About Toast

Toast was purposefully designed to be a valuable tool for restaurateurs, aiming to simplify and streamline their day-to-day operations effectively. The platform offers a comprehensive range of features that cater to various essential aspects of restaurant management. Restaurant owners can easily accept payments, ensure efficient inventory tracking, and access tools for managing staff, facilitating employee scheduling and performance tracking.

Toast’s service provides an exceptional combination of features, value, and user-friendliness. The platform’s well-rounded features cater to various aspects of restaurant operations, including payment processing, inventory management, and staff scheduling.

Products and Services

Toast, Inc. has made a significant impact in the restaurant industry, serving as the POS system of choice for over 62,000 restaurants. Their platform provides a tailored operating system, specifically designed to cater to different aspects of food service, ranging from order processing and inventory management to staff scheduling. One noteworthy feature of the Toast platform is its 24/7 customer service, which comes standard with all their service plans.

Toast has a range of reporting modules that provide valuable insights into various key metrics for restaurant management. These modules encompass metrics like sales performance, labor costs across different locations, and product mix analysis.

Toast offers various plans to cater to different business needs and stages of growth. The Starter Kit is a free plan that provides essential features, including a cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) system, one terminal configuration, email marketing, gift cards, loyalty program management, and menu management.

For businesses looking to expand further, the Growth plan offers additional features such as online ordering and delivery services management, allowing restaurants to reach a broader customer base and offer more convenience to their patrons.

The Restaurant Basics Package is designed to provide more advanced tools for restaurant operations. It includes a lite version of scheduling and payroll tools, which can help businesses manage their workforce more efficiently.

Toast POS Features

While some POS systems cater to various industries, Toast stands out as an exclusive solution tailored solely for restaurants. This focused approach reflects in the hardware, purposefully designed to withstand spills, grease, and heat common in restaurant environments.

Order and Checkout at the Table

Toast’s mobile ordering and checkout capabilities offer a significant advantage for busy restaurants seeking to enhance their table service and turnover efficiency. Restaurant staff can take orders and process payments directly at the table. However, one limitation of Toast’s mobile feature is its offline mode. If the internet connection goes down or if the seating is situated far from a Wi-Fi connection, the off-line mode cannot process payments.

Online Order and Delivery

Toast’s online ordering and real-time delivery tracking feature provides restaurants with a convenient way to offer delivery services even if they do not have their own drivers. Customers can easily place orders online and keep track of their delivery status, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Toast facilitates the process by leveraging its network of drivers to find someone available for delivery in the specific area. Restaurants interested in utilizing this feature will need to upgrade to a paid plan to access the online ordering functionality and enjoy its benefits.

Menu Update

Toast’s menu management feature allows businesses to make quick and easy changes to their menus. This flexibility enables restaurants to adapt to changing demands and offer fresh and exciting options to their customers frequently. The software’s ability to track prices and ingredients is helpul in managing costs effectively, contributing to restaurants profitability. One limitation of Toast is the absence of a built-in nutrition information feature. It’s possible to access nutrition information through the Nightly Menu JSON export but the technical process might confuse majority of users.

Reporting

Toast offers comprehensive reporting features, enabling you to track your sales, labor expenses, and inventory levels in real-time. By creating personalized reports, you gain valuable business insights, make swift decisions, and maintain constant awareness of your restaurant’s performance.

Add-Ons

Toast has established itself as an all-in-one ecosystem, offering various add-ons to enhance the overall management of restaurant businesses. These add-ons provide valuable extra services that cater to different aspects of restaurant operations, ultimately alleviating the workload for restaurateurs. These add-ons include:

• Toast Mobile Order & Pay
• xtraCHEF by Toast
• Scheduling & Team Communication
• Partner Connect
• Marketing, Gift Cards & Loyalty
• Third Party Delivery Integrations
• Payroll & Team Management

Hardware Options

Restaurateurs have the flexibility to configure their hardware setup according to their unique needs, and they can add as many devices as necessary to achieve full coverage of their restaurant space. Hardware options includes handheld devices and all-in-one terminals.

Pricing

Starter Kit: Toast’s free plan includes a variety of valuable features and services such as order and table management, menu management, reporting and analytics, real-time fraud monitoring, assistance for installation and configuration, automatic system upgrades, and 24/7 customer support.

Core: At $69 per month, the most affordable paid plan offers flexibility to customize the hardware you use. This particular plan also provides access to a range of additional features not available with the Starter Kit plan, including team management tools and API access.

Growth: For $165 a month, this plan includes all the features that come with the Core plan. This plan comes with Toast Delivery Services, and Toast TakeOut App, Toast Online Ordering.

Restaurants Basics Package: At a starting price of $110 per month, Toast’s Restaurant Basics Package encompasses all the features available in the Starter Kit, along with the inclusion of an API and productivity tools. These productivity tools consist of Sling scheduling (Lite), Payroll & Team Management (Lite), business insurance through AP Intego, Vestwell 401(k), and the Toast Pay Card and PayOut services.

Customer Support

Toast offers a knowledge base that provides DIY assistance on various features, including menus, labor, employees, guest engagement, front-of-house setup, kitchen setup, integrations, payroll, hardware, and payments. Additionally, customers have the option to attend Toast Classroom, where they can access live training sessions and on-demand classes for further support and learning.

Frequently updating its Toast System Status, the platform ensures customers are informed about any potential downtimes. Users can opt to receive email and phone alerts for changes in Toast’s uptime. Moreover, if logged into their Toast account, customers can access live chat support for immediate assistance.

Conclusion

Toast offers a purpose-built POS system equipped with all the essential software features required to efficiently run establishments such as restaurants, bars, cafes, or food trucks. The hardware is particularly renowned for its intentional design, providing resistance against spills, splatters, and durability in high-temperature environments, which is crucial in the foodservice industry. I’s worth noting that if you decide to opt for Toast, be prepared to sign a long-term contract.