Lightspeed Commerce Inc., the one-stop commerce platform for merchants around the world to simplify, scale, and create exceptional customer experiences, today released its 2022 Global State of the Hospitality Industry report. Lightspeed surveyed 1,100 hospitality owners, managers and operators, and 7,000 consumers from the United States, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, to get a pulse on challenges and trends across regions, gather insight into customer experience and expectations, and identify how industry leaders around the globe are navigating modern challenges and trends.

As restaurateurs around the world are grappling with high inflation rates, staff shortages, and overall economic uncertainty, technology seems to be a key tool in battling macroeconomic conditions. The ability for hospitality operators to do more with less is essential, with survey results noting a majority of industry respondents credit the adoption of a POS or restaurant management software to streamlining shifts, including new or expanded online ordering systems or the use of new technology to automate tasks.

"Digital adoption has been an important lifeline for hospitality businesses and it's clear there are greater efficiencies to be realized with new technology," said Peter Dougherty, GM of Hospitality at Lightspeed. "Our goal is to partner with our customers, sharing reliable insights at every level, from industry, regional, the customer perspective, right down to what is performing best on the menu. Our flagship hospitality product, Lightspeed Restaurant, is an easy-to-use, omnichannel solution that uses data to deliver actionable insights to restaurant operators, helping them make smarter decisions about their business."

The rising cost of food and supplies is among the top obstacles that hospitality businesses are facing, with 37% of restaurant owners surveyed indicating this as their biggest challenge. While it can be daunting to raise menu prices (for fear of losing customers), more than half (61%) of restaurateurs indicated this is how they are combating inflation.

Restaurants like Kotsu Ramen and Gyoza, in California, were hesitant to increase their prices, but ultimately decided it was a necessary change. According to Chief Concept Officer, Grant Macdonald, the move to increase pricing ended up being beneficial in many ways.

"There's a sense that guests are incredibly price sensitive, and we've been actually very nervous about being able to move our pricing up," said Grant. "In some ways, inflation has given us the opportunity to finally make some price changes that were necessary and move into new price points that really needed to happen."

While inflation appears to be the dominating issue, followed closely by hiring new staff (23%) and staff retention (11%), sustainability has become an emerging consideration that cannot be ignored. Nearly half (47%) of hospitality owners surveyed by Lightspeed agree that implementing environmentally friendly initiatives will attract more customers.