Toast combines digital storefront, marketing suites for seamless data collection

Toast, an all-in-one technology platform built for restaurants, has combined its digital storefront and marketing tools, allowing restaurants to gather guest data from online and point-of-sale transactions, said Steve Fredette, president and co-founder of Toast.

"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," he said in a company press release. "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."

Suite enhancements include the ability to:

• Leverage artificial intelligence to create engaging email marketing campaigns aligned with a restaurant's brand and marketing goals. According to a recent Toast survey, 72% of guests surveyed were interested in hearing from their favorite restaurants via email.
• Create one-click, automated marketing campaigns powered by guest data.
• Use a recommendation engine that serves timely insights to operators, such as reminders about upcoming holidays and suggestions to use pre-designed campaigns to save time.
• Create targeted promotional offers tailored to users' business needs, like promoting seasonal specials or discounting excess inventory. O

Toast's website builder joins a lineup of digital ordering tools designed to help a restaurant stand out online. With drag-and-drop functionality and Toast products embedded on-site, restaurants may enhance their online presence and drive traffic via SEO. 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 updates to digital and online ordering menus when menu item availability or descriptions are updated on the POS.
• 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.
• Integrated and embedded Toast products including Online Ordering, Toast Tables, Loyalty and more in websites built with Toast websites.

"It would take many steps to create, change, and update my website and online ordering," said John Mason IV, owner of IV Hospitality, which operates FRESKO Greek Kitchen in North Carolina. "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."