Toast

In short

Toast is a restaurant-focused point-of-sale platform combining POS hardware and software, an AI assistant called Toast IQ, online ordering, marketing tools and add-ons for payroll and staff scheduling. It is one of the most widely deployed restaurant POS systems in the US, from quick-service to full-service dining, which gives it a large partner and integration network. Hardware and processing costs are often bundled into its plans rather than sold as a flat software fee, which makes a like-for-like comparison against a competitor harder without a specific quote.

Key features for restaurants

Who it's for

Toast fits a restaurant, from quick-service to full-service dining, that wants a point-of-sale system built specifically for food service, with menus, modifiers and a kitchen display designed around a restaurant's floor and kitchen workflow. Its wide deployment across restaurant types gives it a large support and integration network.

Who should skip it

A restaurant that wants the simplest possible comparison of software cost, without hardware and processing bundled into the quote, may find a more transparent pricing structure with a competitor. A restaurant already using a general-purpose POS across a small footprint, with no need for restaurant-specific tools like a kitchen display, may not need Toast's depth.

How it handles hardware

Toast sells its own restaurant-grade hardware line, including a countertop terminal, a handheld device, a self-ordering kiosk, a kitchen display system, a guest display terminal and a contactless card reader, all built and tested to hold up against spills, drops and the pace of a busy service. A built-in cellular backup keeps orders and payments moving if the restaurant's internet connection drops, and a device dashboard gives an owner real-time visibility into every Toast device across one or more locations from a single screen.

How it handles payroll and staff management

Toast Payroll pulls hours and tips directly from the point-of-sale rather than requiring a separate timesheet import, and automatically handles overtime across multiple locations and job types, multiple pay rates for the same employee working different roles in one shift, and tip makeup to minimum wage. Pooled tips can be paid out directly through payroll to help avoid late-night cash closeout mistakes, and new hires complete onboarding paperwork on their phone rather than in the back office. Employees get a mobile app showing their pay, benefits and tips per shift, and payroll support is available by chat or phone every day of the week.

Integrations

Toast's partner directory groups integrations by restaurant function, including a supplier and accounting suite, a payroll suite, delivery partners such as Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash, and loyalty tools, connected through Toast's own API so a restaurant can plug in software it already uses for ordering, bookkeeping or marketing. The directory frames these as extending the core POS platform's connectivity rather than replacing it.

Alternatives

• SpotOn if you want a cloud-based restaurant POS and prefer to compare a different hardware and fee structure than Toast's.
• TouchBistro if you want reservations bundled with the same vendor as your point-of-sale system, or prefer iPad-based hardware over Toast's setup.
• See the restaurant software kit for how point of sale fits alongside reservations, online ordering and staff scheduling.

How we reviewed it

Toast's own pricing page returned a bot-protection response to a direct fetch during this review, so we opened Toast's product, hardware, payroll and partner directory pages through a browser session instead to confirm its feature set. We did not state a pricing structure we could not confirm through those pages; verified pricing, where available, appears separately in the pricing table on this page.