Lightspeed and InKind: Empowering Restaurants with Capital and New Repayment Methods to Thrive in Today’s Economy

With this innovative partnership, inKind provides capital in exchange for food and beverage credits to participating Lightspeed restaurants

Lightspeed Commerce Inc. is pleased to announce that Lightspeed Restaurant now seamlessly integrates with inKind, a unique dining platform that helps restaurants across North America grow by providing them with unrestricted capital. 

Powering the world’s best businesses, Lightspeed is the unified POS and payments platform for ambitious entrepreneurs who wish to accelerate growth, provide the best customer experiences and become a go-to destination in their space. 

inKind is a minority and LGBTQ2S+-owned small business. Founded in 2016, there are now 500,000 users on the inKind app. Its mission? To find a way to help restaurants become profitable and allow them to reach their full potential.

“We founded inKind to help restaurants succeed,” says inKind’s CEO and co-founder, Johann Moonesinghe. “Our new partnership with Lightspeed presents an unparalleled opportunity to maximize our impact by providing  operators with equitable financing solutions and best-in-class technology.” 

inKind’s mission is aligned with Lightspeed’s own history as an LGBTQ2S+-founded business that was built to help communities and small and medium businesses (SMBs) grow. “Lightspeed and inKind share a lot of the same values. At our core, we believe that a great dining scene brings so much to local communities—it feeds the culture and the economy. When local restaurants win, we all win,” says Peter Dougherty, General Manager of Hospitality at Lightspeed Commerce. 

inKind brings an alternative funding model to the table; no loan repayments or partial ownership are required. Instead, inKind provides restaurants with capital in exchange for food and beverage credits. Guests who use the inKind mobile app can purchase these credits, which they can redeem by paying for their meal with their phone thanks to the inKind app’s integration with Lightspeed.

• Guests win. At the end of their meal, guests visiting a participating restaurant input their check number into the inKind app, which charges them and closes the bill in Lightspeed. Waitstaff are free to focus on other patrons and guests can move on without having to wait for their server to return to the table.
  
• Restaurants win. inKind was founded by restaurant operators for restaurant operators. It provides operators with funding in the form of a lump sum of nonrestrictive cash.  In exchange, inKind receives food and beverage credits, which it then sells to guests. When guests redeem their credits at the restaurant, they’re also closing the loop. So when the restaurant succeeds, inKind does, too. 
• Everyone wins. Lightspeed and inKind believe that local businesses help communities flourish. And with restaurateurs facing greater challenges—from labor shortages to increasing interest rates and everything in between—easier access to capital can make all the difference. 

“This new partnership complements our Capital offering wonderfully,” continues Dougherty. “By choosing Lightspeed, restaurants now have that many more tools in their toolbelt to build out their vision. It’s not just about surviving, it’s about thriving.” 

He adds: “Their unique model combines POS data with consumer data to help inform their risk model. This is very much in line with our insights and how Lightspeed sets itself apart on the market.”

Ember Kitchen & Subterra Agave Bar, inKind’s own restaurant incubator based in Austin, TX, now uses Lightspeed Restaurant. “Lightspeed reduces headaches so that we can focus on the guest experience,” says Ember Kitchen’s Mychael Flores, Director of Restaurant Operations. On the partnership, Flores notes, “the integration with Lightspeed is seamless and operators across the country have a lot to look forward to.”