Opening a cafe is a busy time - collectively we have opened more than a few in our time. One of the things you don't need to worry about is how you are going to upload your coffee menu to Lightspeed.

Taking a hot drink order can be a combination of super-fast orders and very complicated requests or variations and options. You'll need a menu that can handle the very best (& worst) that you'll face as a barista. So we decided to put together a best practice guide breaking down the steps to create a killer hot drinks menu with Lightspeed.

This setup should take around half an hour to complete and will arm you with tools to improve other product categories within Lightspeed as well.

What's in this guide? 

Add (or Import) your menu basics
Create your variants
Create your options & modifiers
Arrange on the POS

Add (or Import) your menu basics

First things first, you'll need to add your products. The fundamentals for all cafe drinks are fairly standard, so we included an example menu (which you can upload to your Lightspeed). You can also add these yourself if you'd prefer.

• Tax Inclusive (IncTax) pricing is the standard for Australia, New Zealand, UK etc
  • Cafe Drinks Import IncTax.csv
• Tax Exclusive (ExTax) pricing is the standard for the USA, so you'll want the below template
  • Cafe Drinks Import ExTax.csv 

The drinks included in this import are shown below;

Batch Brew Cappuccino Chai Latte Espresso Flat White Hot Chocolate Latte Long Black Macchiato Mocha Piccolo Latte Tea

Create your variants

By setting up variants under the products you've added, you set up a quick and easy way to note coffee size and/or dine-in or takeaway. And because selecting the variant is required, this ensures that no one will forget to enter these details.

Note - If you have not yet read through our guide on creating variants, then I recommend giving that a read first, however, we have also included the basic steps below.

1. Each variant will be created from the attributes you assign to it. Attributes can be added on the Variants tab under Product Info. In the images below we have included one for Coffee Size (eg Regular or Large), and one for Dine In or Take Away.

2. Save these attributes by selecting Save Template.

3. Select Add New Variant

4. Enter the variants under the corresponding attribute. The values you enter in the field for the price and for each attribute will make a new product. Simply select Add Variant to save.

5. If you use the above attributes then each drink (except for tea) should look like the below; 

For teas we can instead add an attribute of tea blend and then add our blends in as the values as seen below; 

Create your options & modifiers

Next, organise our modifiers (e.g. Skim Milk, Soy Milk) into option sets (e.g. Milk Options). For this step, you would need to first read our guide on Creating Option Sets. Then you can refer to the table below for the common option sets and modifiers that cafes use. 

Note - Option sets & modifiers will group into alphabetical order by default, so to save time we name our option sets with a number showing the order we want to show these in.

Then we simply need to assign these to all of our cafe drinks.

We have turned Auto-Prompt on POS to No so that we can still add these modifiers to our drinks from the product edit screen when placing an order, but not having to worry about all these options popping up for the majority of customers who want a "normal" coffee.

For the modifiers we use very frequently, we can simply add those as On-Screen Modifiers by indicating in their product info page that they are modifiers and then adding them to the same category as the cafe drinks to make them visible on the POS.

Arrange your products on the POS and test your menu

The final step is to go to the POS and arrange the products to fit your workflow.

You will find all the hidden option sets only buttons away by clicking on the product in the order summary on the right, then Options along the top of the edit screen.

You should now have a beautiful and functional coffee menu.

We built this menu with guidance from input from several cafe guru's and are always looking for ways to improve - so if you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it!