Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Toast

Toast and BevSpot Want to Improve the Way Restaurants Use Back-of-House Data

Yesterday, restaurant-management software maker Toast announced a partnership with BevSpot, whose own software simplifies the order tracking and inventory process for restaurants. The new solution claims to save businesses time and energy collecting and making sense of data from sales, ordering, and inventory.

Toast’s Android-powered platform already combines a POS system, front- and back-of-house operations, and customer-facing technology (e.g., tabletop order kiosks) into a single cloud-based platform. The BevSpot partnership is a boost because it addresses the often arduous process of gathering and analyzing data from activities that happen behind the scenes: taking accurate inventory, checking the status of an order, and calculating things like pour costs. For a restaurant — particularly a large operation — a combined service like the Toast-BevSpot one could speed up and/or automate a lot of these tasks, not to mention make the numbers more accurate.

Inventory tracking alone is tough; screwing it up, even with a tiny miscalculation, can drastically change the sales numbers. With the Toast-BevSpot integration, businesses will be able to see exact numbers on what goes into the kitchen, what goes out, spillage, customer complaints, theft, and a whole bunch of other factors that affect inventory.

And by harmonizing the POS data with inventory and order data (which is all digitized, thanks to BevSpot), businesses will in all likelihood have an easier time spotting trends, whether it’s about which time of day sells the most fries to what days of the week the kitchen goes through more eggs.

The BevSpot integration is part of Toast’s API Partner Program, where companies can partner with Toast to integrate its system into their own software. Among many others, Grubhub, LevelUp, and Hot Schedules all participate.

Toast raised a $115 million in Series D funding in July and is currently valued at $1.4 billion. But’s a crowded market out there. TouchBistro is a popular competitor and raised a $70 million Series D in June, and Square launched its own POS system in May. This partnership with BevSpot is no doubt a way for Toast to further differentiate itself by dabbling in the data issue — a topic that’s only going to get more important as high tech becomes commonplace in restaurants.

Restaurant Management Software Maker Toast Raises $115 Million

Toast, makers of the eponymous restaurant management software, today announced that it has raised a whopping $115 million Series D round of funding. The round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates with participation from Tiger Global Management and existing investors. The new funding brings the total amount raised by Toast to $249 million and values the company at $1.4 billion.

As we wrote last year:

“Toast is a full-service, cloud-based, point-of-sale system created for the restaurant industry. It streamlines every element of running a successful restaurant – front-of-house, back-of-house, online orders, loyalty programs – and syncs them for easy access and quick changes. Toast provides real-time data, across multiple locations, to zero in on what’s working and what’s not, so owners can pivot when needed. In addition to their platform, Toast offers hardware that easily integrates their solution into a variety of terminals or tablets.”

In a press release, Toast said that it will use the new money to make new hires, expand its footprint globally and invest in research and development of new handheld, back of house and guest-facing technologies. Toast currently has 1,000 employees and counts Jamba Juice, B.GOOD and The Pizza Press and customers.

There are plenty of competitors in the restaurant management software space, and it’s not hard to see why Toast went out to bulk up its coffers. Last month, TouchBistro raised a $70 million Series D, bringing its total amount raised to $105.3 million. And back in May, Square launched its own restaurant POS system.

Toast Wants To Make Going Out To Dinner Better For Everyone – Even The Servers

Steve Fredette, Aman Narang and Jonathan Grimm’s venture into entrepreneurship first began while waiting for their drinks in their favorite after-work bar. The wait seemed never-ending and the three engineers decided among themselves that there had to a be a way to improve the customer experience in bars and restaurants. MIT graduates and naturally gifted tinkerers, they began to imagine all the ways they could potentially improve the dining out experience by removing common pain points, like splitting checks or updating menus. From there, Toast was born.

Toast is a full-service, cloud-based, point-of-sale system created for the restaurant industry. It streamlines every element of running a successful restaurant – front-of-house, back-of-house, online orders, loyalty programs – and syncs them for easy access and quick changes. Toast provides real-time data, across multiple locations, to zero in on what’s working and what’s not, so owners can pivot when needed. In addition to their platform, Toast offers hardware that easily integrates their solution into a variety of terminals or tablets.

“In a world where consumers expect on-demand everything – television, meal delivery, car rides – businesses cannot afford to be slow,” says co-founder and president, Steve Fredette. “Toast brings efficiency, convenience and an exceptional customer experience to the restaurant industry at a time when the demands are higher than ever.”

Addressing the unique challenges only found in the restaurant industry is part of Toast’s service model. “Every member of the Toast team, no matter what their area of focus, has some level of restaurant experience on their resume. Toast is designed for restaurants, by people who know, love and have worked in restaurants,” says Steve. This attention to detail is found in every aspect of the platform’s user experience – from their customizable POS interfaces that include table setup, menu setup and kitchen workflow, to real-time POS customization like adding tickets directly to a kitchen’s display screen to reduce back and forth time from servers, to post-service reporting that dial down on every aspect of the restaurant’s sales and efficiencies. Toast brings the power of data analytics and insights to restaurant ownership and management to allow for more streamlined operations and better customer experiences.

When restaurant patrons can air their grievances as they wait for the check via Yelp or Facebook, a positive experience is more necessary than ever before. By simplifying and optimizing all operations, owners can transform their teams into nimble guest experience gurus. This allows the focus to transfer back to the diner, resulting in a more attentive server, shorter wait times and splitting checks with ease.

“Restaurants tend to function in a state of organized chaos,” says Steve. “From front-of-house to back-of-house, dining in to take out, and customer service to the customer experience, every interaction is interconnected. With Toast, we want to build on that by tapping into the restaurant supply chain with real-time, data-driven insights to reduce inefficiencies, improve interactions and elevate the guest experience.”

So what’s next for Toast? The company has already raised $101M in Series C funding, with plans to hire 1,000 employees by 2018 and were just named one of the world’s top cloud companies in the Forbes Cloud 100. The Toast leadership team is also looking beyond their current model for ways to further customize and curate the restaurant going experience.

“Toast is thinking bigger (and more conveniently) when it comes to food, and is already playing with ideas that will generate more speed and personalization from consumers’ favorite restaurants, bars and food trucks,” Steve adds. “Toast knows what is possible and is building a platform that can get there.”

At Smart Kitchen Summit, Steve Fredette will speak on how restaurants can leverage technology in the front and back of house along with other industry leaders in the Day 1 breakout session Tech Please: How Restaurants Can Leverage Technology In Front & Back Of House. Don’t miss Steve and check out the full list of speakers and register for the Summit, using code TOAST to get 25% off ticket prices.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is the first event to tackle the future of food, cooking and the kitchen with leaders across food, tech, commerce, design, delivery and appliances. This series will highlight panelists and partners for the 2017 event, being held on October 10-11 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.