As the restaurant industry continues to evolve, restaurant owners must keep up with the times. One of the platforms restaurants and the rest of the food service industry can use to achieve this is Toast.
Toast is a cloud-based point-of-sale platform that helps you handle orders, sales, payments, and even marketing in one place. In addition, the platform allows business owners to identify cost savings opportunities and track their best-selling menu items.
This review will discuss the key features, pricing, and pros and cons of using Toast as your all-in-one restaurant technology platform. So, without further ado, let us begin.
Toast Features
Since the Toast platform is specifically built for restaurants, it offers a range of features to assist you in managing and growing your business more effectively and productively. Here are some of Toast’s primary features.
Online Ordering and Delivery
Online ordering is one of the best ways to increase sales and costs by reducing the periods your employees spend taking phone orders. But it’s not just about sales—Toast’s online ordering system creates more orders that make your business more efficient by enabling quick, easy pick-up and delivery processes.
When using Toast’s integrated online ordering system, customers can order from their phones or computers and pay with Apple Pay or Toast Gift Cards. The platform also allows you to customize your digital presence with your branding and menu items, as shown below.
Toast also offers real-time tracking of your deliveries, which is great for businesses that don’t have company drivers. However, this feature isn’t available with its free plan, so you must upgrade to a paid plan if you want to access it.
Tableside Ordering and Checkouts
Suppose you have a packed restaurant and need to turn the tide quickly.
You can’t just let customers walk out the door without ordering their meals, of course—but how do you ensure they don’t miss out on the best parts of your menu?
With Toast’s tableside ordering and checkout capabilities via their QR code ordering system, you can take orders and process payments right at the table, as shown below.
This way, your staff can cut down times closing out checks and spend more time providing great hospitality.
Multi-Location Management
Managing several restaurant locations can be difficult. However, Toast’s multi-location management makes it easy to keep things consistent across all your restaurants without sacrificing the ability to tailor menus, manage options, or organize your workforce.
You may fine-tune each location’s settings and structure to meet your requirements. You can also set up menus, so they’re tailored to each location, as illustrated below.
Note from the image above that restaurant data from all locations is shared on the platform, giving you a unified, clear picture of your overall performance.
Reporting and Analytics
Reporting and analytics are essential parts of running your restaurant. They help you understand your business’s performance, spot key trends and transform your data into actionable insights.
Toast reporting provides a complete picture of your business, as illustrated below.
You’ll have access to key metrics like sales, menu items, labor, and more—all in one place. In addition, if you’re working with multiple locations, Toast will show you how your locations are performing against each other to help you make informed decisions.
This feature also helps restaurants bring their guests back by helping you set up automated marketing campaigns to boost sales and drive repeat visits. Ensure you review your marketing campaign materials’ copy on a writing assistant like Grammarly or a Grammarly free alternative so you can communicate more effectively.
Payroll and Team Management
Do you struggle with payroll and team management? Then you should try out Toast’s POS timesheet integration. With this feature, employees’ punches sync directly to payroll, saving you time each pay period. Plus, you can offer, approve, and track time off in one system.
Your team will appreciate their jobs even more since they’ll have fast access to tips and wages. Remember, the happier your team is, the easier it is to retain your top talent.
Toast Pricing
Toast has four main pricing packages: Starter Kit, Point of Sale, Essentials, and Custom, as shown below.
The following is an estimate of what you can expect to pay for the packages:
- Starter Kit – Starting at $0/month, this package is ideal for small, single-location restaurants that want to get up and running with only one or two terminals,
- Point of Sale – Starting at $69/month, this package is ideal for restaurants looking to get started with a basic level of functionality and uniform processing costs.
- Essentials – Starting at $165/month, this package is ideal for restaurants wanting to grow sales and profits by adding the Digital Ordering suite to their POS system.
- Custom – This package has custom pricing. It’s ideal for all restaurants looking to generate more revenue and streamline operations with Toast’s full suite of tools.
The Toast platform also offers a Restaurant Basics Package. Starting at $110/month plus $4 per every additional employee/month, this special offer package is meant for new restaurants looking to get started with Toast while saving money by integrating POS and Payroll.
Toast Pros and Cons
Following that, we’ll go over the pros and cons of Toast so you can make an informed choice about whether or not Toast is appropriate for you.
Pros
Here’s a list of Toast’s benefits:
- Range of features to help you better manage and deploy your food deliveries.
- Simple to use interface.
- Contactless payment system.
- Easy integration with other most widely used restaurant software like Lunchbox and Sling.
- Fast and durable Toast Go handheld devices that make it to take orders and enhance contactless payments.
Besides that, Toast’s low-cost packages also appeal to a wide range of customers.
Cons
Some drawbacks of using Toast include:
- Some clients have reported poor customer service.
- Compulsory utilization of their payment processor, which repels customers who are loyal to third-party websites.
- The cost of canceling and switching plans is also high, which can frustrate users.
Although some of these issues can be unpleasant for customers, note that the pros of Toast outweigh the cons. So, depending on the demands of your business, you should be able to determine whether it’s worth the price.
In Closing
Toast is an all-in-one platform made by restaurant people for restaurant people. It offers great products and solutions like handheld POS devices, contactless ordering, online ordering and delivery, marketing and loyalty programs, payroll, and team management.
Toast can serve as the restaurant operating system across dine-in, takeout, and delivery channels.
If you’re looking to improve your restaurant operations, grow revenue, and deliver amazing guest experiences, Toast is the solution to go for.
