Cava vs Toast POS
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
Mediterranean fast-casual with 350+ locations and $1B revenue; Chipotle-comparable growth model with grain bowls, pitas, and house-made spreads expanding nationally.
About
Cava is a Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant chain built around customizable grain bowls, pitas, and salads featuring bold Mediterranean flavors, fresh vegetables, and house-made dips and spreads. Founded in 2006 by three Greek-American childhood friends — Ted Xenohristos, Ike Grigoropoulos, and Dmitri Moshovitis — as a restaurant in Rockville, Maryland, Cava grew by first selling its hummus and harissa products in grocery stores before expanding its restaurant footprint. The company went public on the NYSE in June 2023 at a $2.5 billion valuation.
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
About
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.
AI Visibility Head-to-Head
Key Details
Capabilities & Ecosystem
Capabilities
Integrations
Also Compare
Track AI Visibility in Real Time
Monitor how your brand performs across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok daily.