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Lightbulb Solutions

Restaurant marketplace intelligence

Marketplace intelligence for restaurant operators.

Lightbulb is building a unified platform to help restaurant brands understand their third-party marketplace business across locations, brands, and delivery platforms.

Lightbulb makes it easier to connect every order and storefront to the economics behind it—helping restaurant teams protect margins and turn marketplace growth into healthier, more profitable operations.

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A chef cooking on the line of a restaurant kitchen during service, under the pass lamps.

The Lightbulb platform

  • Executive Dashboard

  • Brands

  • Menus

Restaurant marketplace data is fragmented.

Restaurant teams often have to piece together marketplace dashboards, provider reports, and spreadsheets just to understand what is happening across the business. Lightbulb is being built to bring that information into a clearer operating view.

What questions does Lightbulb help you answer?

  1. Which brands and locations are performing best?
  2. How are marketplace sales changing over time?
  3. What are we actually paying to marketplaces?
  4. Which locations generate the strongest contribution?
  5. Are marketplace costs moving in the right direction?
  6. Does operational activity reconcile with financial reporting?

One view of your marketplace business.

Marketplace Performance

Orders, average order value and gross sales over time — read for the whole restaurant group, or narrowed to a brand, a location, a storefront or a marketplace.

Read it by

  • Restaurant group
  • Brand
  • Location
  • Storefront
  • Marketplace

Advanced P&L Breakdown

Every storefront from gross sales through marketplace costs to Gross Contribution and margin — with location costs next in the breakdown.

Gross Sales

minus Marketplace Costs

equals Gross Contribution

Gross Contribution Margin

Next in the breakdown: COGS · Labor · Rent

Gross Contribution is not Net Profit.

Brand & Location Visibility

Move from the restaurant group to a location, a brand and a single storefront, without rebuilding a report for each.

  1. Restaurant group
  2. Location
  3. Brand
  4. StorefrontBrand + location + marketplace

Reporting & Reconciliation

Provider reports are broken into their components and rebuilt, so each total can be traced and checked against its source.

Source statementSource retained

Gross Sales

Marketplace fees

Marketing & promotions

Platform adjustments

Rebuilt payout

Checked against the payout the provider reported

Built to understand more than third-party marketplace sales.

Lightbulb is being developed as a broader operating platform for restaurant teams—connecting marketplace performance, economics, reporting, menus, promotions, and future operational workflows through one consistent system.

Lightbulb

Platform

One data model.
One operating view.

  • Marketplace Performance

    Compare sales, orders, AOV, brands and storefront performance.

    Tools

    • Executive Dashboard
    • Brand Rankings

    One consistent performance model instead of isolated provider screens.

    CURRENT FOCUS

  • Advanced P&L Breakdown

    Connect marketplace sales, costs, contribution and margin.

    Tools

    • P&L Breakdown
    • Contribution
    • Margin

    Moves beyond topline marketplace sales to the economics underneath them.

    CURRENT FOCUS

  • Brand & Location Visibility

    Move from restaurant group to location, brand and storefront.

    Tools

    • Brand Views
    • Location Views
    • Storefront Views

    Performance visibility at the level where operating decisions are made.

    CURRENT FOCUS

  • Reporting & Reconciliation

    Structure, validate and reconcile provider reporting.

    Tools

    • Source Context
    • Validation
    • Reconciliation

    Preserves the path from provider source to financial analysis.

    IN DEVELOPMENT

  • Menu Intelligence

    Understand items, availability, channels and differences by location.

    Tools

    • Menu Items
    • Availability
    • Channels

    Connects menu operations to the same performance and financial context.

    PLANNED

  • Promotions & Marketing

    Connect promotions with marketplace performance and economics.

    Tools

    • Promotion Activity
    • Performance
    • Contribution

    Evaluates promotions through economics, not sales volume alone.

    PLANNED

  • Current focus
  • In development
  • Planned

Integrated tools built for restaurant teams managing more than one storefront.

Lightbulb is being built to give multi-storefront restaurant teams a shared view of performance, priorities, and the work that needs attention across the business.

KPT Board

Keep, Problem, Try — a shared board where upper management and managers can share updates, track issues and align on next steps, location by location. The entries below are examples.

Example KPT board with Keep, Problem, and Try columns containing sample restaurant-operations entries. Keep lists practices worth continuing, such as consistent food quality. Problem lists operational issues that need attention, such as long prep times during the lunch rush. Try lists next actions or experiments, such as testing a new prep flow.

From fragmented provider data to usable operating intelligence.

  1. Step 1: Bring in marketplace data

    Lightbulb is designed to work with structured provider reports and marketplace integrations.

    • Activity

    • Reporting

    • Payouts

  2. Step 2: Organize it consistently

    Marketplace information is normalized across brands, locations, providers, and reporting periods.

  3. Step 3: Validate before trusting

    Provider information is checked before it becomes part of financial and performance analysis.

  4. Step 4: Reconcile the business

    Operational activity and provider reporting can be compared through a consistent data model.

  5. Step 5: Understand performance

    Operators can analyze marketplace economics without rebuilding the same spreadsheets every reporting cycle.

    • Brands

    • Economics

    • Insights

Provider data should be verified before it becomes financial truth.

Financial reporting built for traceability, not just totals.

Marketplace reports can tell operators the total. Lightbulb is designed to show how that number becomes financial truth—preserving source context, validating incoming data, reconciling reporting, and making the path from provider activity to financial insight easier to follow.

  1. Raw provider data

    Captured as reports and provider data arrive.

    • Captured as received
    • Source retained

  2. Validated / reconciled data

    Checked and reconciled before it is trusted.

    • Normalized
    • Validated
    • Reconciled

  3. Traceable financial insight

    What operators analyze and act on — and can trace back.

    • Traceable calculations
    • Data confidence visible

Built alongside everyday restaurant operators.

Lightbulb is being developed with input from restaurant operators managing real third-party marketplace workflows. The platform is shaped around the reporting gaps, operating questions, and decisions restaurant teams deal with every day.

As the product develops, marketplace integrations and operating capabilities will continue to expand around those real-world workflows.

Talk to a Lightbulb Rep

See how Lightbulb is built to help restaurant teams understand marketplace performance, economics, and operations. Talk with our team about your business and learn more about the platform.

Talk to a Rep

or write to solutions.lightbulb@gmail.com