Multi-location businesses can share settings and menu items amongst locations to streamline their operations in Lightspeed Restaurant. This guide covers how to set up new business locations, switch between the Back Office of each, understand which settings are shared (and which are not), and manage menu items across your multi-location setup.

Business locations are used when operating the same restaurant concept at different physical sites. If you oversee restaurants with different concepts, we recommend setting up a separate Lightspeed Restaurant business for each.

Setting up new locations

In Lightspeed, business locations let you manage multiple physical restaurants that share the same concept, menu items, and business settings. You may have have signed up for multiple locations when creating your Lightspeed Restaurant account, or you may need to add additional locations later on if you expand. 

To add business locations to an existing Lightspeed Restaurant account, get in touch with your sales representative. Here are some things to keep in mind when adding new locations:

• Basic menu structure, shared, and global settings are copied from your first business location to each new location.
• Global and shared settings will be synchronized between all business locations.
• With shared items, it’s necessary to maintain a consistent combo structure across all locations. It’s not possible to disable an item group or an individual item within a group on a location-specific basis.

Switching between locations

Managing multiple business locations is made easier with the location switcher. Whether you’re updating menus or reviewing reports, you can transition between locations within the Back Office at any time.

1. In the Back Office, click the location switcher dropdown in the navigation menu of any screen.

   

2. Select a location to switch to. You will automatically be transferred to the corresponding area of the selected location’s Back Office.
   

   

Understanding shared features

Understanding the differences between global, shared, and local features in Lightspeed Restaurant allows you to more efficiently manage your business locations. For example, some settings only need to be set up once for all locations (global), but other settings can be different by location (local).

Items and menus can be classified multiple different ways. For this reason, we’ll discuss them later in a dedicated section of this article.

Global features

Global features are the same for every location attached to your Lightspeed Restaurant business. When you add, delete, or make changes to a global feature or setting in one business location, those changes are automatically copied to all other linked locations.

Global features include:

• Accounting groups
• Order profiles
• Production instructions
• User groups
• Payment methods
• Discounts
• Void reasons
• Item languages
• Transfer operations

Shared features

Shared features have some aspects that are the same across business locations and others that are different. For example, customer profiles are shared across locations, but customer invoices and amounts owed are specific to each location.

Shared features include:

• Users: POS and Back Office users are shared across locations, but users only have access to the location they were created in by default. To grant users additional access, you can edit the business locations they are assigned to.
• Customers: Customer profiles are consistent across locations, simplifying their management. However, invoices, amounts owed, and accounts receivable are managed separately at each location.
• Reporting: While each business location generates its own set of reports, Location reports aggregate data for a comprehensive overview of all locations.

Local features

Local features must be managed separately for each business location. For example, POS configuration settings must be manually customized in each business location to fit that location’s needs.

Local features include:

• Reporting automations
• Floor plans and tables
• Hardware, such as printers and payment terminals
• POS devices
• Production centers and printing profiles
• POS configurations
• Hours
• Reporting shifts
• Customer invoices and amounts owed
• Add-on modules and integrations

Managing menu items across locations

Understanding the difference between local, shared, and global menu items in Lightspeed Restaurant makes it easier to manage menus across locations. Global items maintain brand consistency across all locations, while local items allow customization to meet regional preferences.

Items can be local, shared, or global

• Local items are available in one business location only.
• Shared items are accessible across all businesses locations, retaining the same name but allowing for different settings at each site. For example, an item’s price might be different at a different location.
• Global items are universally available at all locations, and any changes made to these items affect every location equally.
• You can change the sharing status of items from the items table or by editing an item and clicking the Local / Shared / Global badge at the top.

Menus can be local or shared

• By default, new menus are local to the business location in which they are added.
• You can share menus with other business locations to avoid having to manually re-create the menu in locations where it is needed. Before sharing a menu, its items must be set to Shared or Global.
• Shared menus can only be edited and updated from the business location where they were initially created.