Jerk Junction: Prepping for the future with Lightspeed

When Mickey McCarthy joined Jerk Junction as the Managing Director at the end of 2024, he was relieved to find the restaurant was already using Lightspeed. “I can predict our sales forecasts and stock depletion, and see where all our money is at all times,” he said. “Without Lightspeed, we couldn't do all these things within the business.”

That live data is key for Mickey and his team, and the availability of it is even more important. “I've used systems where you have to wait until the end of the day to get a report,” he explained. “Lightspeed gives you real data, and it's live 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That's key for us in a business where we can't wait for a report to generate overnight.”

As with a lot of restaurateurs, Mickey works a lot. So when he needs to solve a problem, he appreciates having 24/7 access to support. He’s used other ePOS systems in the past that work on a ticket basis, and he says he sometimes wouldn’t hear back for three business days. So, Lightspeed’s 24/7 support makes a huge difference for Mickey and his team.

“We operate seven days a week,” he said. “We're not a 9 to 5, and if the tills go down or something happens at 9 p.m. and we're still serving, we know Lightspeed is going to be there for us.”

In his own words, Mickey isn’t a “tech guy” and the access he and his team have to the AI chatbot and their account manager, Katie, is a huge benefit.

“It's not one of these companies where they give you generated generic, unusable, unhelpful support,” he said. “Katie went through everything with me and set it all up. We've got a complex menu, but Lightspeed can handle it.”

When asked about his favourite product, Mickey is clear: it’s Order Anywhere. It lets customers not only order food at the restaurant, but also place orders online from wherever they are. The implementation was so simple that Mickey has already rolled it out at two of his locations. “The set up was ten minutes. I've never seen anything like it, it was seamless.”

Another benefit of Order Anywhere is its Google integration, which has also served Jerk Junction really well. As soon as they turned it on, they saw an influx of new customers who kept coming back.

“It’s really helped us reach more people because some people don't like calling in to place an order. They'd rather do it on their phone, turn up, and take the food away,” Mickey said. Some team members were skeptical of the launch, but it ended up being worth it. “It can additionally add £500 or £600 worth of sales every single week, and we do absolutely nothing for that. Lightspeed does all the work for us, and it's just easy revenue into the business.”

“If I ever woke up and Lightspeed wasn't around, we wouldn't know anything within our business. That's how crucial it is to us,” Mickey said. He called Lightspeed Jerk Junction’s source of truth, helping him manage the whole back office, and providing essential integrations with all their other tools.

“We have a number of different apps, like Workforce and Supy, and all of these systems integrate with Lightspeed,” he explained. “That seamless integration with all our other systems gets us that source truth within our business.”