Toast Review For 2025
Toast Merchant Services Plans & Pricing
Toast Comparison
Expert Review
Pros
Cons
Toast Merchant Services's Offerings
Toast offers its services to users via three basic plans: the Starter plan, the Point of Sale plan, and the Build Your Own plan. However, an additional New Restaurant Basics plan comes as a special offering for startup restaurants in need of payroll assistance.
Customer Support
Toast offers more comprehensive customer support than most of its competition.
Additional customer support:
Community Forum
Toast hosts a forum on its site.
Blog
Toast has a blog for restaurant management on its site.
Features & Functionality
General Features
Merchant services enable businesses to manage transactions and facilitate seamless payment processing between customers and financial institutions
Hardware & Software
Toast Restaurant POS Features
Toast’s restaurant POS system offers a comprehensive suite of features tailored to the needs of modern food service businesses. Its inventory management tools stand out, providing real-time sales and stock updates, low stock alerts, and the ability to reorder inventory directly through the system. Unlike many other POS platforms that require third-party apps for reordering, Toast streamlines this process, saving time and effort for restaurant operators.
In addition to inventory controls, Toast includes features designed to help restaurants maximize profitability. It provides mobile-friendly reports, a profit margin calculator, and a cost management tool that combines labor, dish costs, and fixed overheads into a unified view. This enables restaurants to identify profit opportunities and better manage rising supplier costs.
Toast also excels in customer engagement with its Toast Loyalty program, offering point-based rewards, sign-up bonuses, birthday perks, and flexible redemption options. While other systems like Lightspeed add segmented marketing and automated email features, Toast’s loyalty tools are robust for encouraging repeat business.
The POS system is also remarkably user-friendly, featuring a sleek interface and a step-by-step tutorial for new users. Testers praised its intuitive design and smooth onboarding experience, making it one of the easiest systems to navigate, especially for servers. However, Toast is Android-exclusive, which could deter businesses already using Apple devices. For those needing iOS compatibility, TouchBistro offers a similar level of functionality.
Another standout feature is Toast’s automated tip-sharing capability, allowing servers to split tips at the end of their shift easily. This feature saves waiting staff significant time—up to eight hours per week—boosting productivity and reducing end-of-shift stress.
Despite its strengths, Toast may not suit all businesses. Its feature-rich nature can be overwhelming for small restaurants needing a simpler setup, and it lacks a robust knowledge center for troubleshooting. For smaller operations or those seeking a more straightforward system, Square is a simpler alternative, while Clover offers comparable features with an easier learning curve and better support resources.
Toast is best suited for growing restaurants looking for advanced tools, modern hardware, and an all-in-one POS solution to streamline operations and boost profitability.
Menu Customization
Toast menus will match the physical menus you use and allow you to organize them the same way. Beyond breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you can also further break down menu item groups. There is plenty of room for more subgroups and modifiers.
Restaurant-Tailored Reporting & Inventory Management
Most point-of-sale systems offer reports on transactions. Toast goes one step further for restaurant owners.
Toast integrates its customer relationship system with reports. You can collect customer information and see which customers visit your restaurant the most. Customer reports can be broken down by average check, frequency of visits, and most frequently ordered dishes.
On the inventory side, you can monitor costs with a recipe costing tool and food cost calculator. More impressively, Toast offers a menu engineering feature that helps you determine the best-selling and most profitable dishes.
Staff Management
User-based permissions and access allow you to delegate tasks appropriately. For example, you can only allow managers to approve voids and discounts.
Kitchen Display
Toast’s color-coded kitchen display system features wait times on all orders and enables them to quickly notify servers when an order is prepared. Servers can be notified with a flash or a sound through the POS system.
Toast Go
The Toast Go app makes tableside ordering simple and easy for your staff. With a handheld device, servers send information to the kitchen quickly. Customer-requested changes can be quickly communicated via a device that’s separate from the main POS register.
Integrations & Add-Ons
This is one of Toast’s strong points. The software can be seamlessly integrated with:
- 7shifts
- Appfront
- Avero
- Bevager
- Bevspot
- BrewLogix
- Chowly
- Compeat
- Craftable
- CrunchTime
- Grubhub
- Harri
- Homebase
- ItsaCheckmate
- KitchenSync
- LevelUp
- Marketman
- OpenTable
- PayTronix
- PeachWorks
- Punchh
- Restaurant365
- Shogo
- TapMango
Pricing Options Automations
Simplify billing with automated pricing features.
Sales Channels
Expand business reach with diverse sales channels.
Performance:
In my experience, Toast POS is a well-rounded and highly effective solution for restaurants of all sizes. It’s specifically designed to cater to the unique needs of the food service industry, and it delivers on that promise with a range of features that simplify operations, enhance efficiency, and improve overall profitability.
One of the key strengths of Toast is its inventory management capabilities. It provides real-time updates on stock levels, low-stock alerts, and the ability to reorder inventory directly from the system—features that many POS systems require third-party integrations to achieve. This makes it an invaluable tool for managing kitchen operations and reducing waste.
Toast’s user experience is another highlight. The interface is sleek, intuitive, and designed to accommodate both tech-savvy users and those who might be less familiar with modern POS systems. I’ve found its step-by-step tutorial for new users particularly useful, ensuring that staff can quickly get up to speed. Features like automated tip sharing also save significant time and effort, which is a huge plus for busy restaurants.
Ease Of Use:
Toast’s basic features are easy to understand and can be taught to staff quickly. The company will assist you with the setup process. According to most users, their customer service is thorough and friendly.
It may take you and your staff some time playing around to thoroughly understand Toast’s back-end features. It does not offer the most modern design or interfaces but isn’t too difficult to learn either.
Uniqueness:
The system goes beyond basic POS functionality with tools like detailed reporting, profit margin calculators, and cost management features. These help restaurant owners and managers keep track of labor and dish costs, giving them the insights they need to make informed decisions and maintain healthy profit margins.
That said, Toast isn’t without its limitations. Its exclusivity to Android hardware can be a drawback for businesses that already use Apple devices. Additionally, smaller operations might find its extensive features more than they need, and its lack of a robust knowledge center can make troubleshooting more challenging.
Overall, Toast POS is a powerful, feature-rich system that excels in helping restaurants streamline their operations and boost profitability. Whether it’s managing inventory, improving staff efficiency, or tracking costs, Toast has the tools to meet the demands of a busy restaurant environment. It’s an excellent choice for businesses looking for an all-in-one solution tailored to the food service industry.
Verdict:
Toast offers a comprehensive POS solution for small restaurants, cafes, and similar businesses. While it isn’t a solution for larger businesses, it offers small catering and takeout businesses all the support they need to compete locally. Amid the current pandemic, Toast has also tweaked its offer to include tableside ordering and other features to better accommodate social distancing.
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