Toast Review: Is It the Right POS for Your Restaurant in 2024?

All-in-One Scalable Restaurant POS With Ordering, Inventory & Sustainability Tools

Finding the right restaurant point of sale (POS) can be daunting, especially if you manage multiple locations and need to accept orders in various ways. The challenge intensifies when you’re looking for an easy-to-use POS that doesn’t compromise on features. Available across the US, the UK, Ireland, and Canada, Toast seems to hit the sweet spot.

I thoroughly searched dozens of restaurant POS and compared Toast to several competitors. Most fell short in ease of use and often overlooked crucial features like supply chain and waste management.

Toast stands out with its robust inventory, supply, and waste management features. Moreover, it can help you adopt sustainability practices, boosting your bottom line and reducing your environmental footprint.

While you must use its merchant services and sign a long-term contract, user reviews indicate that the long-term benefits of using Toast outweigh these minor limitations. I decided to dive deeper and explore these claims.

Toast earned a spot among my top picks because it offers customizable plans for every type of restaurant and budget. If it doesn’t offer a specific functionality, it probably has an integration for it.

Toast lets you seamlessly integrate various ordering methods and handle the complexities of multiple restaurant locations, including payroll. It also offers payment flexibility regarding tipping, bill splitting, and post-sale adjustments, adding convenience for your staff and customers.

Keep reading to discover how your restaurant can benefit from Toast, particularly if you seek a scalable POS or aim to enhance your restaurant’s sustainability while saving money.

Feature-Rich & Scalable POS for Every Restaurant Type, Size & Budget

As a restaurant-centric POS, Toast equips you with hardware designed to endure the bustling restaurant environment. While some competitors are out of reach to smaller establishments or too basic for multi-location businesses, Toast offers features suitable for every restaurant type and size.

It stands out with its robust inventory and supply chain features, helping you with everything from tracking ingredient costs to minimizing wastage. Its sustainability management features are among the most comprehensive I’ve seen in the industry. It also supports hundreds of integrations, allowing you to add features like loyalty programs and versatile ordering methods.

Spill-Resistant, Drop-Proof Hardware Tailored to Restaurant Environments

Unlike one-size-fits-all POS devices, Toast offers a small but mighty restaurant-grade hardware selection designed to withstand spills, drops, high temperatures, and a restaurant’s hectic pace. You can buy or lease long-term, but paying upfront is the most favorable option. Its selection includes a traditional, fully-fledged POS kit and a system with a guest-facing screen that enhances the checkout experience in quick-service restaurants.

While some POS vendors use standard iPad systems as handheld POS, Toast’s devices stand out with twice longer battery life and drop resistance of up to four feet. Additionally, Toast offers a Kitchen Display System (KDS) that enables advanced operations like routing orders to a specific station (dine-in, takeout), notifying servers when the food is ready, and tracking ticket times by prep station to identify bottlenecks.

Toast’s hardware has double the RAM of standard consumer tablets, which helps fire orders faster. Its offline mode is pretty standard, allowing you to accept card payments offline. However, the system will only send the stored payment data to the card networks for authorization when the device is back online. You need to reestablish connection within three days (preferably 24 hours) to minimize the risk of a chargeback.

Plenty of (Commission-Free) Ways To Accept Orders

Toast offers multiple integrated channels for online ordering and a pre-built yet customizable solution. It comes with search engine-optimized menus and tools like order-based promotions, single-use promo codes, and popular item recommendations to stimulate higher checks.

While most modern POS systems support online ordering, Toast stands out with its proprietary, commission-free, flat-rate takeout and delivery solution, which could save you an average of $36,000 annually. Popular third-party online ordering apps like Uber Eats and Doordash, for which Toast offers direct integrations, take 15% – 30% from each sale you make on their platforms. Toast’s flat-rate fees can help you retain more of your money.

One of its commission-free channels, the Toast TakeOut app, gives you access to a growing network of potential customers. The app also supports loyalty programs, integrating with Toast’s system to incentivize repeat business and turn occasional visitors into regulars.

Multiple Payment Tools With Fundraising Options

You can split checks by item or evenly by the number of guests and accommodate different forms of payment for each split check. You can also customize service charges and mandatory gratuity and adjust tips post-sale for closed checks during the same business day the transaction occurred. Toast POS can interface with other systems like 7shifts to manage tip pooling with custom rules and automatic calculations.

Like other sophisticated POS systems, Toast offers built-in fundraising features, allowing you to add optional donations to customer bills. You can also set up promotions and campaigns to support fundraising events by offering special menu items or discounts where proceeds contribute to a cause.

Toast offers proprietary merchant services that are seamlessly integrated with your POS, allowing you to accept various payment methods. Although some competitors offer more flexibility, you cannot use a third-party processor with Toast, which will be problematic if you already have a contract. Thankfully, Toast offers competitive rates and is willing to match rates from other processors.

Payments made before 9:30 p.m. EST will be deposited to your bank account the next business day, which is considered fast in the industry. Instant deposits are available for a competitive fee of 1.75% and arrive in your bank account within 30 minutes.

Robust Inventory & Supply Chain Features With Sustainability in Mind

Toast’s inventory and supply chain management features effectively balance functionality with environmental responsibility, making it the ideal POS for sustainable restaurants.

The seamless integration of inventory management with Toast’s sales data gives restaurant owners real-time visibility into food and beverage costs from beginning to end to the ingredient level. The system turns all collected data into actionable insights so that you can identify waste, shrinkage, and theft.

While certain POS systems designed for restaurants provide similar capabilities, Toast goes a step further with its inventory management. It offers comprehensive tools to monitor inventory levels, track depletion, and pinpoint waste patterns, which helps reduce food waste and decrease costs.

Toast also helps you automate supply chain management with a custom order guide based on what’s on hand and what’s required to maintain periodic automatic replacement (PAR) levels. You can use Toast to schedule recurring orders to ensure par levels for the most-used products and send orders directly to suppliers.

Additionally, Toast gives you all the tools to offer paperless receipts, coupons, and gift cards. You can also reduce waste with Toast Mobile Order & Pay™, a solution that lets guests scan a menu, see real-time pricing, place an order, and pay from their mobile device.

200+ Integrations To Streamline Operations

Toast is one of the few POS providers with over 200 direct integrations, encompassing everything from accounting and inventory management to labor and sales reporting. Whatever your POS system lacks, Toast probably has a third-party integration to fill the gap, in addition to an extensive API that allows further customizations.

For instance, BeerSAVER Systems precisely monitors the amount of draft beer poured. My Wine Guide trains servers to use tools that enable them to offer personalized wine recommendations and pairings, potentially boosting wine sales significantly. CityCheers, on the other hand, allows guests to browse menus, join waitlists, and pay directly from their phones, resulting in faster table turnover and increased customer satisfaction.

Easy to Set Up & Use With a Slight Learning Curve

Toast is easy to set up but has a slight learning curve due to its extensive features. Thankfully, you’ll have access to training materials (including online tutorials and in-person classes) to get comfortable with the system​.

Getting Started With Toast

Initially, you can purchase a plan, request a demo, or request a quote. To apply for the free demo, you need to provide some standard details, such as your personal and contact information.

After signing the contract, you’ll receive an activation email for your account. You can access the Setup Checklist from your account dashboard. Once you review the checklist, you can move on to the Kickoff call, where an onboarding consultant will present the implementation plan they prepared for your restaurant’s specific needs.

After the call, you can explore Toast’s online training resources to familiarize yourself and your team with Toast’s system. During the build phase, your team will collaborate with Toast to configure your software and build your menu.

Extensive Onboarding Support

Toast offers many self-service onboarding resources. However, based on customer reviews, asking for extra setup training from your sales rep can significantly benefit you later.

You can also request on-site or remote onboarding support during setup, which is among the most comprehensive in the industry. Alternatively, you can get continuous support from Toast experts in the weeks before going live. This costs extra, but proper implementation and training often reduce long-term costs, particularly in complex establishments.

User-Friendly Software

Although it’s only available in English, Toast’s software interface is intuitive and easy for staff to learn and use. It integrates seamlessly with kitchen operations and delivery platforms, improving order accuracy and speed.

Going through user reviews, I found Toast’s software surprisingly easy to use, given its robustness. It’s designed to work optimally with its hardware but supports some third-party devices. However, its compatibility isn’t as broad as some systems, which can be a drawback if you already own the hardware.

The Toast POS software that powers its devices is Android-based. That said, apps like Toast Now for on-the-go reporting and business management and Toast Tables for waitlist and reservation management are available on both iOS and Android.

Quote-Based Pricing Leaves Room for Negotiation

Toast’s hardware, though more expensive, justifies the cost with its durability. The company offers flexible payment options. These include a 0% interest financing through a third-party lending partner with a 36-month contract and paying for the hardware with a daily percentage of your sales. Toast doesn’t offer short-term lease options like some competitors.

Toast offers a range of pricing plans tailored to various restaurant sizes and needs. All plans include order, table, menu management, reporting and analytics, and invoicing. Features like online ordering, delivery, takeout, and loyalty programs are only available as add-ons, meaning smaller restaurants never get charged for unnecessary features.

The Starter Kit for single-location restaurants requires no upfront cost or monthly fees, provided you’re willing to accept higher payment processing fees of 3.09% + $0.15¢ (in-person & online) for all types of transactions. You’ll cover the hardware costs over time with your processing fees. This option includes up to two terminals.

If you need more equipment and run up to 15 locations, Toast offers the Point of Sale plan for $69.00 per month per location for the software plus upfront costs for the hardware. This plan gives you access to lower processing fees of 2.49% + 15¢ (card-present transactions) for card-present and 3.50% + 15¢ (card-not-present transactions) for card-not-present transactions. These aren’t the lowest fees I’ve seen, but fall within the industry’s standards.

Examining user feedback, I found you can often negotiate a better deal by building your own plan. If you need multiple add-ons like online ordering, delivery, takeout, email marketing, scheduling, and other functionalities, it’s worth bargaining with its sales team.

Like most POS providers, Toast requires a long-term commitment, typically two years. Depending on your plan, Toast may charge additional fees for inactivity, advanced onboarding support, and any add-ons. Although its fees are higher than generic POS options, the specialized features of this restaurant-specific software provide greater value.

Starter Kit

3.09% + $0.15¢ (in-person & online) / transaction

Monthly Fee:$0

E-commerce Fees:$75/month

No Software Fees

Max number of locations:1

Payout Time:1 day

Accepted Payment Methods: Credit/Debit Cards, PayPal

Get Started

Point of Sale

2.49% + 15¢ (card-present transactions) / transaction

3.50% + 15¢ (card-not-present transactions) / transaction

Monthly Fee:$69

E-commerce Fees:$75

No Software Fees

Max number of locations:15

Payout Time:1 day

Accepted Payment Methods: Credit/Debit Cards, PayPal

Get Started

Top-Notch Security, but You’re Responsible for PCI Compliance

Toast offers many security features and will support you with specific PCI requirements. Additionally, the company has developed a proprietary framework to help restaurants mitigate cybersecurity risks.

PCI Compliance & More

While Toast provides some guidance, you remain responsible for obtaining and maintaining PCI compliance. Some competitors offer broader support in this area. Toast might also assist with certain aspects of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) compliance, but the ultimate responsibility is again yours.

The system automatically handles software updates, ensuring the security framework is always up-to-date. Additionally, it includes customizable employee permissions, giving you detailed control over data access, enhancing security, and reducing internal threats.

Additional Security Features

Toast’s POS system enhances payment security for restaurants through end-to-end encryption and tokenization. While these are standard features for reliable POS providers, Toast stands out through its collaboration with Bluefin, a leader in encryption and tokenization. It provides PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE), which reduces PCI scope and strengthens data security against unauthorized access.

Additionally, Toast has developed the PLATE framework, specifically tailored to mitigate cyber risks in the restaurant industry. This approach helps prepare for, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents. Toast offers a free eBook that details the five functions of the PLATE framework and provides additional cybersecurity tips.

24/7 Customer Care for All Plans, Including Highly Responsive Phone Support

Some providers charge extra or limit support types to higher-tier plans, but Toast offers 24/7 phone and web messaging customer support at all price levels. Aside from these standard support channels, Toast offers screen sharing with a customer representative and access to critical POS function status reports directly from your device.

Toast Central serves as your hub for all support activities, hosting an extensive DIY knowledge base with detailed guides, FAQs, and video tutorials. Toast Classroom, for instance, offers more in-depth learning opportunities through live training and on-demand classes.

I came across some less-than-stellar reviews about Toast’s customer support, but it appears the company has addressed these issues. You can only reach Toast as a non-customer by phone, and I decided to give it a go.

I called Toast late in the evening and got connected to a representative within a minute. They patiently answered my questions without pushing me into scheduling a demo. They also sent follow-up texts with resources related to our discussion, allowing me to explore further at my own pace.