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Toast POS Review 2022 – Top 10 POS Systems

Toast is a point-of-sale (POS) system deployed in restaurants. And courtesy of its wide-ranging hardware options and capabilities, food orders are easily accepted, managed, prioritized, and tracked.

Hence, Toast POS needs to be at the top of your priority list if you’re food and drinks sector. Although you have to carry out some research to get an accurate idea of the fees involved, it has a well-deserved reputation for being a reliable and flexible rostrum for cafes providing great customer care.

The Verdict
Toast POS Toast POS

Toast's point-of-sale solution was specifically designed with dining places in mind. It's also evident that design considerations were made for restaurants while creating a user-friendly interface.

And to ensure eateries run smoothly, Toast has every imaginable tool. Hence, freeing the team to serve guests better.

Pros:
  • Customer-facing Screens
  • Your visitors can make purchases, sign up for loyalty schemes, and provide comments thanks to this functionality. To promote registrations, patrons do not have to enroll in plastic card-based programs since they are already integrated into the digital checkout capabilities.
  • Line Busting and Table Payment
  • Using this feature, businesses may expedite the service of their tables while also letting customers to pay more quickly. Fast food and full-service diners’ alike profit from this. Orders and payments may be accepted sequentially, improving service and reducing hold-ups. Kitchens also benefit from improved lead times and insight into their order statuses.
  • Business Visibility
  • Because it works with smartphones and other mobile devices, Toast POS lets you run your company on the go. The public may easily access restaurant and sales data. With daily summaries, they'll be able to keep an eye on crucial data and notifications. Additionally, the platform offers analyti
Cons:
  • Quote-based pricing makes it hard to compare
  • Payment processing rates at Toast are reliant on an estimate for each client. This means prospective buyers will have to make the additional effort upfront, such as acquiring an estimate, scheduling a meeting with a Toast representative and many more.

About Company

In 2011, three friends in Boston founded Toast. The program’s inventors, Steve Fredette, Jon Grimm, and Aman Narang, saw a demand for a more modern technique of product sales and sales analysis in several local restaurants. To allow customers to view their sales data from any site, they developed a cloud-based POS. Currently, Toast has roughly 2,000 workers and is used throughout the US and Ireland. According to the company’s advertising, one in every five new cafe customers at Toast comes from a user reference.

Services

Toast provides the following features.

  1. Toast POS

Toast’s point-of-sale platform addresses the hardware and software requirements of running a restaurant, resulting in a streamlined process from the moment the customer places their order. Minor options like mobile devices and huge options like self-service booths are included in the store’s collection of accessible hardware.

Because it’s hosted in the cloud, the Toast makes it simple to view data pertaining to your restaurant from any device. It is also easy to make last-minute modifications to your menu using a mobile device or your tablet to analyze how different restaurant’s locations perform. The intuitive graphical user interface makes it easier for new enterprises to start and run smoothly and for more established firms to transition to a client-friendly platform.

  1. Toast Now

ToastNow blends the platform’s Email Marketing, Takeout, and Online Ordering program with the right to use Toast’s Delivery System within a convenient package. Toast Takeout has an application that consumers can use to place orders. On the other hand, Online Ordering allows consumers to place orders directly through your restaurant’s web page. Your company can generate email lists and create automated promotional campaigns thanks to the program for Email Marketing. Additionally, you can do A/B testing on your email advertising operations.

With Toast Now, customers may choose from several delivery options, including noncontact delivery and real-time tracking of the progress of their orders. Registering with Toast Delivery Services allows you to employ indigenous drivers via an on-demand network if you don’t already have a delivery crew.

  1. Toast Reporting and Analytics

Manage your cafe’s information in one place with this tool. Revenue, member of staff, and menu data may be accessed in real-time, which many businesses like since these things might change at any given time. A nightly email will be sent to your inbox with critical information regarding your data if you don’t keep an eye on it. Available from any device due to the product’s cloud-based nature. Having your labor statistics available on your mobile device is convenient, especially if you’re always traveling.

With the deployment of graphic representation, you may view how your figures are evolving in a form that is easy to understand. For example, you may determine if a new menu product is doing well or a failure depending on how many restaurant sites you own and run. You can access and analyze sales from any day using the software’s daily filter.

  1. Toast Payroll and Team Management

There is an effort here to bring together the backroom and front room parts of a cafe. Onboarding, approving timesheets, payment of workers, tracking of turnout and other HR responsibilities are all made possible by Toast.

This optional feature will demand you dig deeper into your pocket, but if used properly, it might free up time for you to engage with customers and close transaction instead of doing banal activities. Toast’s return-on-invested-capital calculator may be accessed on the company’s website.

  1. Toast Online Order

Clients may buy food from the diner’s website using an internet-based ordering service. With this, restaurants may raise their revenue while eliminating the intricacies and sometimes pressures that accompany in-person or telephone orders. Consumer convenience is improved by the availability of options such as drive-in service, noncontact delivery, and more. Utilizers of Toast’s Online Order may manage the order stream by establishing order windows and can bring up-to-date their internet-based menu from their handheld devices, create sound alerts for new orders, and so on.

Your cafe’s internet-based ordering process may be tailored several ways for maximum brand consistency. This feature doesn’t charge a dime, so all of your cafe’s earnings from internet-based orders go straight into your account. Use the web page’s calculator to determine how much money you might save by inputting data such as how many phone orders are placed each day, the amount of time it takes to work on those orders, and the percentage of those transactions now placed online instead.

  1. Toast Loyalty

With Toast Loyalty, eateries may get an advantage over their rivals by cultivating long-haul client relationships. A points-centered solution governs the product, allowing users to build up points for several actions as time passes. It is up to you to decide how consumers may make points and how they can redeem them. Giving consumers a gratuity during registration, for example, is an option.

Restaurant owners should keep track of their customers’ loyalty scheme memberships thanks to the new technology. You don’t need extra hardware from the firm to operate a loyalty scheme.

  1. Gift Cards

As a result of Gift Cards, users may easily give and get gift cards by email or message. After that, the cards may be traded in either in-person or online. A client’s ability to view a card’s balance is also made available to them through the website. The program supports those who prefer real gift cards over digital ones. This add-on may be quite beneficial, as shown by the fact that customers who use Toast gift cards spend more money.

  1. Kitchen Display System

Cooking may be made more efficient using the Toast Kitchen Display System. Client orders are digitally sent to the scullery, where they are shown on a giant screen for all scullery personnel. This may be done either online or in-store. Data may be shown in multiple languages and displayed on a wall-mounted screen for improved visibility.

Separate areas for takeaway and dining in the scullery allow users to organize the received data better. Clients who specify allergies or nutritional restrictions on their orders may color-code their receipts so that the pantry workers won’t be blindsided. Additionally, the product considers the time it takes to prepare meals, so it will prioritize those that take more time to cook and make certain that no meals become cold while the rest of the order cooks.

  1. Toast Kiosk

With Toast Kiosk, a self-service ordering program, patrons of restaurants may make their orders on mobile devices and be notified through text when their food is ready. To use this feature, kiosk hardware must be purchased and installed in front of the home. The requirement for cashiers or servers may be reduced if customers input and use the user-friendly rostrum to make their orders. To help consumers understand what they are getting, diners might include pictures of their products on the kiosk’s set of options.

A lot of eateries employ kiosk ordering to cut down on time spent in line at the checkout. It’s especially useful for restaurants that provide grab-and-go goods since consumers can scan the barcode and pay without dealing with a clerk. Additionally, the kiosk feature shows the suggested add-ons, increasing client costs. Clients may click several times to provide tips for the people who prepare the dish.

  1. Toast Inventory

This program tool keeps tabs on the eatery’s food and alcohol inventories and offers insights, assisting restaurants’ managers in managing their spending. It allows you to keep track of the goods you use, which in turn may assist you in comparing expected and real expenditures to identify areas where you may be wasting cash.

We recommend that you use the shelf plan option to see how your scullery products will fit on your shelves. Thanks to Toast Inventory’s waste-tracking feature, you can see whether you’re overspending and even little cases of stealing. With the waste examination function, it’s easy to determine which menu items aren’t working and which ones should be highlighted.

  1. Toast Multi-Location Management

In keeping with its name, Toast Multi-Location Management caters to cafes with several sites. You may use the software to keep track of all your branches, no matter how many. Using this feature, you may tailor your meal depending on the products that are readily accessible in your area. With this feature, you can adjust prices depending on your establishment’s site and remain competitive with other eateries around you.

This add-on provides a general idea of your sales, and you can drill down into the data by region to get a more detailed look. Adding a site is also made easier with the Multi-Location Management solution. To guarantee a seamless catering process, the owner may digitally plan their kitchen workflow. They may also track tax rates on particular products and create guidelines for discounting the goods.

Plans and Pricing

The price structures for Toast have been changed. The nicest thing about Toast’s updated price is that a free plan is now offered, which can be a decent choice for smaller establishments. There are three price ranges for Toast:

  • Starter: $0/month
  • Essentials: $165/month
  • Quote: Quote-based

Starter

Toast’s free Starter package provides the following features:

  • Point-of-sale systems hosted in the cloud
  • Payment processing
  • Customer service
  • Real-time monitoring of fraudulent activity

Essentials

The Essentials plan, which has a monthly starting price of $165, contains everything in the Starter plan plus:

  • Internet-based ordering & distribution
  • TakeOut application
  • Bespoke hardware set up

Custom

This plan is based on a quotation and includes all the features of the Essentials plan, as well as additional options.

  • Gift cards
  • Loyalty
  • Marketing
  • Integration access

On the other hand, Toast is offering new eateries $110/month for cloud-based POS, light payroll and basic personnel management features as part of their special package.

For an additional fee, you may enhance your package with optional features. The Toast Now add-ons aim to get your business up and operate online as quickly as possible; however, the company does not provide price information for most of its add-ons. The following is a list of the prices for Toast Now’s digital add-ons:

  • Toast Now: $75/month
  • Toast Now Plus: $100/month
  • Toast Now Premium: $175/month

A unique feature of Toast Now is that digital ordering choices may be purchased without having a Toast POS system. As a result, Toast Now may be used to vend online even if you deploy a different point of sale system in person.

Frequently Asked Questions

Check out the most frequently asked questions about Toast System.

What is Toast POS?

Toast is a POS Solution created specifically for all kinds of restaurants, pubs, and cafes. The solution enables company proprietors to handle all aspects of consumer service from a single point of control. Restaurant workers may use this system to handle the menu, orders, payments, and produce reports for their establishment.

Where can the Toast solution be deployed?

Toast is exclusively available in the United States and is not meant to be used outside of the country.

What is Toast POS Best for?

Toast POS is an excellent choice for enterprises to cater to the demands of dining establishments. Thanks to the software’s user-friendly interface, your staff can quickly manage menus and handle orders deploying the solution. Payments may be processed via it as well.

The POS solution has comprehensive analytics that lets you track vital sales data.

Best for:

  • Taverns
  • Bakeries
  • Bistros

What did Clients like regarding Toast Solution?

Consumers were also pleased with the product’s ease of installation. The system may be tailored by the restaurant’s technological expertise to meet its unique requirements.

Many consumers praised the site’s easy-to-navigate design. Products may be added or removed by customers. Furthermore, thorough reports may be created without going too far into the menu. Additionally, they can participate in live or recorded online coaching sessions.

Toast POS’s outstanding consumer support was perhaps another reason for its popularity. When addressing questions, the helpful customer service representatives do it in a kind and professional manner.

To ensure that customers are not left waiting on hold, customer service representatives will return any calls left on hold. Customer satisfaction has been boosted because of this rare occurrence in the sector.

Does Toast have a smartphone application?

Toast’s point-of-sale solution functions on Android via an application. When it comes to taking payments or running your dining establishment from a non-Toast gadget, Toast advises against it. Toast Go is one of the recognized mobile point-of-sale gadgets.

Additionally, Toast offers a Toast TakeOut application for users. Toast-affiliated establishments may make use of this application to take their meal orders.

Your restaurant’s performance statistics on your Toast account may also be accessed via the internet.

Is The Company Right For You?

Toast wins when it is all about business and stock management, and the POS also gives amazing till capabilities. In addition, Toast’s packages are also amazing value for cash, allowing eating businesses to gain from its products while not using much of their resources.

However, while Toast has fantastic output with its admirable stock management, till, and marketing capabilities, its client service alternatives are not that impressive. They differ in price – a thing most people don’t agree with – and the platform does not give email support. To make matters worse, Toast’s point of sale does not routinely backup data. Hence, we advise you to shop around before settling on Toast.