Toast is a leading point-of-sale (POS) system that often finds itself on many of our guides for the best restaurant systems. An affordable base price, industry-grade hardware, and highly intuitive software features set Toast apart from other POS competitors in the restaurant space.
Another key aspect that keeps Toast in the lead is its consistent updates and new feature launches. Let’s break down some new and interesting Toast products and features to understand why it is revered by operators across the industry.
1. Toast Benchmarking Tool
Toast recently launched one of its most useful tools yet—Toast Benchmarking—which lets you determine just how well your business is performing against other restaurants in your region or even nationally. It is extremely useful to understand where key business metrics are sitting industry-wide to compare your restaurant to the standard food business in 2024.
Different comparison groups can be selected with Toast’s Benchmarking tool. (Source: Toast)
Toast Benchmarking compares sales data and operational metrics with your peers. The filters on this comparison are in-depth, allowing you to search by category, menu item, and even beverage type. You can even search by order channel, e.g., delivery vs in-house dining. The Toast Benchmarking reports include this comparison tab, a Food Deep Dive, an Alcoholic/Non-Alc Beverage Deep Dive, and even a Service Performance analysis.
It is important to note that for the whole Toast Benchmarking experience, you need to be signed up for and use the Restaurant Management Suite version of Toast Benchmarking. The Lite version of Toast Benchmarking has limited features but does have some restrictions, as seen in the table below.
Feature | Lite Version of Toast Benchmarking | Restaurant Management Suite Version of Toast Benchmarking |
|---|---|---|
Reporting Time Period | Compare sales and operational metrics with peers within your geographic area over a 30-day period | Compare sales and operational metrics with peers across any time period, including comprehensive year-over-year comparisons |
Sales Insights | View and analyze sales across all channels or specific ones, with a breakdown by order channel; toggle between sales, item count, and effective pricing data | View and analyze sales across all channels or specific ones, with detailed breakdowns by order channel; toggle between sales, item count, and effective pricing data |
Year-over-Year Comparison | Limited capability | Available for various time periods and at restaurant, regional, state, and national levels |
Service Performance | Not available | Includes charts showing average table turn times and hourly sales performance against peers |
Deep Dive Insights | Focuses on sales performance for food, alcohol, and non-alcoholic beverages without detailed item-level insights | Provides detailed analysis of sales by menu category and item-level insights |
Overall, Toast Benchmarking gives you in-depth information to identify key areas where your business excels over others, which you can use to stay competitive. At the same time, you can use the same data to shore up wherever your restaurant may be coming up short.
Find real-time snapshots regarding your overall restaurant performance when compared to others. (Source: Toast)
2. Mobile Innovations
Toast acknowledges that many restaurant operators want the ability to manage their restaurant operations from their phones. Toast’s latest Fall Product Release includes new Branded Mobile App options and SMS Marketing capabilities with ready-to-use templates made to grow your customer base. These mobile updates are useful for restaurants of any size to enhance the customer experience through their own white-label app.
The Toast Branded Mobile App allows restaurants to create and launch their restaurant-branded mobile app on both iOS and Android phones. This app integrates with online ordering, POS systems, customer loyalty, and other functions. You can notify guests, offer deals, and establish a direct relationship with customers through your restaurant’s app.
Toast’s mobile app is a great way for restaurants to grow customer loyalty. (Source: Toast)
The SMS Marketing tool now offered by Toast allows your restaurant to connect with customers in real time, offering limited deals and keeping consistent contact with your guests. A recent survey by Toast shared that 57% of its users are interested in hearing from their favorite restaurants, and this ability to communicate with customers is an answer to this demand. SMS messaging, paired with other key mobile features, adds a layer of marketing execution that is super helpful for busy restaurant operators.
Toast’s SMS Marketing tools can even help with the tone of your marketing messages. (Source: Toast)
3. Toast Now
Another key tool is Toast Now, a smartphone management app that gives real-time data and reporting on the current state of your restaurant. The app provides hour-by-hour sales data, breaks down your current data, and compares it week-over-week or even year-over-year.
Get sales data, food costs, and labor costs in real time. (Source: Toast)
One of the very useful features of Toast Now is the ability to toggle between individual locations for data at each site. For example, you can pause online ordering for whatever location you want. Another feature I find incredibly meaningful is the ability to 86 a menu item from anywhere, which can be super beneficial if you need to lock out an item during a busy dinner rush quickly. The last big component of Toast Now is the ability to manage your staff. The app shows who’s clocked in or out and even shows tips earned and break times for each employee at any of your locations.
All this, plus being able to add entries into your Manager Log and communicate with staff, makes the Toast Now app vital for busy operators who rely on their restaurant data.
Manage all delivery apps in one convenient mobile app. (Source: Toast)
4. Updated Self-service Kiosks
A big focus for Toast in recent years has been updating its self-service kiosk capabilities. In its recent Fall Product Release, Toast shared that some major overhauls were done to the self-service kiosk interface—specifically the ability to upsell to customers more intuitively. The kiosks have also been overhauled to more effectively promote customer loyalty options so that your customer base can grow at a steady and competitive rate.
Toast’s customer-facing kiosks can auto-generate specials that allow for easy checkouts when ordering. (Source: Toast)
Toast’s self-service kiosks tout that they can take orders for “as low as $1/hr,” offering a way for restaurants to save on labor costs and maximize their dining rooms. The kiosks can take cell phone numbers from customers and alert them when their food is ready for pickup. Other great additions are the ability to update the kiosk menus at any time and pop-ups before checkout to drive loyalty.
5. Food Waste Reduction Tool
Food waste can be a costly issue for restaurants if not handled correctly. Toast’s Food Waste Reduction Tool lets you stay on top of waste and overall food costs. Toast tracks inventory and sales and breaks down the biggest waste factors your restaurant experiences, delivering reports that give you a high-level yet detailed view of where you and your team can improve on food waste.
Toast’s Food Waste Tool even shares the reason why waste has occurred. (Source: Toast)
One unique feature of this tool is that Toast can actually partner your restaurant with local organizations that could use the waste your restaurant produces. Have extra bagels after a service? These items can go to organizations in your community through Toast’s connections. Tailored waste tracking, accessible to your whole staff, and tips to decrease waste on ingredient-level items are all included in this comprehensive way to manage food waste within your restaurant.
6. Fundraising Feature
Toast recognizes that fundraising is a key activity for food businesses across the US. Its new fundraising feature allowed restaurants to raise $1.5 million in 2023 and looks to continue this trend across 2024. This function is currently only available in the US (excluding California). It can be a great way to further showcase your core values as a business to both your employees and customer base. You can ask customers for a flat-rate donation or to round up their bills and you can support a wide variety of organizations.
Toast Fundraising allows your restaurant to raise money for causes you care about. (Source: Toast)
7. Toast Tables Updates
Toast Tables is its dining room front-of-house management tool. Some key updates were made in 2024 to further enhance this offering and make reservation and table management much more user-friendly. Its Mobile-Friendly Host App allows your staff to utilize host stand functions on their mobile device, wherever they are. The Cover Count Report gives operators better insights into their upcoming reservations and the relevant information that comes with them. Finally, the Deposits feature allows your restaurant to collect deposits for busy business time reservations. Deposits are added automatically to the customer’s bill when they dine at your business and help deter no-shows.
Toast gives in-depth details into each table sat in your dining room. (Source: Toast)
8. Toast Payroll Updates
Toast Payroll allows you to manage all things labor, and it has expanded this feature with some key add-ons in 2024. The new Tax Center helps organize key tax information that makes it easy to file each quarter. The Pay Change Experience centralizes employee payments, making it easier than ever to pay your employees accurately and on time. Finally, the New Hire Onboarding tool ensures that employees are set up quickly, guaranteeing that they get their first check without any delays. These enhancements make Toast’s Payroll tools some of the most advanced on the market for restaurants in 2024.
Toast’s Payroll features offer great ways to manage your payroll in one centralized dashboard. (Source: Toast)
Another key Toast feature is the ability for your new staff to fill out all needed forms, including I-9 and W-2, on their phone. Toast also allows you to pay your employees with direct deposit, printed checks, or even pay cards. You can upload and post payroll in as little as three easy steps, and this is available in all 50 states. If payroll is a constant headache for you or your management team, then Toast Payroll may be reason enough to switch to Toast’s robust POS system offerings.
9. Catering Events & Discussion
Catering is one of some restaurants’ most lucrative business channels in 2024. Toast understands this and has enhanced communication for restaurants looking to get smoother messaging with clients. The new addition keeps all communication with catering guests within Toast, allowing for smooth comms and an easy way to manage the entire catering process. You can create banquet event orders (BEOs), offer quotes or estimates, and provide online invoicing to your customers. All of this enables operators to offer catering with ease and the confidence that all aspects of their services are being accounted for.
Toast’s new catering communication platform keeps all comms within Toast’s digital ecosystem. (Source: Toast)
10. Packaging Preferences Feature
One of the newer yet underrated features that Toast has provided is the ability for customers to choose their preference of packaging from a restaurant. Environmentally sound choices are important to guests in 2024. Toast allows customers who order digitally to opt out of single-use items such as utensils or napkins. It can also ask if customers want less overall packaging to help reduce single-use plastic waste. This ability to meet a need for customers is good for the environment and can save your business money by avoiding the use of unwanted takeout materials.
Toast POS Pricing
Toast offers a Pay-as-You-Go pricing model, with key add-ons available for a monthly cost. Some major drawbacks are the two-year commitment Toast requires and the lack of a truly free trial period for users. For payment processing, you are locked into Toast Payments.
Starter Kit | Point of Sale | Build Your Own | |
|---|---|---|---|
Monthly Software Fee | $0 | $69 | Custom-quoted |
Best For | Small restaurants that only need two terminals | Small to midsize independent restaurants wanting lower processing fees or needing more than two terminals | High-volume or multilocation restaurants |
In-person Processing Fees | 2.99% + 15 cents | 2.49% + 15 cents | Custom-quoted |
New Restaurant Basics | Inclusions: Lite versions of Toast Payroll and Scheduling, business insurance, Vestwell 401(k), and Toast Pay Card and PayOut Cost: $69 (as of now), $9 per employee monthly | ||
Digital Ordering | $75 per month | ||
Gift Cards | $50 per month | ||
Email Marketing | $75 per month | ||
Loyalty | $50 per month | ||
Pay-as-You-Go Digital Marketing Suite | Inclusions: Online ordering, gift cards, email marketing, and loyalty Cost: + 0.40% processing fees | ||
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Toast is an industry-leading POS system used by many restaurants and food businesses on a daily basis. Below are the most commonly asked questions regarding Toast.
Toast has three pricing tiers, with the most approachable being a pay-as-you-go pricing option. This means that each transaction you have with Toast will incur a very small fee that goes to the operation of Toast and its services. All hardware options have this option, too, making Toast very affordable to launch when choosing a POS system.
Toast is a payment processing software and a restaurant management software in one. It lets you process payments, take orders, and relay orders to kitchen staff for preparation. Toast also helps manage staff, inventory, online ordering, ordering websites, guest loyalty, and much more. The system is used in restaurant or food business management in various ways.
Toast is specifically designed for restaurants, food businesses, and similar concepts. The software can be used for catering, bars, and other adjacent business types but is built with food and alcohol sales in mind.
Square is often seen as Toast’s biggest competitor; it also offers a free baseline plan that allows you to pay for the service per transaction. Both systems are used heavily in the restaurant industry and often compete to offer a comprehensive experience for food business operators.
Bottom Line
Toast is a POS software that is constantly being updated with new features, aiming to provide value to its users and stay competitive in its specific product offerings. New Toast features focused on mobile restaurant management, deeper restaurant analytics, and benchmarking make the service very useful for restaurant operators.
The software has everything you need to manage a food business successfully and only adds more value to its product each year. Check out Toast today and see if it is a good fit for your restaurant or food business.
