# Toast POS

**Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/toast-pos  
**Vertical:** Hospitality  
**Subcategory:** Restaurant POS  
**Tier:** Leader  
**Website:** toastpos.com  
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14

## Summary

Q3 2025 $1.63B revenue (+25.1% YoY); 156K locations powered globally; $2.0B+ ARR (+30% YoY); $159.1B GPV FY2024 (+26% YoY); 97.36% customers from US; restaurant POS leader

## Company Overview

Toast was founded in 2011 in Boston with the mission of building an all-in-one technology platform purpose-built for the restaurant industry. Unlike generic point-of-sale vendors that adapted retail software for food service, Toast designed its hardware, software, and payments stack from the ground up around restaurant workflows — table management, kitchen display systems, online ordering, payroll, and inventory unified in a single cloud platform.\n\nToast's product suite covers the full restaurant operating stack: POS terminals and handheld order devices, kitchen display screens, Toast Go handhelds for tableside payments, online ordering and delivery integrations, catering management, payroll and scheduling, and xtraCHEF for back-of-house food cost analytics. The platform serves independent restaurants, multi-location chains, quick-service concepts, and enterprise groups. Its open API allows integrations with hundreds of third-party tools, and the Toast for Enterprise tier serves national brands with centralized menu and reporting management.\n\nAs of Q3 2025, Toast reported $1.63 billion in quarterly revenue, up 25.1% year-over-year, with annualized recurring revenue exceeding $2 billion and gross payment volume of $159.1 billion for fiscal 2024. The company serves more than 156,000 restaurant locations globally and trades on the NYSE under the ticker TOST. Toast's vertical focus and deep restaurant-specific functionality give it a durable competitive moat against horizontal POS vendors.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is Toast POS?
Toast introduced ToastIQ, an AI-powered intelligence engine delivering timely prompts, personalized recommendations, and automated workflows built natively into Toast's platform.

### When was Toast POS founded?
Toast POS was founded in 2011 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Three MIT graduates who previously worked together at Endeca (acquired by Oracle in 2011) founded Toast to revolutionize restaurant operations.

### What are Toast POS's major milestones?
Toast POS's history includes several key milestones: 2011: Toast founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts; secured $2 million in seed funding 2013: Pivoted to restaurant management software; launched Toast Point of Sale 2019: Achieved unicorn status with valuation exceeding $1 billion 2021: Completed IPO on New York Stock Exchange, raising approximately $870 million 2025: Launched ToastIQ AI intelligence engine; partnerships with Uber and American Express; expanded to Australia

### What is Toast POS's mission?
Toast POS's mission is to We empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive.

### Who founded Toast POS?
Toast POS was founded by Aman Narang, Steve Fredette, and Jonathan Grimm.

### What products or services does Toast POS offer?
Toast introduced ToastIQ, an AI-powered intelligence engine delivering timely prompts, personalized recommendations, and automated workflows built natively into Toast's platform.

### How does Toast's integrated payments model work and what processing fees do restaurants pay?
Toast operates as both a POS platform and a payments processor — restaurants using Toast process all credit and debit card transactions through Toast Payments (powered by First Data/Fiserv), with processing rates typically around 2.49% + $0.15 for card-present transactions. Toast bundles payment processing with hardware and software rather than integrating with external processors, which gives Toast economics on every transaction and creates significant switching costs for restaurants that would need to replace both hardware and payments infrastructure to change POS vendors. Toast's fintech revenue (payments processing and financial services including Toast Capital working capital loans) is its fastest-growing and highest-margin revenue stream.

### What restaurant types and sizes is Toast optimized for compared to Square and Lightspeed?
Toast is purpose-built for full-service, quick-service, and fast-casual restaurants specifically — its hardware (Toast Go handhelds, kitchen display systems, drive-through integration) and software modules (table management, split checks, kitchen routing) are designed for restaurant workflows that general-purpose POS vendors like Square don't handle well. Square for Restaurants has broader adoption among very small restaurants and food trucks due to lower upfront costs and simpler setup, while Lightspeed Restaurant targets higher-end full-service restaurants with complex modifier needs. Toast dominates mid-market restaurants (10-100 locations) where integrated restaurant-specific functionality outweighs the simplicity advantage of general POS vendors.

## Tags

b2b, b2c, retailtech, saas, services

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*Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*