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Toast Sales

To empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive by creating the world's most customer-centric restaurant technology ecosystem

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Toast Sales SWOT Analysis

Updated: April 18, 2025 • 2025-Q2 Analysis
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To empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive by creating the world's most customer-centric restaurant technology ecosystem

Strengths

  • PRODUCT: Comprehensive all-in-one restaurant platform
  • ECOSYSTEM: Strong integration ecosystem with 100+ partners
  • RETENTION: 95%+ revenue retention for subscription services
  • BRAND: Strong restaurant industry reputation and trust
  • DATA: Rich restaurant data insights across 74K+ locations

Weaknesses

  • COMPETITION: High competition in restaurant POS space
  • DEPENDENCY: Revenue heavily tied to restaurant industry health
  • PROFITABILITY: Ongoing challenges in achieving profitability
  • INTERNATIONAL: Limited global market penetration vs competitors
  • ENTERPRISE: Lower adoption among large enterprise restaurants

Opportunities

  • EXPANSION: Untapped mid-market and enterprise restaurant sector
  • FINANCIAL: Expand financial services offerings beyond capital
  • GLOBAL: International expansion beyond current limited markets
  • LOYALTY: Enhanced guest engagement and loyalty platform growth
  • DATA: Monetize restaurant industry data intelligence services

Threats

  • MARKET: Economic downturns impacting restaurant industry
  • PRICING: Increasing price competition in restaurant tech
  • CONSOLIDATION: Industry consolidation reducing TAM
  • DISRUPTION: Direct payment solutions bypassing POS systems
  • SECURITY: Data breach risks affecting customer trust

Key Priorities

  • PRODUCT: Enhance enterprise-grade features and scalability
  • EXPANSION: Accelerate international market expansion strategy
  • FINANCIAL: Develop comprehensive financial services suite
  • DATA: Create industry-leading data intelligence platform

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To empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive by creating the world's most customer-centric restaurant technology ecosystem

ENTERPRISE DOMINANCE

Become the go-to platform for enterprise restaurants

  • ACQUISITION: Increase enterprise customer acquisition by 40% through targeted industry vertical campaigns
  • PLATFORM: Launch enterprise-grade management console with multi-location analytics by Q3
  • PARTNERSHIPS: Establish 5 strategic partnerships with enterprise restaurant groups representing 500+ locations
  • RETENTION: Achieve 98%+ revenue retention rate for enterprise segment through enhanced customer success model
GLOBAL EXPANSION

Accelerate international market penetration strategy

  • MARKETS: Successfully launch in 3 new international markets with localized product offering
  • REVENUE: Generate $12M in international ARR by end of quarter, representing 65% YoY growth
  • PARTNERS: Establish 10 regional reseller partnerships to drive international customer acquisition
  • COMPLIANCE: Complete regulatory certification in 5 target countries to enable 2026 expansion plan
FINTECH ECOSYSTEM

Build comprehensive financial services platform

  • CAPITAL: Expand restaurant capital program to $150M in deployed funds with less than 2% default rate
  • PAYMENTS: Increase payment processing attachment rate to 85% of new customers through bundled pricing
  • PAYROLL: Launch integrated restaurant payroll solution in 10 additional states reaching 60% market coverage
  • BANKING: Pilot Toast Banking services with integrated accounts, cards and financial management for 50 customers
DATA INTELLIGENCE

Create industry-leading restaurant insights platform

  • ANALYTICS: Launch predictive analytics dashboard with AI-powered forecasting for 1,000 beta customers
  • BENCHMARKS: Develop industry benchmark reporting across 20 KPIs segmented by restaurant type and geography
  • INSIGHTS: Deliver automated operational insights generating measurable 5%+ efficiency for participating customers
  • PLATFORM: Release data API platform enabling 3rd-party developers to build on Toast restaurant insights
METRICS
  • ARR: $1.32B (+13% QoQ)
  • NET REVENUE RETENTION: 110%
  • GROSS MARGIN: 48%
VALUES
  • Customer-First
  • Solve Together
  • Embrace Change
  • Innovation
  • Diversity and Inclusion

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Align the learnings

Toast Sales Retrospective

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To empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive by creating the world's most customer-centric restaurant technology ecosystem

What Went Well

  • GROWTH: ARR increased 35% YoY reaching $1.17B with strong customer adds
  • RETENTION: Subscription services maintained 95%+ net revenue retention
  • EXPANSION: Average revenue per location up 12% through cross-selling
  • PAYMENTS: Processing volume grew 42% to $33.7B with margin expansion
  • ADOPTION: New product adoption rate exceeded targets by 22% QoQ

Not So Well

  • PROFITABILITY: Adjusted EBITDA margins below target by 2.3 percentage
  • ENTERPRISE: Enterprise segment growth lagged expectations by 18%
  • INTERNATIONAL: Expansion timeline delays in key European markets
  • ACQUISITION: Higher than projected customer acquisition costs in SMB
  • TURNOVER: Sales leadership changes disrupted go-to-market momentum

Learnings

  • SEGMENTATION: Need targeted sales motions for enterprise vs. SMB
  • BUNDLING: Product bundles drive higher conversion than à la carte
  • DIGITAL: E-commerce channel represents untapped customer acquisition
  • PARTNERS: Channel partners deliver 3.2x higher customer LTV vs direct
  • RETENTION: Customer success engagement directly correlates to growth

Action Items

  • RESTRUCTURE: Realign sales organization by segment with clear ICP focus
  • ONBOARDING: Enhance implementation process to reduce time-to-value
  • PARTNERSHIPS: Expand ecosystem with 15 strategic integration partners
  • ENABLEMENT: Launch comprehensive sales certification program by Q3
  • METRICS: Implement real-time sales performance dashboard by end of Q2

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To empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive by creating the world's most customer-centric restaurant technology ecosystem

Strengths

  • ANALYTICS: Advanced data analytics capabilities across platform
  • INTEGRATION: AI-ready infrastructure and data pipelines
  • ADOPTION: Strong customer adoption of existing technology
  • SCALE: Massive restaurant dataset for AI model training
  • TALENT: Growing AI/ML engineering talent acquisition

Weaknesses

  • MATURITY: Early-stage AI implementation compared to competitors
  • SILOS: Fragmented AI initiatives across product lines
  • RESOURCES: Limited dedicated AI research and development team
  • VISIBILITY: Unclear AI roadmap communication to market
  • EXPERTISE: Gaps in specialized AI restaurant domain knowledge

Opportunities

  • FORECASTING: AI-powered demand forecasting and inventory mgmt
  • PERSONALIZATION: Hyper-personalized guest recommendations
  • AUTOMATION: Labor optimization through AI task automation
  • INSIGHTS: Predictive analytics for restaurant performance
  • VOICE: Voice-activated restaurant management solutions

Threats

  • COMPETITION: Tech giants developing restaurant-specific AI
  • COMMODITIZATION: AI features becoming standard across industry
  • ADOPTION: Restaurant hesitancy to embrace advanced AI tools
  • REGULATION: Emerging AI regulatory constraints and compliance
  • TALENT: Fierce competition for limited AI engineering talent

Key Priorities

  • PLATFORM: Develop unified AI strategy across product portfolio
  • INTELLIGENCE: Create restaurant-specific AI predictive models
  • AUTOMATION: Launch AI-powered workforce optimization tools
  • EXPERIENCE: Implement personalized guest experience AI engine

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AI Disclosure

This report was created using the Alignment Method—our proprietary process for guiding AI to reveal how it interprets your business and industry. These insights are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, legal, tax, or investment advice.

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