Fintech #4: Toast

this is not what it looks like

Ever walked into a cafe, ordered your frappuccino with two whipped creams and three pumps of vanilla, and proceeded to pay using your phone by tapping a little cube-like object?

That little object is from a company called Toast. Toast describes itself as a "cloud-based restaurant service" that has an all-in "one point of sale system built on the Android operating system."

Toast supports everything a restaurant could possibly need, from customer care to HR and payroll to giving data analytics on how the business does transactionally that day.

It costs $69 👀 per month and has additional payment processing fees of 2.99% plus 15 cents per transaction, if you choose a pay-as-you-go hardware; otherwise it is 3.50% plus 15 cents for card-not-present transaction, if you pay for hardware upfront.

The POS system of toast → all its products interconnected over a cloud based network.

Cons:

Contact based→ , because the Toast system is contract-based, restaurants must stay for the duration of the contract, and leaving before the contract expiration can be costly.

Hidden fees → After a series of chats with local restaurant owners and employees here in San Diego, I found out the restaurants that use Toast have to watch out for hidden fees because it may appear to be more costly than it actually is.

Therefore, I believe Toast should improve its customer retention and product:I would make the case for being more transparent with the fee structure and pricing, similar to what Square does, which thus increases customer loyalty and satisfaction.

A higher level of transparency fosters customer trust which promotes goodwill for the company.  

As always, if this resonated or helped you understand the resturant industry a bit better, please subscribe below: