Toast, the all-in-one technology platform built for restaurants, has announced significant updates to the Toast platform, including the launch of a new mobile app and an enhanced point-of-sale (POS) experience.

The new Toast Now mobile app is designed to meet the dynamic nature of how owners and operators manage restaurants, helping them be on the go and in control with real-time reporting and key controls. Additionally, Toast’s new POS experience has been reimagined to provide users with more helpful features, workflows designed to help speed up service, and a comprehensive design update that introduces an attractive and streamlined new look—resulting in a system that is easier to set up, learn and use. Both Toast Now and the new POS experience are available to all Toast customers.

“From high inflation to hectic lives, restaurant owners and operators are often managing changing restaurant dynamics on the go—and we believe that the right technology partner is critical to helping keep restaurants at the top of their game,” says Steve Fredette, president and co-founder of Toast. “The new Toast Now mobile app and POS experience are purpose-built for all restaurants, built in close collaboration with our customers, and reaffirm that when a restaurant partners with Toast, they benefit from ongoing innovation designed to make running a restaurant easier, faster, and more intuitive. As we seek to serve the entire restaurant community, Toast will continue to innovate in ways that both meet the unique needs of different restaurant types—and also offer universal benefits.”

In beta testing, users of Toast Now are logging into the app approximately three times more frequently than the average customer logged into Toast’s web portal, as the app enables the flexibility to check in throughout the day.

Toast Now is designed to build an experience that is simple to use and enables restaurants to:

• Increase access to information with real-time reporting – Easy and instant access to performance data is critical for owners and operators to effectively manage operations. In the Toast Now app, managers can get real-time updates with live sales and labor reporting—so they can easily monitor and compare top-performing items, profitability trends, and more across different time periods and multiple locations. Any owner and operator can leverage these insights to make key business decisions in the moment.
• Stay in touch while on the go with Manager Log – It can be challenging to keep tabs on operations, especially when the owner or operator travels between multiple locations, is out sourcing ingredients for new menu items, or is searching for new locations for their next concept. Toast Now’s Manager Log allows restaurant owners, operators and managers to communicate and coordinate with staff and stay on top of things without physically being in the restaurant.
• Optimize kitchen flow with delivery channel control – Staff can help ensure a seamless guest experience both on and off-premise by managing kitchen volume. Toast Now makes it easy to manage delivery channels with quick toggles for turning first and third-party ordering channels on and off to ensure a manageable flow of orders to the kitchen. With the app, owners, operators, and managers can also remove a menu item on the fly to manage guests’ expectations and help employees solve stock shortages in real time.

According to Toast’s latest Voice of the Restaurant Industry survey, two of the most important purchasing considerations for small and medium-sized restaurants in 2024 will be the depth of features in core POS and the ability to increase guest throughput and turn-time efficiency. The new POS experience is built to help enable restaurants to operate seamlessly with access to more features and controls than ever before, accompanied by intuitive screens designed to improve speed and accuracy.

Examples of additional enhancements include Advanced Table Management, designed to give servers more control and insights that enhance the guest experience through features such as table timers to help optimize pacing and table turnover and also indicate which tables need attention. Servers can also be in greater control with Server Item Fire—built to help support the right dish coming out at just the right time. Table Screen Enhancements on the new POS help staff eliminate errors with updates to layout, font sizes, colors, and more. When it is time for evening service with lower lighting, for example, the table screens now include a Dark Mode, allowing the POS to better blend in with the ambiance. And Open View is designed to speed up and improve order-taking accuracy by displaying items and modifiers all at once to help establishments with high traffic volume and highly configurable menu items keep the line moving, even with lots of complicated orders.

Toast Now is available on iOS and coming soon to Android, and the new POS experience is available to all customers now.