Toast Deepens Commitment to Food and Beverage Retailers

Rhea-AI Summary

Toast (NYSE: TOST) announces expanded commitment to food and beverage retailers, showcasing its comprehensive retail solution at the National Retail Federation Show. The company is targeting convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocers with its Toast Retail platform, leveraging over a decade of restaurant technology experience.

The platform offers features including smart inventory planning, mobile-first technology with SmartScan, SKU management at scale, and SNAP EBT payment processing through Forage partnership. According to research, 56% of consumers now consider convenience stores viable alternatives to fast food restaurants for made-to-order food, while over half of food and beverage retailers offer some form of foodservice.

Toast's solution includes tools for checkout optimization, foodservice management, and integrations with Vroom and CityHive. The platform aims to help retailers operate more efficiently, modernize inventory management, and enhance customer experiences as the lines between retail and restaurants continue to blur.

Positive

• Expansion into new market segments (convenience stores, bottle shops, grocers)
• Integration of SNAP EBT payments, potentially increasing revenue streams
• Strategic positioning in growing market where 56% of consumers consider convenience stores for made-to-order food

Negative

• None.

Insights

Market Research Analyst

Toast's expansion into food and beverage retail represents a strategic pivot into a high-growth market segment. The convergence of retail and restaurant sectors creates significant revenue opportunities, particularly given that 56% of consumers now view convenience stores as viable alternatives to fast food restaurants. The company is targeting a massive addressable market by focusing on convenience stores, bottle shops and grocers.

The integration of SNAP EBT payment processing through Forage partnership opens up access to a $120 billion annual market, potentially driving substantial transaction volume growth. The platform's ability to handle both retail and restaurant operations positions Toast uniquely in a market where over 50% of food and beverage retailers offer foodservice.

Tech Expert

Toast's new retail platform demonstrates significant technological advancement in inventory management and operational efficiency. The SmartScan feature's AI-powered product recognition and automated description generation represents a major leap in retail automation. The system's ability to handle complex SKU management at scale, combined with predictive inventory planning, positions it as a serious competitor to traditional retail POS systems.

The multi-location management capabilities and cross-location inventory transfer features are particularly valuable for scaling businesses. Integration with specialized hardware like deli scales and various scanner types shows a deep understanding of retail-specific needs. The platform's unified architecture for handling both retail and foodservice operations on a single system reduces technical complexity and training requirements for businesses operating in both spaces.

Financial Analyst

This strategic expansion significantly enhances Toast's total addressable market (TAM) and revenue potential. The move targets the $5.8 trillion U.S. retail market, particularly the high-growth convenience store segment. By leveraging its existing restaurant technology infrastructure to serve retail clients, Toast can achieve operational efficiencies while maintaining healthy margins.

The timing is optimal as retailers increasingly blur the lines between traditional retail and foodservice. This expansion could accelerate Toast's revenue growth through increased payment processing volumes and subscription revenue from retail clients. The company's established presence in the restaurant sector provides a strong foundation for cross-selling these new retail capabilities to existing customers while attracting new retail-focused clients.

Company showcases complete retail offerings for convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocers

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Toast (NYSE: TOST), the digital technology platform purpose-built for hospitality, is deepening its commitment to convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocers in 2025, kicking off the year by showcasing its comprehensive food and beverage retail solution at the National Retail Federation Show in New York City. Toast Retail is designed to enable convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocery stores to operate faster and more efficiently, modernize inventory management, and create delightful guest experiences.

(Photo: Business Wire)

“Toast has more than a decade of experience helping restaurants of all sizes and types adopt new technology so they can run more efficiently and deliver memorable guest experiences. Now we’re doing the same for the food and beverage retail community,” said Steve Fredette, President and Co-Founder at Toast. “As the lines between retailers and restaurants continue to blur and more retailers transition to the cloud, we see a clear opportunity for Toast to be the technology platform of choice for convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocers — providing a modern inventory management experience in an easy to use platform, and helping to serve consumers in new ways. We look forward to continuing to build our offerings for the retail community.”

Toast helps retailers evolve to meet food and beverage expectations

In recent years, more retailers have started to offer made-to-order and prepared foods while more restaurants are offering merchandise and other retail items (stock-keeping units or SKUs) for sale. In fact, 56% of consumers now consider convenience stores as viable options for made-to-order food over fast food restaurants, according to Intouch Insight’s 2024 Third-Party Delivery Report. According to a recent Toast study, more than half of food and beverage retailers offer some form of foodservice¹. Toast is designed to support retailers’ increasingly complex operations, enabling retailers to seamlessly use multiple service models and checkout experiences in-store and online — all on the same platform that more than one hundred thousand restaurants use.

Ashlea Hogancamp and her husband, Matt, had difficulty finding high-quality, organic food items for their growing family – so they decided to open a neighborhood store, Herban Market. They quickly saw rising demand from customers who wanted prepared food items alongside their retail shopping experience. Looking for a POS provider to handle their retail and dine-in needs, she turned to Toast.

“At Herban Market, we care deeply about providing convenient, high-quality experiences for our customers,” said Ashlea Hogancamp, co-founder of Herban Market. “When we decided to offer food alongside our grocery items, our original POS created major issues for us as volume increased. We lost hundreds of dollars a day from ticketing and checkout issues. We switched to Toast because they were one of the only partners we could find that could help us manage our high-volume retail and food service business on one platform. Since we switched to Toast, not only have prepared food orders been seamless, the inventory management insights have helped us better curate our SKUs so we always have our customers’ favorites in stock – helping us be competitive with the big-box grocers & restaurants.”

Toast Retail provides retailers the tools to delight their customers, seamlessly manage inventory, and streamline operations

With the combination of our retail-focused products and the existing functionalities from our robust all-in-one platform, Toast's offering helps convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocery stores of all shapes, sizes, and concepts save time, streamline inventory management, and enhance the customer experience. Toast Retail offers retailers:

• Smart inventory planning with historical sales data. For example, Toast Retail predicts the number of days before an item runs out on the shelf. The Purchasing & Receiving features streamline the process of ordering from suppliers so retailers will never run out of their customers’ favorite items. This tool takes the guesswork out for retailers so they can get their inventory just right – no more “too much” or “too little”.
• Mobile-first technology with SmartScan, which takes a new SKU from scan to shelf in seconds. Retailers can use their mobile device and point it at an item's barcode. SmartScan pulls in essential information for a new product including a name, brand, a high-quality image, and an AI-generated recommended description, which retailers can use for an online listing of that item.
• SKUs at-scale. Repricing items, printing barcodes, changing stock status, and many other common operations can be performed on thousands of SKUs at once with Bulk Actions.
• Toast’s Multi-Location-Management and Cross-Location Inventory Transfer features help retailers expand to multiple locations without losing an accurate view of their inventory. If retailers want to offer their customers a craft beer in six packs or a single can or even as part of a gift basket, these tools give them the flexibility to sell and bundle their SKUs.
• Thorough retail hardware support via Toast’s integration with barcode scanners, grocery scanners, scales, and deli scales to ensure their grocery operations can continue to run smoothly.
• Tools for a faster checkout experience. Staff can use Toast’s point-of-sale (POS) terminals and give guests full visibility into their purchases with a Guest-Facing Display. Retailers can upgrade the self-checkout experience for their customers with Toast’s Kiosk to help speed up lines on busy days or do some ‘line busting’ with Toast Go® 2, Toast’s handheld terminal.
• Enhanced foodservice in all forms. Toast spent years working with thousands of restaurants of different sizes and concepts to hone and develop a leading restaurant POS that can handle anything from grab-n-go to made-to-order dishes. Toast’s Online Ordering allows customers to order their groceries and a lunchtime sandwich for curbside pickup, and Toast’s Kitchen Display System helps staff fulfill those deli orders.
• SNAP EBT Payment Processing. In partnership with Forage, Toast retailers can now accept SNAP EBT benefits. Through this integration, retailers and restaurants can use Toast’s existing technology to seamlessly onboard, navigate the USDA certification process, and enable SNAP EBT at the POS – growing their revenue while supporting American families in need.
• Integrations with Vroom, an online ordering system that allows consumers to place orders from their local convenience store; and CityHive, an e-commerce online ordering solution for the wine and spirits industry.

Kris Larson is the owner of the Oshkosh, WI restaurant Becket’s and of Wagner Market — an independent grocery store that offers meat (including handmade brats and sausages), craft beers, local produce and cheeses, and more. He uses Toast for both his restaurant and grocery store. He chose Toast for his grocery store because he wanted a POS that was faster and more efficient.

“SmartScan has been a paradigm shift for us — training employees to add new inventory used to take hours, and now it takes minutes,” said Larson. “What transferred from restaurant POS to grocery POS better than any of us expected was the speed of the operation – checking people out rapidly. Other retail POSs are designed only to handle simple items. You can control Toast’s POS like a restaurant menu where you've got infinite control of categories and it gives you a better view of reporting. The fact that what works for a restaurant works for the retail side is still unbelievable to me.”

Visit our retail page and National Retail Federation Booth #203 in the food innovation zone to learn more.

About Toast

Toast [NYSE: TOST] is a cloud-based, all-in-one digital technology platform purpose-built for the entire restaurant community. Toast provides a comprehensive platform of software as a service (SaaS) products and financial technology solutions that give restaurants everything they need to run their business across point of sale, payments, operations, digital ordering and delivery, marketing and loyalty, and team management. We serve as the restaurant operating system, connecting front of house and back of house operations across service models including dine-in, takeout, delivery, catering, and retail. Toast helps restaurants streamline operations, increase revenue, and deliver amazing guest experiences. For more information, visit www.toasttab.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements,” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the context of the statement and generally arise when Toast or its management is discussing its beliefs, estimates or expectations. Such statements generally include the words “believes,” “plans,” “intends,” “may,” “will,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “outlook,” “continues,” or similar expressions. These statements are not historical facts or guarantees of future performance, but represent the beliefs of Toast and its management at the time the statements were made regarding future events which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside Toast’s control. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecast in such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding Toast’s business plans and strategy, including future development plans of Toast’s retail solutions, the products and features of Toast’s retail solutions and their intended functionalities, and the benefits of such launch on Toast’s business and operations.

The forward-looking statements contained in this release are also subject to other risks and uncertainties, including those more fully described in Toast’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including in the sections entitled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations'' in Toast’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, Toast’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2024, and Toast’s subsequent SEC filings. Toast can give no assurance that the plans, intentions, expectations or strategies as reflected in or suggested by those forward-looking statements will be attained or achieved. The forward-looking statements in this release are based on information available to Toast as of the date hereof, and Toast disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Toast’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

TOST-CORP

¹Food Service defined as a convenience store, bottle shop, or grocery store that offers one or more of the following: “Made-to-Order Meals”, “Deli Counter”, “Catering”, “Salad and/or Hot Bar”. Based on blind, incentivized, survey of 445 CBG decision-makers operating 16 or fewer US locations from 5/17/24 - 6/2/24. Using a standard margin of error calculation, at a confidence interval of 95%, the margin of error on average is +/- 5%.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250109601700/en/

Media: media@toasttab.com

Investors: IR@toasttab.com

Source: Toast, Inc.

FAQ

What new retail markets is Toast (TOST) expanding into for 2025?

Toast is expanding into convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocery stores, showcasing its comprehensive food and beverage retail solution at the National Retail Federation Show.

What key features does Toast's new retail platform offer?

Toast Retail offers smart inventory planning, mobile-first SmartScan technology, SKU management at scale, SNAP EBT payment processing, and integrated foodservice management tools.

How does Toast's SmartScan technology benefit retailers?

SmartScan allows retailers to scan new SKUs and automatically pull in product information, including name, brand, image, and AI-generated descriptions, significantly reducing inventory management time.

What percentage of food and beverage retailers currently offer foodservice according to Toast's study?

According to Toast's study, more than 50% of food and beverage retailers offer some form of foodservice.

What payment partnerships has Toast (TOST) announced for retail operations?

Toast has partnered with Forage to enable SNAP EBT benefit payments, and integrated with Vroom for convenience store ordering and CityHive for wine and spirits e-commerce.