.
- Spend less time training staff thanks to the highly intuitive graphical interface and familiar Microsoft environment. You can also assign roles and permissions to your employees to speed up service and reduce the risk of fraud.
Kitchen Management
Help your kitchen staff produce consistent dishes that are prepared according to guest specifications and served at the right time. No more lost tickets: the kitchen display systems ensure that all orders are displayed at the right kitchen station, simplifying preparation, and distributing tasks efficiently.
- The software routes orders from the POS to the correct food preparation stations. Organize items so dishes go out at the right time and in the right order. Send alerts to staff if orders have been in the queue too long, display special allergies or requests, and easily bump dishes to different stations, recall them, and mark when they’re ready.
- Record and store your recipes in a centralized place. The software shows you what ingredients you need, in what quantities, and the prep time. Produce consistent dishes that follow a standard recipe, use recipes to create daily and weekly menu plans, and reduce waste in the kitchen by keeping your use of ingredients under control.
- Easily manage takeaway, over the counter, drive thru, and delivery alongside your regular dining room. To-go orders can be clearly labelled on the KDS including their expected time of delivery, so your chefs can pack them appropriately and your staff can differentiate between types of orders without any mix ups.
Tables & Menu
Seat guests promptly and know who has been served/who has been waiting. Keep guests informed about the ingredients you use and warn them about potential allergens – no matter if you’re serving breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
- Maximize your restaurant seating with the graphical table and floor view. Design the layout of your dining area with the drag and drop feature, set up different layouts for different times of day, and easily separate, move, or join tables as needed.
- Plan menus based on the time of day or for special occasions. Inform guests of the ingredients and nutritional content of each dish to warn of allergens or if the dish aligns with dietary preferences. Design the menu layout to perfectly match your brand.
- Use insights that will help you price dishes correctly to align with demand and ensure profit. Increase sales per seat, grow upsell, and turn tables faster, optimize your menu – like adding a new meal deal when you discover some dishes are frequently bought together.
Inventory
Manage sales, purchasing and food production within the same platform. The system helps you monitor supplies and track what raw materials you are using, in which quantities – all in real- time. Powerful automations make sure you always stock the amounts you need, not more, not less!
- Get real-time visibility into sales and available stock across all your locations. The system can help you keep an accurate view of the stock you have, and how fast it's selling, so you can reorder the right amount of ingredients and distribute them properly across your business.
- Sync your recipes to the POS so that when you sell a dish, the system automatically deducts the right amount of ingredients from your stock. Easily track ingredient usage and available stock in real time, keep track of all your recipes, and your most popular dishes.
- Keep a close eye on your budget – the system helps you manage food costing and plan menus, set up expense limits, choose among top-down, bottom-up and middle-out budgeting approaches, and budget on different levels, from items to divisions and everything in between.
Guest loyalty
Identify loyal guests and send them personalized rewards, deals, and messages based on their habits, preferences, and history. Offer online ordering, self-service kiosks, takeaway, curbside pick-up, and more.
- Build an effective loyalty program with multiple levels of membership and let customers access it online. Decide how guests can collect and spend points, analyze and segment customers based on their preferences to send personalized offers, deals, and discounts or notify them of new campaigns to better align with what your guests want.
- Spot trends, identify what different types of guests prefer, and anticipate demand. Plan happy hours, special offers, meal deals, and track their popularity and return on investment (ROI). Discover what vouchers, promotions, and offers guests redeem, when and on which channels, and build a 360-degree profile of each guest.
- Sell a combination of items for a special price and see which combo customers buy the most. You can also let customers mix and combine as few or as many promotions as they want depending on your strategy, and set a weekday lunch discount, happy hour, or any offer your customers will love and apply it to some or all of your locations.
Reporting
Maintain your data in one central place, in an organized and consistent format. This way you can easily analyze it using the system’s advanced Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting functionality called Analytics for LS Central. Set your goals and check where you are without having to compare lines of data or Excel files.
- Know exactly how your business is performing and keep a close eye on sales trends, customer preferences, bestselling dishes, and more with Analytics for LS Central. Easily analyze and interact with your data using a simple graphical interface and drag and drop features, view your dashboards and reports on any hardware, and always keep your data secured in the cloud. Plus, the implementation only takes 1-2 days as opposed to the standard 6-12 months!
- Focus on actions that will drive returns. See your top selling menu items and make sure you always have the right ingredients on hand. Take note of unpopular dishes according to location and decide if you should create a promotion or remove them from the menu. Analyze your menu depending on how much each dish costs to produce, and track and compare sales and productivity per time period, employee, location and geography, so you can adjust your menu as needed.
- Give all your teams secure, real-time access to business data, insights, and reports wherever they are. The software gives you a single version of the truth, allowing you to keep track of how each location is performing at any given time and compare the performance of locations, menu items, offers and promotions based on each location. Share specific insights and reports with key stakeholders and set alerts for specific metrics to take quick action when needed.
ERP
LS Central extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, a robust ERP hosted in the secure and highly reliable Microsoft cloud. Get rid of your legacy systems and of complex integrations that always break. With LS Central, you get all the functionality the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP offers, plus advanced restaurant functionalities (like menu management, loyalty, Kitchen Display Systems, table management, and more) within one unified software solution.
- Collect all your business information in one database and work within a single environment. When your process a sale, take in stock, change a price or menu, your information is instantly updated across your enterprise.
- Better manage cash flow and budgeting, automate financial reconciliation, and simplify financial closing and reporting. Keep a clear overview of your costs, revenue, and profit within your enterprise with general ledger (GL) and account schedules reporting.
- Easily keep up with your sales and marketing. Manage your customer database within the Microsoft suite. Maintain a clear and connected overview of customers’ details in the central CRM and use their contact information to run targeted marketing campaigns.
- Simplify operations across your supply chain. Get clear visibility across purchasing, manufacturing, and stock. Engage with suppliers in a more cost-effective way, decrease your expenditure on materials, and ensure you produce within your supply and capacity limits.
- Administer staff roles and permissions and set access limitations for specific information and operations. You can also customize the interface, so it suits and support your business processes and add apps to extend the functionality when you need it.
- Grow your restaurant chain or food service business easily in the cloud and access your information anywhere. The Microsoft datacenter encryption automatically protects your data from unauthorized access, so you can store and transmit data securely within your business.