Toast, the all-in-one technology platform built for restaurants, has announced details for its Digital Storefront and Marketing Suites. Toast’s Digital Storefront Suite offers robust website and online ordering capabilities, while Marketing Suite marries marketing tools with automation technology. Together, the suites create a seamless digital hospitality experience for restaurants, integrate across the Toast platform and allow restaurants to gather guest data from online and point-of-sale (POS) transactions. This data powers automated, targeted campaigns and custom-tailored guest experiences, fostering an engaging online environment that attracts guests and encourages return restaurant visits and repeat orders.

“Through innovations including our Toast Go® 2 handheld devices and Toast Mobile Order & Pay®, Toast technology has streamlined and transformed the on-site guest experience for restaurants of all sizes and types,” says Steve Fredette, president and co-founder of Toast. “Our Digital Storefront and Marketing Suites extend that enhanced guest experience online using tools like Toast’s new AI-powered writing assistant, search engine-optimized websites and online menus, promotional offers, loyalty programs, and automated marketing campaigns that work together to draw guests in and keep them coming back.”

Toast Marketing Suite

Whether increasing online orders or driving in-store visits, Toast’s Marketing Suite can help restaurant owners and operators reach their goals. In fact, Toast restaurants that used gift cards, loyalty and email marketing offered as part of the Marketing Suite saw 63 percent more sales than Toast restaurants that did not use any of those features. A collection of powerful marketing automations and enhancements are designed to make it easier for restaurant owners and operators to generate marketing campaigns targeted to the guests they want to reach when it matters most. Key suite enhancements include the ability to:

• Leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create engaging email marketing campaigns aligned with a restaurant’s brand and marketing goals. According to a recent Toast survey, 72 percent of guests surveyed were interested in hearing from their favorite restaurants via email. Guests also identified promotions and loyalty programs as some of the top content that they want to see. Toast customers can provide simple inputs like campaign goals and desired tone, and the AI-powered writing assistant will generate suggested layout and text for promotional emails. Users can regenerate results as often as they like, review and make edits, and easily send them to their desired audience.
• Create one-click, automated marketing campaigns powered by guest data. From thanking repeat guests to welcoming new ones, restaurants can easily turn on data-driven campaigns that run in the background — so they can save time and focus on running their business.
• Use a powerful recommendation engine that serves timely insights to operators, such as reminders about upcoming holidays and suggestions to use pre-designed campaigns to save time. The Marketing Suite provides real-time performance metrics so owners and operators can track sales driven by each campaign.
• Create targeted promotional offers tailored to users’ business needs, like promoting seasonal specials or discounting excess inventory. Owners and operators can seamlessly promote these offers on their Toast Digital Storefront channels and through email marketing campaigns to their guests. Coming soon, users can also create and promote upsell deals directly through their Toast Guest-Facing Display.

Toast Digital Storefront Suite

Part of Toast’s Digital Storefront Suite, Toast’s website builder joins a lineup of powerful digital ordering tools designed to help a restaurant stand out online. A restaurant’s website is one of the top three ways that consumers discover a restaurant, according to responses from restaurant guests to a recent Toast survey. Toast Websites empowers owners and operators to build and customize a professional website effortlessly and make updates in seconds. With drag-and-drop functionality and Toast products embedded on-site, restaurants can enhance their online presence and drive traffic via SEO. Key Digital Storefront features include:

• Search Engine Optimization for digital view-only menus, online ordering, and websites, designed to make it easy for restaurants — and the best menu items — to get discovered faster.
• Automatic POS integration that enables seamless updates to digital and online ordering menus when menu item availability or descriptions are updated on the POS. Real-time menu updates enable consistency between online and in-person dining experiences and enhance SEO.
• Customization allows any restaurant to take its in-person dining experience to the web with a customizable online presence with fonts, colors, and imagery.
• Templates and drag-and-drop tools to simplify creating and updating a website. The website is buildable in minutes and allows for easy creation and updates without the need for technical expertise.
• Integrated and embedded Toast products including Online Ordering, Toast Tables, Loyalty, and more in websites built with Toast Websites. Custom branding helps deliver a seamless guest experience whether dining in or ordering takeout.

“It would take many steps to create, change and update my website and online ordering. With Toast, it’s easy to set it and forget it — I make an update in one place and see changes across my whole tech stack,” says John Mason IV, owner of IV Hospitality, which operates FRESKO Greek Kitchen, a two-location quick-service restaurant group in North Carolina.

The Digital Storefront and Marketing Suites also include additional features including customizable online ordering with advanced data collection and capabilities that can help boost sales, customizable promotional offers to incentivize guests, and new loyalty accrual and redemption capabilities, as well as gift cards.