Toast POS

Pros

Very easy to use, awesome user interface, very helpful customer support. Toast POS is great in almost every way!

Cons

Constant updates can cause confusion when menus and their items randomly move around sometimes. Some processes are complicated and difficult to understand or remember.

Pros

Toast was great! We used it in both our food truck and our brick and mortar. Having multiple screens was great and the convenience of the handhelds was great!

Cons

Their set up process is horrible. No support for the set up. Basically just have to find and then hire a guy to set it all up for you.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Toast POS

Pros

TOAST POS is a very useful POS with great menus, good back end and reporting. We really like the integration to QBO using a third party tool. The startup and training is well done. The cost is double what we were paying before; however, the operational returns are well worth the cost.

Cons

TOAST support it very poor. We struggled to get payment terminals working correctly. Our customer facing team needs to deal with 3 to 5 walkup clients per minute. The team couldn't deal with troubleshooting terminals on the telephone with support and serving customers at the same time. The problem was solved by a technician looking at the transaction logs and sending a replacement terminal.

Our biggest challenge was changing banks. We had three attempts to get the new banking set up, and received confirmation that the request was completed. This process took more than two months and included email, telephone, and service tickets. When our payments to TOAST stopped due to this problem, we got more attention. Unfortunately, TOAST support often sent requests to the wrong people, ignored our emails and comments in the service tickets, and asked for the same information several times. The support frustration and extra work do not make up for the good product.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Toast POS

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Toast POS

Pros

I love the customization options!!! It’s so easy to add and publish new items on the go from the handheld devices or POS Stations.

Cons

Bugs. Lots of weird bugs and down time during dinner service!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Toast POS

Pros

Toast is the easies POS to use from front end to back end. They are the most compatible POS company for restaurants that I've had the experience working with.

Cons

Toast is growing fast and does seem to make some changes before doing any user research to see how the changes will affect the users who interact with it most. I'm happy to see them grow, but don't lose the user friendliness we all know and love!

Pros

It's ease of use. The plug and play setup.

Cons

There's not enough of a rollout. Lots of seminars and video conferencing but for my personality, I would've liked to have a rep show me some hands on traning.

Pros

The ultimate decision of why Toast was because at the time they were one of the only POS that integrated well with third party deliveries For that functionality it has been great and done what we needed it to do included wrapping up our payroll and scheduling into one system.

Cons

A few things. Toast is extremely complicated to get set up for some reason. Unlike other POS systems we have used in the past they do there PCI compliance through a router rather than through there software. However, you can not use their router for regular internet usage so the restaurant needs static IPs, one for Toast, one for everything else. This has made it so our hardware/infrastructure is extremely complicated and every time we have an issue we have to get our ISP, Toast, and now a IT Consultant involved to solve issues. Very time intensive and expensive.

Second, when the system has a disruption or even if you want to make certain changes you have to be at the store using the terminals. The backend is pretty useless and as a owner that doesn't live by my store this is extremely frustrating. When speaking to the reps and going through the demos it is pitched as if you can run and correct items from your house but the reality is you can only do a handful of things that are not impactful. For example, when credit card processing goes down, which happens often with them for some reason, you then have to key in cards (which Toast then charges higher merchant fees to do this) and then you have to get to the store and either wait until your slow or closed to fix the issue for the next day. There is nothing you can do on the backend, customer service can't help you, nope you have to be physically present manually doing everything on your own time with maybe someone on the phone to assist you .

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Toast POS

Pros

Handheld and xtra chef are good products

Cons

There customer support is terrabile and if they approach you about payroll you better run.

Pros

Working with toast on the set up was great and easy. As we have grown their support has been solid. Not like other POS we have used in the past.

Cons

Reporting is eh and needs work...mostly data is there, just not obvious how to get what you need and they have to data dump and email it. Also, menus for serving customers can get a little much drilling sometimes 2-3 levels deep to do an 8 oz brown ale.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Toast POS

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Toast POS

Pros

As far as POS systems go, Toast is very user-friendly and highly customizable to your restaurant, bar, or venue. It is easy to set up and when changes need to be made, they are easy to do.

Cons

If you need customer support to resolve an issue, help with a feature you may be unfamiliar with or network support, Toast is very weak in this area. The customer service reps have minimal knowledge and are running off a script with no actual knowledge of the product. In the event they need to "escalate" your issue, the call is over at that point. The ability to speak with someone with the knowledge to help you with your issue promptly is practically non-existent. DO NOT use Toast Payroll services. They greatly messed up on tax reporting and nearly caused a significant increase in our IRS fees due to their incompetence.

Pros

when Toast is fully functional its great

Cons

Totally lack of ownership from Toast w/ regard to 3rd parties, Toast continually blames the 3rd parties for their own short falls, losing thousands per week because Toast does not know how to set up 3rd parties

Pros

We love Toast and its modern/easy to use setup. It is very easy for both our employees and customers to utilize. We love the online ordering features, the terminal setup and the customer service.

Cons

We are always left disappointed with the processing fees for credit cards. We wish we could price compare. This makes the system more expensive than it initially seems.

Pros

Toast has been seamless for us to use. Customer service is always top notch and the amount of mistakes in restaurant has decreased dramatically.

Cons

Online order was a bit tricky to set up and has been a little harder to implement.

Pros

Ease of using and training on. I have several younger and older employees and it is very easy to learn how to use the system. It is very simplified.

Cons

Not really anything. We have been really pleased with Toast hardware, customer support, product support and updates that we receive about new products and new equipment.

Pros

The ease of use for beginners is great. Very simple for new staff to start using with little training.

Cons

The install is very complicated with little help. Setup could be a bit better.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Toast POS

Pros

Toast is designed in a way that you can learn how to use all the features within minutes. It is very user friendly, and dynamic. Great for both management and staff.

Cons

Once in a while, there will be a network wide crash that causes some entry errors, and occasionally some offline payment processing errors. Toast is usually great about fixing this.

Pros

It does the job, but not very well.Easily to have connection failure in the middle of service, not cleared issues...

Cons

pricing for what we get also integration can be expensive as well.

Pros

hand held ordering. tableside payments. and a few other things.

Cons

the worst support of any company i ever dealt with. I'm currently paying $75 dollars per month for integration. almost a month in still doesn't work. online ordering 3 weeks in still not functional, gift cards still not functional. I could go on and on.

Pros

Nothing to add - survey questions covered it all.,,

Cons

Would like payroll assistance available on weekends

Pros

POS ease or use. Accurate payment and reporting systems.

Cons

Extra, unnecessary features for our needs

Pros

There are so many POS devices in a Restaurant and Toast has one device that can take order, Create and Take Payments all in one and that is more easier for servers.

Cons

The Bar Order taking and Payment terminal should have autodiscovery that has reachable IP addresses in the same network to be able to link it easily.

Alternatives Considered

Pros

The ease of use for the servers is great. Very intuitive. Easy to back track if a mistake was made. Handhelds are excellent.

Cons

It took a little more time and effort to set-up the system, but that becomes a non-issue once everything is up and running.

Pros

Toast is a very easy-to-use and intuitive POS. It was a great change from a legacy platform, and a brief stint with another terrible platform. Team picks it up very quickly.

Cons

Wish the handhelds had a longer lifespan. We spent a lot of money on them just prior to covid, then shut down for more than a year. Upon reopening many of them had issues with card readers, batteries and a new model was released. Wound up being many thousands of dollars spent only to be on the cusp of needing to replace them all.Wish there was more flexibility with an enterprise system. It would be nice to have more local customization while maintaining a brand database.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Toast POS

Pros

Contactless payments are a huge perk, it's easy to use, was simple to figure out the portable handhelds for events, and it's overall just an efficient option.

Cons

I didn't love the fees, and the service could be inconsistent at times. I do like that the fees are flexible so that you only use what you pay for, but you are paying marked up feeds. We compared Toast with Zettle and some other POS options and these issues weren't unique to Toast though.

Pros

This is one of the best systems to train new staff on it's very user friendly it has the test mode and it's also easy for inputting and creating a new menu

Cons

Every time that you sign in to toast from say your mobile phone or also a laptop you have the recaptcha but it says that you are remembered but you said you still have to go through all of the steps to make sure that it's you sometimes that takes a little bit more time than you want it to