Toast

order-capture-floor-plan-editor

Table service floor plan with sections and server assignment is core Toast FSR functionality; specific doc page not retrieved this pass.

order-capture-seat-level

Seat-numbered ordering and split-by-seat are standard Toast table service behavior; not verified against a doc page.

order-capture-coursing-hold-fire

Coursing with hold and fire-next-course from terminal or handheld; KDS docs confirm the firing half. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformKDSOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-split-merge

Split by item, seat, even N-way and amount supported. Merge after partial payment not verified.

order-capture-bar-tab-preauth differentiator

Card pre-authorization is a documented Toast feature (called out as unavailable offline). Incremental re-auth and automatic stale-tab close not documented. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminOfflineCCPayments.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-transfer-audit

Check transfer between servers and tables is standard; audit-log naming both employees not verified.

order-capture-native-handheld

Toast Go 3 is a first-party native handheld with integrated reader that fires to kitchen and takes payment tableside. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware/toast-go · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-offline-order-entry

Offline order entry, cash tender, printing and (with local sync) KDS routing all documented, with an explicit unavailable-features list. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminOfflineModeOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-qr-same-check differentiator

Toast Order & Pay supports scan-to-order and scan-to-pay at table; that guest items land on the same server-opened check was not verified in docs.

order-capture-kiosk-first-party differentiator

First-party Toast Kiosk runs the same POS menu and modifier tree. No ADA/WCAG conformance report or VPAT located. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-drive-thru

Toast Drive-Thru launched April 14, 2026 as a unified hardware + POS-native software solution. Order-point/pay-window separation and tandem-lane assignment not enumerated publicly. https://pos.toasttab.com/news/toast-drive-thru-launch-2026 · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-drive-thru-timers

Speed of Service (SoS) reporting ships with Toast Drive-Thru to identify lane bottlenecks. Per-segment timers tied to individual orders not documented. https://pos.toasttab.com/news/toast-drive-thru-launch-2026 · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-voice-ai differentiator

Not first-party. Incept AI is a named certified integration for phone and drive-thru order taking; Toast says more voice partners follow in 2026. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-InceptAI-Integration · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-throttling differentiator

Manual delay/snooze in 5-minute increments up to 120 minutes plus per-slot order caps. Automatic quote extension triggered by measured kitchen load not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Managing-Online-Order-Volume-Throttling-Orders-1492627940253 · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-scheduled-orders

Scheduled/pre-orders with per-channel lead times; Toast documents how online orders are fired into the make queue rather than on receipt. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminFiringToastOnlineOrders.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-catering

Toast Catering & Events runs lead form to BEO to kitchen sheet to paid invoice, with catering-specific hours, lead times, minimums and capacity. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Getting-Started-Catering-and-Events · retrieved 2026-08-01

order-capture-order-ready-signal differentiator

The inference chain does check out on DoorDash's side - the 2026 DPIP standards require order-ready notifications and Toast is in the 2026 cohort - but that establishes the capability only for the DoorDash channel, via a third party's program requirements, with no Toast documentation of an order-ready signal for Uber Eats, Grubhub, or first-party pickup. Partial, not yes. https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-preferred-integrations-program-2026 · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

order-capture-void-comp-controls

Void reasons are a shared MLM configuration object; manager approval and exception reporting are standard Toast behavior but not verified page-by-page.

menu-pricing-nested-modifiers

Nested modifier groups with min/max and required flags. Caveat: nested subgroups do not render on third-party marketplace menus. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Creating-Modifier-Groups-and-Modifiers-1492803987509 · retrieved 2026-08-01

menu-pricing-modifier-price-by-parent-size

Re-pointed off the dead adminPortionsAndPricing.html to the live pricing-strategies set. Size price "Applies to: Menu items, modifier groups, modifier item references": on a modifier group's details page you set "How are modifiers in this group priced" to "All modifiers share the same price", select Size Price, and fill a grid whose rows are size/price pairs, so "all of the toppings in a Toppings modifier group cost $0.50 for a small pizza, $1 for a medium pizza, and $1.50 for a large pizza" with one modifier, not duplicates. Set "Each modifier has a unique price" instead and each modifier's item reference carries its own Size Prices grid ("pepperoni costs $1 on a small pizza and $2 on a large"). Size/Sequence Price adds the second axis (size by 1st option / 2nd option / all additional options). Parent-item variation comes from the same underlying item reference being priced separately per modifier group, or per modifier via the "Override item reference price" setting. Caveat: for modifier groups and modifiers these strategies are not supported on the Toast Takeout (Local by Toast) app or Toast Order and Pay. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminSizePrice.html · retrieved 2026-08-08 adversarially verified

menu-pricing-fractional-placement differentiator

Verified myself against Toast platform docs: "Modifiers can be applied to menu items in portions, for example, a one-half portion of a topping can be applied to either the first or second half of a pizza." This is a real native per-section portion model, not a duplicated-modifier workaround. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminPortionsOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

menu-pricing-half-and-half-rule differentiator

The cited page returns HTTP 403 to retrieval, so I could not confirm it directly. However the Price Multiplier field (0-100, max 2 decimals, set on the portion) is corroborated from doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminConfiguringPortions.html. Still only one pricing lever - no average-the-halves or charge-higher-half rule found. Partial stands; note the researcher's cited URL is not publicly retrievable. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminConfiguringPortions.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

menu-pricing-topping-quantity-tiers

Toast pre-modifiers (NO, SUB, ADD, EXTRA, ON SIDE) are prefix/suffix tiers applied to a modifier, and each pre-modifier option carries either a Multiply Price? factor - "If the Multiply Price? setting is set to two (2), it would double the price of a modifier", set it to 0 for NO - or a mutually exclusive fixed price such as $0.50. This is a per-tier multiplier on one modifier, distinct from adding the modifier twice: repeating a modifier is a separate mechanism requiring modifier-level multi-select and duplicate modifiers to be enabled. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Pre-Modifiers-1493068611745 · retrieved 2026-08-08

menu-pricing-size-style-matrix differentiator

Size-axis pricing is documented; a two-axis size x crust grid with per-cell override is not. Operators typically model crust as a separate item or modifier.

menu-pricing-included-allowance differentiator

Toast's Sequence modifier pricing strategy prices modifiers "by the sequence in which they are added to a menu item. For example, on a pizza menu item with a Toppings modifier group, the first topping is free, the second topping costs $1.00, the third topping costs $1.50, and all additional toppings cost $2.00" - overage-only charging. Shortfalls: it is expressed as a per-position price ladder, not a declared 'N included' allowance with a substitution credit-or-forbid rule, and Toast states the Sequence, Size and Size/Sequence strategies "are not supported on the Toast Takeout (Local by Toast) app, Toast Order and Pay, and Toast Kiosk." https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminPricingModifierOptions.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

menu-pricing-combos

Combo is a Toast discount type configured against "one or more eligible combinations of items" (adminDiscountsConfigureCombo.html), and Combo discounts are explicitly listed as eligible for auto-apply: "An auto-apply discount is applied if the items on the check match the selection criteria of the discount, without any action from a restaurant employee" - the automatic a-la-carte-to-combo conversion the claim describes. Shortfalls: no component-swap-with-price-delta mechanism is documented (a Toast combo is a discount over an item combination, not a built meal with swap deltas); "Discounts can only be applied automatically to checks that are created or updated on the Toast POS app", so not online ordering; and "If you apply a combo discount to a check that includes more than one of the same menu item... the discount applies to only one of the items." https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminAutoApplyDiscounts.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

menu-pricing-upsell-prompts differentiator

Digital upsell prompts exist in Toast Online Ordering; per-channel configuration and vendor-reported attach-rate not verified.

menu-pricing-86-propagation

86 propagates within Toast (POS, KDS, Toast Online Ordering). For marketplaces Toast states the ordering partner controls whether 86'd items are respected. No published propagation latency. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Uber-Eats-DoorDash-and-Grubhub-Integration-Configuration-Limitations · retrieved 2026-08-01

menu-pricing-countdown-auto-86 differentiator

"After you manually set the Quantity status for a menu item, the quantity amount is automatically decreased by the Toast platform each time you order that menu item", and "When the quantity amount reaches 0 (zero), the Toast platform automatically changes the inventory status to Out of Stock for the menu item." Scheduled restore is documented separately: "You can create stock refresh schedules that automatically refresh a menu item or modifier's stock status and quantity (count) on a defined schedule" (plartformAutomaticallyRefreshingInventory.html). https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminMenuItemInventoryOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

menu-pricing-dayparting

Time-specific pricing and scheduled menu/item availability documented. Note it does not sync to third-party marketplaces. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Help-with-Third-Party-Ordering-Price-Incompatibilities · retrieved 2026-08-01

menu-pricing-channel-price-books

Distinct prices per third-party channel are configurable, and menu versions cover dine-in vs off-premise. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Help-With-Third-Party-Ordering-Integration-Pricing · retrieved 2026-08-01

menu-pricing-dual-pricing differentiator

Toast Cash Discounting shows one advertised price with a cash discount at tender, rather than storing two item-level prices. Digital wallets are treated as cards and excluded. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Cash-Discount-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-01

menu-pricing-allergen-nutrition

Toast stores structured per-item allergens: "select the applicable allergens for the menu item from the drop-down list of pre-defined options. Note: This is a pre-defined list of allergens and is not customizable." They publish to "Online Ordering, Toast Mobile Order & Pay, Catering Online Ordering, Kiosk, Tables, Local by Toast, and Branded Apps." Shortfalls: no per-item nutrition or calorie field is documented - the 465-page doc.toasttab.com platform guide inventory I crawled contains no Nutrition, Calorie or Recipe page at all; no derivation of nutrition from linked recipe components; and third-party marketplace menus (DoorDash, Uber Eats) are not among the listed allergen destinations. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Add-Allergen-Information-to-Online-Ordering-Menu-Items · retrieved 2026-08-08

menu-pricing-recipe-linkage differentiator

xtraCHEF links recipes to Toast POS items, giving real-time plate costing, inventory depletion and theoretical food cost. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Get-Started-With-Actual-vs-Theoretical-Analysis-Reports · retrieved 2026-08-01

menu-pricing-3p-menu-push

Direct certified push to DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Skip. Toast documents which menu features silently fail to sync, but a per-item sync-status/rejection view for operators was not found. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Help-with-Third-Party-Ordering-Price-Incompatibilities · retrieved 2026-08-01

menu-pricing-dynamic-pricing

Toast supports Time Specific Price on menu groups and items - "you define the price of a menu group or item during specific times of the day. For example, a menu item that costs $10 between noon and 2pm and $12 during the rest of the day" - with a Base Price used outside the defined windows, alongside Menu Specific Price and Location Specific Price levels, so price does vary automatically by time and by menu/channel. Shortfalls: pricing is calendar-scheduled, not demand-responsive; the platform guide's complete price-strategy set (Base, Fixed, Open, Sequence, Size, Size/Sequence, Time Specific, Menu Specific, Location Specific) takes no demand or utilisation input and exposes no floor/ceiling guardrail fields; and overlap safety is left to the operator ("Be careful to avoid overlapping time-specific prices"). https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminTimeSpecificPrice.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

payments-processor-choice differentiator

Upgrade the evidence, not the score. This should never have rested on review sites: Toast's own Payment Processing Terms state the merchant "agrees to utilize Toast as its exclusive provider of Payment processing services," and support docs tell switchers to have their prior processor disabled. Vendor-affirmed absence, so 'no' is legitimate rather than 'not documented'. https://pos.toasttab.com/payment-processing-terms · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

payments-published-rates differentiator

Re-checked 2026-08-08. pos.toasttab.com/pricing returns HTTP 403 to retrieval (as does the pos.toasttab.com blog host generally), so Toast's marketing pricing page still cannot be read. On the newly reachable support.toasttab.com the article that would carry rate mechanics is login-gated: support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Interchange-Plus-Reporting 307-redirects to idm.toasttab.com/v1/login?application=SUPPORT_PUBLIC. The publicly readable finance articles - Finance-Reports, Reconciliation-Report-and-Payout-Details-Overview, When-are-deposits-made-to-my-bank-account - describe where to find your own rate in your own statements and never quote a figure, consistent with the earlier finding that Toast builds a custom rate per restaurant. I will not assert a published rate I could not read, nor assert absence when the one page that would settle it is a 403.

payments-dual-pricing differentiator

Cash Discounting is single-advertised-price with a discount at cash tender, not two stored prices printed side by side. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Cash-Discount-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-surcharge-guardrails differentiator

Debit and prepaid identified by BIN and automatically excluded; 3% card-brand cap enforced; enabled per location and only in eligible US states; tips and taxes not surcharged. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Credit-Card-Surcharging-FAQ · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-emv-nfc

Toast terminals accept EMV chip and NFC; Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay are explicitly treated as card transactions. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Cash-Discount-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-softpos-tap-to-pay differentiator

Checked support.toasttab.com/en/article/Which-Toast-devices-support-Apple-Pay-Google-Pay-and-Samsung-Pay, which names Toast Tap (on-counter and direct-attach), Toast Go 2 and Toast Go 3 as the NFC-capable devices and explicitly excludes Magtek eDynamo readers and acceptance "directly on the Toast tablet (POS)" - all Toast-supplied hardware, with no commodity-phone acceptance mentioned either way. Also searched the 828-URL support.toasttab.com sitemap and the 465-page doc.toasttab.com platform guide inventory I crawled to closure: neither contains a Tap-to-Pay, tap-to-phone or softPOS page, and the only 'Tap' hits are Toast Tap reader hardware guides. That device article does not present itself as an exhaustive supported-acceptance table, and Toast Now / Toast Mobile surfaces are documented on pages I could not reach, so this is unresolved rather than absent.

payments-pay-at-table

Toast Go 3 handheld takes EMV/NFC at the table with tip prompt and splitting. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware/toast-go · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-qr-guest-pay differentiator

Toast documents a "receipt QR code payment experience" alongside Don't Wait to Pay, and confirms automatic settlement: "the guest's table changes from yellow to white once the guest's payment has been completed". Mobile Order & Pay separately documents scanning a QR at the table to order and pay. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Don-t-Wait-to-Pay-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-02 adversarially verified

payments-tip-adjust

Unsourced. The pre-auth-then-adjust flow, batch window, and unadjusted-tips manager screen are all non-obvious and unverified. adversarially verified

payments-tip-pooling differentiator

Toast Tips Manager computes pooled tips from POS data and syncs allocations directly into Toast Payroll, replacing spreadsheets. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Payroll-Tips-Manager-Setup · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-offline-store-and-forward differentiator

Cards are encrypted and stored on device, then submitted on reconnect. An optional per-transaction offline limit can be set, above which a manager override is required. Devices enter offline mode ~40s after losing connectivity. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Prepare-to-Operate-in-Offline-Mode-During-Service-Disruptions-or-Outages · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-offline-decline-liability differentiator

Liability is stated plainly: 'You are responsible for any declined, expired, or disputed payments taken in Offline Mode,' and authorizations may expire within 24 hours. A dedicated post-reconnect failed-payment report is not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Prepare-to-Operate-in-Offline-Mode-During-Service-Disruptions-or-Outages · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-gift-cards

First-party Toast gift cards clearly exist (they are named in the offline-unavailable list), but group-wide and online redemption - the parts that matter - are explicitly unverified by the researcher. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflinePaymentsOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

payments-house-accounts

House accounts exist as a Toast tender type (documented as unavailable offline). Per-account credit limits and statement/invoice generation not verified. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

payments-split-tender

Multi-tender settlement with split by seat, item, even shares and amount; no evidence of a cap below eight.

payments-refund-void-controls

Role-gated voids, refunds and discounts with reason codes; immutability of the audit log not verified.

payments-chargeback-tooling differentiator

Toast Web Reports > Payments > Chargebacks lists chargebacks with status (including New), amount, reason, check date and response deadline, plus a Win Likelihood estimate. Disputes are filed inside the product: the flow provides an explanation field and a "Supporting documents" upload, then a Confirm step, with the warning that "disputes cannot be edited or amended after submission." A Chargebacks Report also appears in Toast's finance report catalog. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Disputing-Chargebacks-in-Toast-s-Back-End · retrieved 2026-08-08

payments-card-on-file differentiator

Toast Online Ordering: "Guests can create an account before or during checkout and save a credit card for future use. At checkout, guests choose between Express checkout with Toast (uses saved information) or Checkout as guest." Separately, for Catering & Events, "Guests must opt in to saving their card during the deposit payment process" and staff later see a "Charge saved card ending in XXXX" button on the POS. Merchant PAN storage is ruled out: Toast states the platform stores only "the last four digits of a credit card number" and that cardholder data must only be entered into the Toast payment field. Shortfalls: no documentation describes one guest-profile token reusable across online ordering, phone orders and in-store - the two saved-card paths are channel-specific - and the public articles never use the word tokenization (the developer guide's PARTNER_VAULT cardNumberOrigin covers partner-held credentials, not a Toast guest vault). doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminSavedCreditCards.html still returns HTTP 403. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Online-Ordering-FAQ · retrieved 2026-08-08

payments-payout-timing differentiator

Toast publishes the schedule with a named cutoff: batches closed before 9:30 p.m. ET produce a deposit that "arrives next business day"; after 9:30 p.m. ET, or via the 4 a.m. auto-batch, the "deposit arrives two business days later". Toast adds that "Most restaurants' service hours extend past 9:30 p.m. ET, which means deposits typically take two business days instead of one", and excludes federal banking holidays. Faster funding exists as a separate product, Instant Deposit, whose transactions and fees are reported in Toast Web (Instant Deposit Reporting Overview) and which appears alongside standard payouts in the Reconciliation report. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/When-are-deposits-made-to-my-bank-account · retrieved 2026-08-08

payments-p2pe-pci4

Toast states it is a PCI-DSS-compliant Level 1 Service Provider assessed by a QSA and provides PCI Responsibility Guides on request. No published validated P2PE listing or v4.x AOC located. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/What-is-PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-station-routing

Prep stations (Grill, Salad, Bar, Pizza) with routing by item, dining option and service area, configurable by the operator. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminRoutingOrdersKitchen.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-expo-consolidation

Expediter screen shows the whole order across stations; the ticket turns green only when every prep station has fulfilled its items. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminUsingExpo.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-course-firing differentiator

Items assigned to courses, held, then fired; fired items route to expo and the relevant prep stations. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformKDSOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-prep-time-pacing differentiator

KDS ships 'automated firing by prep time' so items are staggered to finish together. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-the-Kitchen-Display-System · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-order-throttling differentiator

Order caps and manual delay/snooze extend quote times, but throttling is operator-triggered or capacity-configured, not automatically driven by measured KDS ticket times. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Managing-Online-Order-Volume-Throttling-Orders-1492627940253 · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-channel-pause-propagation differentiator

Toast pushes availability to marketplaces, but explicitly states the ordering partner decides whether menu visibility and availability settings are respected. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Uber-Eats-DoorDash-and-Grubhub-Integration-Configuration-Limitations · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-order-ready-callback differentiator

Same single-channel inference. No Toast doc shows a KDS bump firing an order-ready callback to marketplaces generally. https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-preferred-integrations-program-2026 · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

kitchen-bump-bar-hardware

Marketing hardware page only, with the researcher conceding no supported-model list. A hardware-compatibility 'yes' on marketing copy is exactly the failure mode to avoid. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware/kitchen-display-system · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

kitchen-all-day-counts

All Day View with production item counts is a listed KDS feature. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-the-Kitchen-Display-System · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-sla-alerts

Color-coded ticket escalation plus SMS and in-app alerts are listed KDS features. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-the-Kitchen-Display-System · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-printer-fallback differentiator

Adding a kitchen printer in Toast exposes a "Backup" printer selection among its configurable fields, and the guide states: "If printing fails at this printer, the system redirects tickets to the backup printer." Caveat recorded rather than scored: platformKitchenPrintersOffline.html describes a local-network outage in which "The Toast POS device cannot send tickets to the kitchen printers", with the only named recovery being autofiring of queued online orders once connectivity returns - so the designated-backup failover covers printer/device failure, not a whole-network outage. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminAddKitchenPrinter.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

kitchen-offline-operation differentiator

Under offline mode with local sync, KDS devices receive orders from every POS device on the LAN via a local hub device while the internet or Toast cloud is unreachable. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-item-build-screens differentiator

Color-coded modifiers give full modifier breakout on station screens. Recipe steps or portioning instructions on the KDS not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-the-Kitchen-Display-System · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-pizza-fractional-display differentiator

Portions carry through from POS entry to tickets, but Toast does not document a visual pie/section rendering on the make-line screen. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminUsingPortionsInTheToastPosApp.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-recall-refire

Recall/unbump and item refire are standard Toast KDS actions; not verified against a specific doc page.

kitchen-order-modification-alerts differentiator

Toast documents a Flash Changes setting that "defines whether the KDS device alerts employees to new and changed tickets by intermittently changing the color of the ticket headers. To acknowledge the ticket and stop the flashing, you select the ticket." The KDS configuration quick reference adds an audible option to "Play a sound when a new ticket appears, a ticket is ready for fulfillment at an expediter KDS device, an item is changed, and an item is marked as void." Item-level marking is documented for re-fired checks: "refunded items appear crossed out and are labeled as REFUNDED... The remaining quantity is labeled as CHANGED." Shortfall: on a live displayed ticket the alert is a header-colour flash for the whole ticket, and the per-item crossed-out/REFUNDED/CHANGED labelling is documented only for refunds on re-fired checks - Toast does not document per-item visual flagging of items added or removed on an already-displayed ticket. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminKitchenDiningRoomReference.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

kitchen-guest-ready-notification differentiator

Order status SMS exists for delivery and online orders. A general bump-driven ready notification or status board included at no extra cost was not confirmed. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Delivery-Services-Order-Status-SMS-Texts · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-waste-logging

Crawled doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide to closure (465 distinct pages; a third crawl round added none) and grepped the full inventory: there is no Waste, Spoilage or Remake page at all, and the KDS pages (adminKdsConfigQuickRef.html, platformKitchenUnderstandingItemFulfillmentKDS.html, adminKitchenDiningRoomReference.html) enumerate KDS notification, interaction and display options with no waste-entry action and no reason codes. The 828-URL support.toasttab.com sitemap likewise contains no waste article. This still falls short of the enumeration bar: adminKdsConfigQuickRef.html calls itself a "quick reference guide" rather than the complete KDS action surface, and Toast's waste and inventory-depletion tooling lives in the separately licensed xtraCHEF product, whose articles in the sitemap (xtraCHEF-COGS-Report, xtraCHEF-Recipe-Reporting, xtraCHEF Actual vs Theoretical Analysis) I could not tie to an on-the-line KDS entry point either way.

kitchen-speed-of-service-reporting

Kitchen productivity reporting in KDS plus Speed of Service reporting in Toast Drive-Thru. Percentile slicing and CSV/API export not explicitly documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-the-Kitchen-Display-System · retrieved 2026-08-01

kitchen-prep-forecasting

Forecast-driven prep reaches Toast only through a partner: "The PreciTaste team analyzes sales data and POS items daily to create a location-based prep forecast", with a Prep Assistant that "automates daily ingredient preparation using AI-driven forecasts." Named shortfall: this is not first-party - "This integration requires access to Toast Partner Integrations", it is requested by adding a tile in Toast Partner Connect, and the PreciTaste customer success team contacts the restaurant separately, so it is a separately contracted vendor. Toast's own prep output, Production Items feeding Prep Tools (Prep Sheets, Pack Sheets, BEOs), derives quantities from actual booked Catering & Events orders - "if one menu item requires 1 bread roll per guest and the guest orders for 25 people, the prep sheet will show 25 bread rolls" - not from historical sales or forecast demand. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-the-PreciTaste-Integration · retrieved 2026-08-08

delivery-driver-roster

Toast supports delivery with your own drivers, with Delivery Mode as the native in-POS module for managing and dispatching them. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/How-do-I-set-up-my-take-out-and-delivery-options-1492745822028 · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-dispatch-board

Checked the cited article. Delivery Mode does have Unassigned / En Route / Delivered phases, dispatches to clocked-in employees with a Driver job type, and explicitly supports dispatching multiple orders to one driver (weak batching). Per-order elapsed timers and route sequencing are still absent, so partial is right - but the note's claim that multi-order dispatch is undocumented is wrong. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Delivery-Mode-1493048871021 · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

delivery-route-map differentiator

Delivery 2.0 Live Map provides a map view of delivery activity. System-generated multi-stop route sequencing not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Delivery-2-0-Live-Map · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-driver-tracking differentiator

Guests can see driver location on a map for Toast Delivery Services orders. Live GPS from an in-house driver app back to dispatch not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Delivery-Services-Order-Status-SMS-Texts · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-zones-polygon differentiator

Researcher missed this. Toast documents an actual Polygon tool on the delivery-area map: "Select the Polygon tool (square icon) at the top right of the map. The tool allows you to draw and designate your delivery area." Arbitrary polygon geometry is documented; drive-time isochrones are not. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminConfigureDeliveryArea.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

delivery-zone-pricing

Now sourced rather than inferred: Toast documents multiple mileage-based service charges and delivery zones, a Waive Fee Threshold, a Delivery Distance Threshold, and a Delivery Minimum set to Reject. Quote times are configured on the Delivery & Takeout page. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Configuring-Delivery-Fees-1493053499602 · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

delivery-address-validation

Confirmed: Toast compares the configured delivery area to the customer's address on on-site and online delivery orders to automatically allow or deny the order. The delivery-area doc page itself does not describe the geocoding mechanism, so 'geocoding' specifically remains unverified. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Configuring-Delivery-Fees-1493053499602 · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

delivery-driver-comp differentiator

Toast Web > Takeout & delivery > Availability > Takeout/delivery has a Driver Reimbursement section, defaulting to "No, do not reimburse drivers" and switchable to "Yes, reimburse drivers for each delivery order completed" with a reimbursement amount, described as reimbursing drivers "for the wear and tear of their personal vehicle". Shortfalls: the reimbursement is a flat per-completed-delivery amount - no mileage or distance per run is captured anywhere in the delivery section of the platform guide; driver-retained tips are not addressed on this page; and no payroll export separating a non-taxable reimbursement line from wage lines is documented. Toast also restricts the feature: "Driver reimbursement is only available for first-party delivery." https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminReimburseDriversAndCashBanks.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

delivery-cash-reconcile

"You can also choose to configure a starting cash balance for a delivery driver. At the end of the driver's shift, their cash bank is returned to the restaurant and counted as cash in hand." It is enabled in Toast Web > Takeout & delivery > Availability > Takeout/delivery under Driver Cash Management by selecting "Yes, assign driver bank for reporting" and entering a starting amount, and orders are tied to drivers - "An Order Ready order must be assigned to a driver before it can be marked as complete" (platformManagingDeliveryOrders.html). Shortfall: Toast documents issuing and returning the bank but no settle-up flow reconciling cash collected against orders assigned and tips owed, and no per-driver over/short figure; the platform guide's cash pages produce drawer-level and deposit-level variance only. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminReimburseDriversAndCashBanks.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

delivery-daas-dispatch

Toast Delivery Services dispatches on-demand couriers powered by Uber Direct or DoorDash Drive from Toast's own online ordering channels, keeping the guest data. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Delivery-Services · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-daas-fallback differentiator

Vendor-affirmed absence, not merely unfound. Toast's delivery overview enumerates the model completely - "Toast offers two options for delivery: First-party delivery: You use your own drivers to make deliveries. Toast Delivery Services (TDS): You can choose between DoorDash or Uber Direct to deliver orders from Toast Online Ordering and the Local by Toast app" - and then states in an Important callout: "First-party delivery and TDS cannot be used at the same time or interchangeably." With the two modes mutually exclusive there is no per-order overflow from an in-house driver to a DaaS courier, and no wait-threshold or out-of-zone dispatch rule appears in the delivery section or in the TDS setup article. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminDeliveryOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

delivery-3p-direct-integration differentiator

Toast-owned direct integrations with DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats and Caviar; no middleware required. https://pos.toasttab.com/third-party-delivery-integrations · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-3p-injection

Orders flow from the marketplaces directly into the Toast POS, eliminating tablets and manual double-entry. https://pos.toasttab.com/third-party-delivery-integrations · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-menu-push

One Toast master menu publishes to marketplaces with channel-specific prices. Real caveats: time-specific pricing and nested subgroups do not sync. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Adjusting-Sync-ing-Hours-on-DoorDash-UberEats-GrubHub-Menus · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-86-sync

Toast pushes availability but states the ordering partner controls whether 86'd items are hidden — so item-level 86 is not uniformly guaranteed across channels. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Uber-Eats-DoorDash-and-Grubhub-Integration-Configuration-Limitations · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-store-pause

From inside Toast you can "turn on, off, or snooze (pause) third-party online ordering channels" individually or in bulk, and the snooze is timed with automatic resumption: it pauses ordering for 20 or 40 minutes, or until the start of online ordering hours the next day. Shortfalls: the documented effect is on whether Toast accepts orders from that channel - Toast does not state that the store is deactivated or shown as closed on the marketplace's own storefront; the timers are fixed presets rather than an arbitrary duration; and marketplace account management stays outside Toast. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformManagingThirdPartyOnlineOrderingChannels.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

delivery-3p-reconciliation differentiator

Positive scope statement, not absence of mention. Toast's Reconciliation report "gives you a single list of every payout Toast has sent to your bank account", and Payout Details breaks one payout into "card payments, refunds, fees, withholdings (Toast Capital and Easy Pay loan repayments, Toast Delivery Services fees, instant deposit fees, and others)" - no marketplace commission, marketing-fee or 3P adjustment line anywhere in that breakdown, and the report is itself "in limited release with select customers". Marketplace money never enters that surface: "Sales from third-party delivery integrations (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) are paid out by those providers directly to the restaurant on the provider's own schedule and do not appear in your Toast credit card deposit", and Toast tells operators these platforms "issue payouts directly to you, not through Toast", sending them to each marketplace's own knowledge base for payout questions. What Toast provides is sales-side tracking only - the DoorDash integration "consolidate[s] DoorDash accounting and reporting in Toast, with a unique payment type and dining option for tracking". Toast Delivery Services, Toast's own dispatch product, does get a TDS billing breakdown, but that is Toast's own fee withheld from a Toast payout, not a marketplace payout being reconciled. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Reconciliation-Report-and-Payout-Details-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-08 adversarially verified

delivery-injection-error-visibility differentiator

Toast publishes troubleshooting for missing third-party orders and setup checklists, but a live per-channel integration health dashboard with failure alerts was not found. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/My-restaurant-isn-t-receiving-third-party-orders · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-tracking-page

Toast Delivery Services provides guest order status SMS and a confirmation page with a live driver map. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Delivery-Services-Order-Status-SMS-Texts · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-promise-time differentiator

Toast documents order wait time calculation and throttling that adds to the quote. Automatic adjustment from driver availability and zone drive time not documented. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/calculatingOrderWaitTime.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

delivery-offline-behavior

Toast has a dedicated offline-delivery page: "You can place takeout and delivery orders when the device is in offline mode", with the stated limitation that "you cannot look up guest information to link the order to an existing guest account", which can create duplicate guest accounts on reconnection. Shortfall: of the three behaviours the claim asks to see documented, only order entry is covered. Neither adminOfflineDelivery.html nor the other fourteen offline pages in the platform guide (adminOfflineModeOverview, platformOfflineMode, adminOfflineCCPayments, platformOfflinePaymentsOverview, platformOfflineKDSDevices, adminCompletingShiftReviewOffline, adminPendingTipsWhenOffline and the rest) states whether driver assignment/dispatch or driver cash-bank settlement continues during an internet outage. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminOfflineDelivery.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

digital-first-party-web

Toast Online Ordering is first-party and commission-free, writing orders straight into the POS, with its own operator dashboard. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminOnlineOrderingDashboard.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-menu-single-source

Online ordering renders the same Toast POS menu record; no separate digital menu build. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminFiringToastOnlineOrders.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-native-app differentiator

Toast's Branded Mobile App: "Launch your own mobile app (on iOS or Android) - build your brand with your logo and choice of fonts, colors, and imagery." It is published under the restaurant's own store identity: setup requires the restaurant to create its own developer accounts with each store ($99 annually with Apple, $25 one-time with Google), and "It can take up to two weeks for your newly created app to be completed" plus app-store review. This is distinct from the shared multi-restaurant Local by Toast (Toast Takeout) marketplace app, which Toast also operates. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-the-Branded-Mobile-App · retrieved 2026-08-08

digital-account-saved-payment

Guest accounts with saved addresses, tokenized cards and reorder in Toast Online Ordering; not verified against a doc page.

digital-upsell-engine differentiator

Checkout upsells exist; configurable-vs-algorithmic behavior and attach-rate reporting not documented.

digital-scheduled-pacing

Scheduled/pre-orders plus per-slot order caps and throttling that close or delay slots when the kitchen saturates. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Managing-Online-Order-Volume-Throttling-Orders-1492627940253 · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-fulfillment-modes

Pickup, curbside, dine-in/QR and delivery in one flow with mode-specific fees and prep timing; curbside arrival check-in not separately verified.

digital-qr-table

Toast Order & Pay supports QR scan-to-order and scan-to-pay with splitting and tipping.

digital-kiosk differentiator

First-party kiosk on the same menu and modifier engine with unattended EMV. No published accessibility conformance documentation. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-group-ordering

Toast documents group ordering on Toast Mobile Order & Pay: it lets "multiple guests at one table scan a QR code and begin ordering items on a single check", displaying guest names "so servers know who each item is for", and it works with the Tabs option so guests can "order multiple rounds and pay at the end". Shortfalls: no per-person or total spend cap is documented, and the join mechanism is an in-venue table QR code for on-premise Mobile Order & Pay rather than a remotely shareable group-order link for an off-premise order. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Group-Ordering-on-Toast-Mobile-Order-PayTM-INTERNAL · retrieved 2026-08-08

digital-catering-portal differentiator

Catering Online Ordering has its own hours, customized lead times, order minimums and capacity settings, feeding Catering & Events invoicing. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Getting-Started-with-Catering-Online-Ordering · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-voice-ai-phone differentiator

Incept AI is a named certified partner taking guest orders over the phone and injecting them into Toast. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-InceptAI-Integration · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-drivethru-ai

Toast Drive-Thru ships with Incept AI voice ordering integrated to the POS menu; escalation-to-human handoff not documented. https://pos.toasttab.com/news/toast-drive-thru-launch-2026 · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-sms-ordering

Toast SMS Marketing campaigns may carry an ordering link - the "Accepted SMS marketing URLs" are the Toast Online Ordering page and the restaurant's own website - so a text-a-link path into a Toast order exists, and orders placed via that link arrive in the POS as ordinary online orders. Shortfalls: messaging is one-way broadcast, and the only inbound keyword documented is texting JOIN to the restaurant's dedicated toll-free number to subscribe, not to order. Toast's other SMS product, Text to Pay, is explicitly payment-only - "The guest will receive a link via text message with their check" - and places no orders. No conversational or agentic text-ordering flow is documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-SMS-Marketing · retrieved 2026-08-08

digital-google-order differentiator

Order with Google is "automatically enabled in your Toast account when Online Ordering is turned on", provisioning the Toast direct ordering link as an ordering option on the restaurant's Google listing. Toast also documents the preferred placement the claim describes: "By adding a preferred business badge to your listing, you can elevate your Toast link's position in the Google UI and shift third-party orders to Toast to save on commission", with the badge requiring the operator to connect with Google. Recorded rather than scored as a shortfall: the badge is an operator action, not an automatic default - the claim treats preferred status as the ideal, not the requirement. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Using-Order-with-Google · retrieved 2026-08-08

digital-apple-business-connect

Searched the full 828-URL support.toasttab.com sitemap and the 465-page doc.toasttab.com platform guide inventory I crawled to closure: neither contains any Apple Business Connect, Apple Maps or place-card page, and the only Apple hits are Apple Pay device support. Toast documents the Google analogue in detail at support.toasttab.com/en/article/Using-Order-with-Google, including the preferred-business badge, with no parallel Apple article and no Apple mention inside that article. Off-Toast searching surfaced only generic Apple Business Connect explainers and third-party listing managers, not a Toast integration. Because Apple Business Connect action links can be configured by the business owner directly against any ordering URL, the absence of a Toast article does not establish that a Toast ordering link cannot be placed there, and neither doc set enumerates Toast's listing/presence channels exhaustively. Unresolved rather than absent.

digital-loyalty-attach

Guests are prompted to join Toast Loyalty during online ordering and accrue/redeem on the same guest identity as in-store. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Getting-Started-Toast-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-subscriptions

Toast Subscription Plans are a native guest-facing recurring-billing product - mug clubs, wine clubs, seasonal access passes - where the restaurant sets a plan price and billing frequency and Toast charges subscribers automatically, either on their signup anniversary or on a synchronized date shared by all members (a quarterly plan billing 1 Jan / 1 Apr / 1 Jul / 1 Oct). Named shortfall: entitlement delivery is manual - "Benefits are redeemed manually" through a 100% discount applied at checkout - and the platform does not natively support automatic discounts, stored value or a plan-linked delivery-fee waiver; benefits needing credits or deferred payment must be paired with house accounts. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-Subscription-Plans · retrieved 2026-08-08

digital-promo-parity

Promos and loyalty rewards are defined centrally and honored across POS and digital; explicit per-channel eligibility controls not verified.

digital-guest-data-ownership differentiator

Toast publishes a Merchant Data Processing Addendum and documents loyalty data import. Bulk self-serve export of guest PII and consent status without fee or approval is not documented, and API export requires an RMS Essentials+ subscription per location. https://pos.toasttab.com/privacy/merchantdpa · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-checkout-pci-sca

Checkout is Toast-hosted and Toast is a PCI Level 1 Service Provider, so card data never touches the restaurant's page. 3DS support and Req 6.4.3/11.6.1 script-integrity posture not published. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/What-is-PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-08-01

digital-surcharge-transparency differentiator

Surcharging is state-gated with card-brand-compliant signage requirements and BIN-based debit exclusion. Whether the identical configuration applies to online and kiosk channels is not stated explicitly. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Credit-Card-Surcharging-FAQ · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-unified-profile

No source, and the researcher concedes dedup/merge behavior is undocumented. Cross-surface identity unification is a differentiator claim that needs product docs. adversarially verified

guest-loyalty-thirdparty-identity-attach differentiator

Get Started With Toast Loyalty: "Guests cannot earn or redeem Toast Loyalty points on orders placed through online ordering integrations such as DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats." A separate article gives the same answer for ChowNow. Guestbook's "Which guests get added to Guestbook" list enumerates every profile-creating event (Toast Online Ordering, Local by Toast, mobile payments, Mobile Order & Pay email receipt, Branded Mobile App, emailed or texted in-store receipt, Toast Go feedback, Toast Tables booking) and no third-party marketplace is among them; the Guestbook Order Source filter likewise enumerates In-store, Toast Online Ordering, Toast Branded Online Ordering, Toast Local (web), Toast Local (app), Toast Mobile Order & Pay, Toast Self-Ordering Kiosk, phone and invoice, with no DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub option. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Getting-Started-Toast-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-08-08

guest-loyalty-accrual-models

Operator chooses points per dollar spent or per visit, sets value per point, minimum spend and reward type (free item or cash back). https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Getting-Started-Toast-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-tiers differentiator

Configure and Redeem Tiered Rewards: "With tiered item rewards, you can expand your restaurant's reward offerings through Toast Loyalty. You can set up three free item rewards, each tied to different points or visit balance tiers." These are reward thresholds, not guest status tiers - there is no promotion, no demotion and no rolling window. Get Started With Toast Loyalty enumerates the full configuration surface (signup method, visit-based or amount-based earning, discount rewards with a value-per-point, free-item rewards with points-to-unlock) and contains no status-tier concept. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Configure-and-Redeem-Tiered-Rewards-in-Toast-Loyalty · retrieved 2026-08-08

guest-loyalty-offline-behavior differentiator

Documented clearly: loyalty rewards cannot be redeemed as a payment method offline, alongside gift cards, customer credits, comp cards and house accounts. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflinePaymentsOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-offer-stacking-rules differentiator

The discount Advanced Properties include an "Allow with other discounts" setting, which is the explicit exclusive-vs-combinable control. Shortfall: Toast documents no order-of-application or precedence configuration, and the setting "is only available when the discount type is fixed check, open check, or BOGO. Item discounts cannot be combined." Promo codes are further limited - "Only one promo code or discount can be applied to a single check." https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Basic-Discount-Configuration · retrieved 2026-08-08

guest-loyalty-targeted-offers differentiator

Automated campaigns target behavioral audiences such as lapsed guests, but a general rules-builder over recency/frequency/spend/items is not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Building-an-Automated-Email-Campaign · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-rfm-segmentation differentiator

Prebuilt lifecycle segments (new, repeat, lapsed) drive Toast's automated campaigns, but a full RFM/VIP/at-risk model surfaced as analytics is not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Building-an-Automated-Email-Campaign · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-lifecycle-automation

'Set it and forget it' ongoing campaigns including welcome, repeat-visit and lapsed win-back, plus automated loyalty notifications. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Building-an-Automated-Email-Campaign · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-native-email-sms differentiator

Both channels are native: Toast Email Marketing and Toast SMS Marketing with one-time and automated campaigns. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-SMS-Marketing · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-consent-management

Consent is captured at online-ordering checkout and Toast Loyalty signup. Per-channel consent timestamp/source records and non-STOP revocation handling not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-SMS-Marketing · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-10dlc-registration

Toast documents operator SMS registration: the restaurant completes business information under Marketing > SMS marketing and "your restaurant or business group will receive a unique, verified toll-free number for SMS marketing"; as of February 2026 the flow "includes new required fields to comply with updated toll-free number (TFN) carrier registration requirements", and "it can take up to 14 business days to receive your dedicated toll-free phone number." Shortfall as worded: the documented path is toll-free number verification, not A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration, which appears in neither Get Started With SMS Marketing nor the SMS Marketing FAQ; a live website with no coming-soon banner is a prerequisite, and rejected registrations must go back through Customer Care. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-SMS-Marketing · retrieved 2026-08-08

guest-loyalty-campaign-attribution differentiator

Toast markets campaign-driven revenue reporting; tying redeemed offers to actual check totals was not verified in documentation.

guest-loyalty-data-export-portability differentiator

Guestbook offers self-serve export: "Select Download list at the top of the Guestbook table", "Toast emails the logged-in user a link to a unique download URL", and the file is a CSV including contact information (primary email address or phone number) plus a guestGuid key. No fee and no support ticket. Shortfalls: the export is the Guestbook table (contact info, order date, number of orders, average spend per check, order source), not per-transaction history - full order history is viewable only in the per-guest profile UI; "If your restaurant management group has more than 250,000 guests, the export is limited to guests who have ordered within the past six months"; the download link expires after 72 hours; and a listed known limitation is that you cannot send Guestbook data automatically to an SFTP site or external destination. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Access-Your-Guest-Data-with-the-Guest-Report · retrieved 2026-08-08

guest-loyalty-review-capture-routing differentiator

Toast captures post-transaction star-rated feedback on Toast Go handhelds and on digital receipts, and the Guest Feedback Inbox lets managers reply privately where the guest left an email, set a status, add notes, or use an AI-drafted response; Toast frames the purpose as "Address negative experiences before disgruntled guests air their frustrations on Yelp." Shortfall: there is no score-based routing - Toast documents no mechanism that sends high scorers toward Google, Yelp or TripAdvisor, and no threshold that decides which of the two paths a response takes. Ratings are reported by theme (Atmosphere, Service, Food Quality, Wait Time). https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Guest-Feedback · retrieved 2026-08-08

guest-loyalty-referral-program

Checked the full Toast Loyalty documentation set on support.toasttab.com - Getting-Started-Toast-Loyalty, How-Guests-Enroll-in-Toast-Loyalty (which enumerates eleven enrollment channels: POS or Toast Go checkout, guest-facing display, closed check, Toast Online Ordering, kiosk, mobile payments, online rewards page, digital receipts, Local by Toast, QR sign-up link, manual staff entry), Toast-Loyalty-FAQ-1492794694913, Optimize-Toast-Loyalty-with-Item-Based-Rewards and Configure-and-Redeem-Tiered-Rewards-in-Toast-Loyalty. None documents a per-guest referral code or link, attribution of a referred guest's first order, or a two-sided reward. Toast's documented referral programs (Toast Advocates at pos.toasttab.com/advocates, Refer a Restaurant) are merchant-acquisition programs for referring new restaurants to Toast, not a guest-to-guest mechanic a restaurant can run. Because none of these pages asserts a complete list of loyalty program mechanics, this is absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence.

guest-loyalty-wallet-pass differentiator

The prior no rested on a contrast rather than an enumeration. How Guests Enroll in Toast Loyalty documents the delivery vehicle Toast does describe - "Every enrolled guest receives a digital loyalty card", accessed "directly from the Local by Toast app when viewing your restaurant", with the welcome message carrying a link to that digital card - but on re-read the article does not present that as the complete set of access methods. Toast does ship Add to Apple Wallet and Add to Google Wallet for gift cards, so wallet passes exist in the platform; no Toast document states that loyalty lacks an equivalent, and a search of support.toasttab.com and pos.toasttab.com surfaced wallet material for gift cards only. Absence of evidence, so unresolved.

guest-loyalty-privacy-rights-tooling

Toast publishes guidance for managing privacy compliance obligations and a Merchant DPA. In-app locate/export/delete tooling with propagation to loyalty and marketing records is not explicitly documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Managing-Your-Privacy-Compliance-Obligations · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-redemption-fraud-controls

Toast documents a velocity control and an employee-level misuse report: Loyalty Program Alerts "notify you if a rewards account has accrued points more than three times in 24 hours", enabled at Marketing > Loyalty > Settings with an email address and delivered "every Monday at 11:00 am ET"; the Loyalty Misuse Report (Reports > Cash and loss management > Loyalty Misuse) gives "a breakdown of total points accrued and redeemed on transactions per employee" and tags employee accounts with an EMP tag. Shortfalls: manager approval is explicitly unavailable - "At this time it is not possible to set up manager approval for loyalty redemption" - manual point adjustment is gated only by the 3.2 Transfer / Rewards Adjustment permission, and no audit log of adjustments is documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Taking-Action-Against-Suspicious-Rewards-Activity · retrieved 2026-08-08

guest-loyalty-ai-offer-recommendation differentiator

Toast IQ was expanded in 2026 from smart features into an AI assistant. Marketing-level claim; specific shipped offer-content/audience/send-time recommendation not confirmed as generally available. https://pos.toasttab.com/news/toast-expands-toast-iq-smart-ai-assistant · retrieved 2026-08-01

guest-loyalty-stored-value-gift

Native stored-value gift cards tied to the guest record and redeemable across the brand's locations; explicitly unavailable offline.

labor-clock-in-at-pos

Employees punch at the Toast terminal; time entries flow to Toast Payroll with no separate time clock hardware. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Time-Entry-Management-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-01

labor-photo-punch-verification differentiator

Customize Time Clock Options enumerates the entire Toast time clock configuration surface: Print clock slips, Enforce scheduling (manager approval for non-scheduled clock-in or clock-out), Show time?, and Time entry rounding scheme. No camera, photo or biometric option exists. The Sling by Toast time clock settings are likewise enumerated (early clock-in, clock-in without scheduled shift, auto clock-out, early clock-out, shift classification, automated breaks) with no photo capture. Clocking in is authenticated by POS access code only. Toast does document biometrics, but for multi-factor login to Toast Web, not for punch. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Setting-Up-Time-Clock-Options · retrieved 2026-08-08

labor-offline-time-punch differentiator

Toast's platform guide documents the offline punch behavior directly: "During offline mode, employees can clock in on Toast POS devices", and the support article adds that "each employee should clock in and out on the same Toast device for the duration of the outage so their time entries stay together." Named shortfall: the other half of the punch fails - "During offline mode, employees cannot clock out of their shifts because shift reviews are not supported in offline mode" when Shift Review is set to Required - and Toast publishes a manual repair procedure "for an employee who could not clock out during offline mode." Reconciliation is therefore partly manual rather than automatic, and Toast documents no duplicate-entry handling for punches taken across more than one device. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminOfflineEmployees.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

labor-granular-rbac

Per-action permission sets by role and location (voids, comps, discounts, refunds, reports); granularity not enumerated in a retrieved doc.

labor-manager-override-audit

Overrides attributed to the approving manager; immutability and post-hoc queryability not verified.

labor-native-scheduling differentiator

Sling by Toast / Toast Scheduling builds and publishes schedules in the same platform as timekeeping, surfaced to staff in the MyToast app. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/The-MyToast-App-Shifts · retrieved 2026-08-01

labor-demand-labor-forecast differentiator

Toast markets sales-history-driven labor planning; a documented recommended-hours-by-daypart engine was not located.

labor-realtime-labor-percent differentiator

Labor % is documented as "labor cost divided by net sales or gross sales". SHORTFALL: the documentation says only that "the report updates automatically for pre-set date filters" and never states that the figure is available live during service, which is the discriminating half of this claim. Refresh frequency and in-service availability are undocumented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Labor-Cost-Breakdown-Report-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-02 adversarially verified

labor-overtime-prevention differentiator

Toast Payroll tracks and calculates overtime across locations, FEINs and job types. A clock-in-time warning or block before OT is incurred is not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Payroll-Overtime · retrieved 2026-08-01

labor-break-compliance-by-state differentiator

Break clock-in/out is tracked and Toast documents failure modes, but per-state meal/rest rule configuration, attestation prompts and missed-break premium flagging were not confirmed. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Time-Entry-Management-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-01

labor-minor-labor-rules

Checked the labor rule configuration surface on support.toasttab.com: Setting-Up-Time-Clock-Options (Print clock slips, Enforce scheduling, Show time?, Time entry rounding scheme), Creating-New-Overtime-Rules (rule fields are only Rule Type - weekly hours, daily hours or consecutive days worked - Threshold Value, and Overtime Rate Factor), Sling-by-Toast-Configure-Time-Clock-and-Time-Entries (early clock-in, clock-in without scheduled shift, auto clock-out, early clock-out, shift classification, automated breaks), Enforcing-Scheduling-Time-Clock-Rules-with-Integration-Partners-1492745815961 (which enforces only a clock-in and clock-out time window around a scheduled shift, and requires a third-party scheduling integration) and Clocking-In-and-Out-for-Shifts-and-Breaks. None of these carries an employee age or minor-status field, an age-based hour cap, a prohibited time window or a school-day rule. Toast Payroll holds state-specific compliance content (for example New York Spread of Hours, California overtime) but nothing on minor labor enforcement at scheduling or clock-in. No page asserts that minor rules are unsupported, so this stays unknown rather than no.

labor-tip-pooling-rules

Toast Tips Manager automates calculation and distribution of pooled tips from POS data by configurable rules, feeding payroll directly. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Payroll-Tips-Manager-Setup · retrieved 2026-08-01

labor-tip-distribution-audit-trail

Per-shift, per-employee tip contribution and distribution records are retained and flow into payroll reporting. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Payroll-Tips-Manager-Setup · retrieved 2026-08-01

labor-qualified-tips-w2-reporting differentiator

Toast Payroll addresses the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tip provisions and commits to the occupation code: "TTOC are not required for 2025 reporting and are not on the 2025 Form W-2. Reporting will being [sic] on the 2026 Form W-2. Toast Payroll will add TTOC to employee profiles in 2026." For 2025 it surfaces the tip figure at My Profile > Taxes & Documents > Year End Documents from January 19, 2026, covering "both tips employees reported and any tips an employer was required to report on an employee's behalf." Shortfalls: the article does not separate cash from charged tips (it describes a single discretionary-tips figure and places tips in Box 7), TTOC support is stated as a future 2026 addition rather than as shipped, and Toast documents neither W-2 Box 12 code TP nor Box 14b. This is Toast Payroll, a separately licensed product, not Toast POS. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Payroll-No-Tax-on-Tips-and-or-Overtime · retrieved 2026-08-08

labor-native-payroll differentiator

Toast help centre documents Toast Payroll as the filing agent, not an export: the Tax Center is 'Toast Payroll's central hub for managing payroll taxes and employer tax filings', employers must list Toast Payroll as third-party administrator on every state tax account 'so Toast Payroll can file and communicate with the state agency on your behalf', and federal filings are authorized by IRS Form 8655. Employee direct deposit accounts are configured inside Toast Payroll (Plaid link or manual routing/account entry) and paid from the company bank account. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Payroll-Manage-Payroll-Taxes · retrieved 2026-08-06

labor-payroll-export-formats

Toast Web publishes a Payroll Export at Reports > Labor > Labor summary > Employee Summary, downloaded as "a .csv file" containing Regular worked, Overtime hours, Pay rates, Net sales, Tips and Gratuity - so timecards, wages and tips do leave the platform in a documented format, and operators are told they can "filter the report after it's downloaded" for their own payroll system. Automated Nightly Data Export additionally delivers a Time Entries file over SFTP nightly, retained seven days. Shortfall: no provider-specific format and no direct payroll integration is documented for any third party - the article names only Toast Payroll ("If you use Toast Payroll, this data is imported automatically"), and the only third-party providers Toast names (ADP Run, QuickBooks, Square Payroll, Gusto) appear in a migration article describing data flowing INTO Toast Payroll from a prior provider, not out of Toast to them. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/How-do-I-export-the-Payroll-Labor-Summary-report · retrieved 2026-08-08

labor-shift-swap-workflow differentiator

Shift visibility and self-service actions exist in the MyToast app and Sling; manager-approval workflow enforcing overtime and role eligibility not verified. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/The-MyToast-App-Shifts · retrieved 2026-08-01

labor-server-performance-metrics differentiator

Per-server item sales are documented, and Toast references an Employee Productivity report covering sales, tips, guests served and turn times. SHORTFALL: void and comp rate BY EMPLOYEE — named explicitly in this claim — is not documented in the sales reporting overview retrieved this pass. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Sales-Reports-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-02 adversarially verified

inventory-recipe-bom-costing

xtraCHEF does real-time plate costing with variance updates, recalculating as invoice-derived ingredient costs move. Sub-recipe nesting depth not explicitly documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Recipe-Reporting · retrieved 2026-08-01

inventory-unit-conversion-yields

Purchase/recipe/count unit conversion is implicit in xtraCHEF plate costing; explicit yield/waste percentage on raw-to-usable conversion not documented.

inventory-theoretical-vs-actual differentiator

Actual vs Theoretical analysis compares product actually used against what Toast POS sales imply, reporting variance for waste, portioning, theft and unrecorded sales. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Get-Started-With-Actual-vs-Theoretical-Analysis-Reports · retrieved 2026-08-01

inventory-realtime-depletion differentiator

Toast POS sales data fuels inventory depletion in xtraCHEF, but the cadence (near-real-time vs daily batch) and modifier-driven depletion are not specified. https://xtrachef.com/integration/toast/ · retrieved 2026-08-01

inventory-86-auto-sync differentiator

Item counts do auto-86 and do propagate: Toast "will automatically mark this item as 'out of stock' when the last unit is sold" for limited-stock items, and "Stock changes that you make are immediately applied to your Toast Online Ordering site, and there is no need to publish them." Shortfall on the trigger the claim names: the mechanism is per menu item, not component-ingredient driven - "Item counts only apply to an individual item. For instance, if you use lobster in a lobster roll and also in lobster mac and cheese, these counts will need to be set individually and will not update based on each other's item count." Propagation to connected DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub menus is not addressed in this article. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Setting-the-Stock-Status-and-Count-for-Menu-Items · retrieved 2026-08-08

inventory-count-modes

Physical inventory and inventory analytics with count history are documented; explicit ad-hoc spot counts and scheduled cycle counts as distinct modes were not confirmed. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Inventory-Analytics · retrieved 2026-08-01

inventory-mobile-count-offline

xtraCHEF by Toast ships a mobile inventory app on iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play) for taking counts, with product selection, quantity entry and an Out of stock control that "automatically appl[ies] zero to your stock level." Shortfalls: the article documents neither barcode nor QR scanning, and says nothing about operating with no network connectivity or syncing on reconnect - no offline behavior is described in xtraCHEF-Mobile-Inventory, xtraCHEF-Inventory-Counts or xtraCHEF-Inventory-Getting-Started. Note this is xtraCHEF, a separately licensed Toast module, not the POS app. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Mobile-Inventory · retrieved 2026-08-08

inventory-vendor-catalogs-edi differentiator

xtraCHEF ships vendor management, ordering and product catalogs, but named EDI order-transmission integrations with Sysco / US Foods / PFG are not documented publicly. https://pos.toasttab.com/products/xtrachef · retrieved 2026-08-01

inventory-invoice-ocr differentiator

Toast help centre: 'xtraCHEF's artificial intelligence and machine learning capture your purchases from invoices', and 'line items extracted from your supplier invoices' are then usable 'as products in advanced food-cost reporting, recipe creation, and inventory management'. Documented intake routes are mobile-camera photo capture of an invoice, a per-account 'xcinvoice' email address, and desktop file upload; uploaded documents sit in Processing (typically 6 to 8 hours) before Completed, and illegible or incomplete uploads are Rejected. Extracted items are then mapped/assigned to products per the Map Invoice Items article. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-101 · retrieved 2026-08-06

inventory-price-change-alerts differentiator

Per-item purchase price history and fluctuating-cost drilldown are documented; a configurable threshold alert on received price is not. https://pos.toasttab.com/products/xtrachef · retrieved 2026-08-01

inventory-par-auto-suggest differentiator

xtraCHEF supports per-item par levels that feed ordering: on the Count List you "input a par level amount (par level UOM's are based on the item's purchase unit)" describing "how much of your inventory item to have on hand at all times", and during a count "If you created par levels when creating your Count List, these amounts will automatically populate", with the shortfall against on-hand surfaced in a "Need to Order" column the user can adjust. Shortfall: every documented par is a static operator-set figure - no sales-forecast-driven par mode appears in xtraCHEF-Inventory-Counts, xtraCHEF-Inventory-Getting-Started or xtraCHEF-Advanced-Inventory-Training - and the workflow stops at a suggested order quantity rather than a generated purchase order. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Inventory-Counts · retrieved 2026-08-08

inventory-waste-logging

xtraCHEF's Manage Waste feature (Inventory > Manage Waste > + Add Waste) is a structured workflow with a date, an inventory item or ingredient, a Reason selector "to indicate the type of waste being logged", a quantity, and optional notes or an image. Waste cost is reported separately from usage variance: "xtraCHEF's Manage Waste feature gives you the actual dollar impact of these events" and it "ensures your Actual vs Theoretical Analysis reflects a true variance" by accounting for wastage independently. Shortfalls: the article does not enumerate the available reason codes, does not state that logging waste debits on-hand inventory quantity, and the capability lives in xtraCHEF, a separately licensed module, not in the base POS. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Inventory-Waste · retrieved 2026-08-08

inventory-shelf-life-expiry

Checked the xtraCHEF by Toast inventory doc set on support.toasttab.com: xtraCHEF-Inventory-Getting-Started (inventory area and count list setup, where the documented item attributes are purchase unit or UOM and par level), xtraCHEF-Inventory-Counts (count entry fields are UOM quantity and Need to Order, with a four-digit limit per item), xtraCHEF-Inventory-Waste, xtraCHEF-Advanced-Inventory-Training and xtraCHEF-Get-Started-With-Inventory-Reports. No expiration date, use-by date, lot date or shelf-life field appears on the item record, and no expiring-soon report or alert appears in the report catalogue. Also checked the POS-side Setting-the-Stock-Status-and-Count-for-Menu-Items, which carries only In stock, Out of stock or Limited stock plus a unit count. Because none of these pages claims to enumerate the complete item schema, this remains absence of evidence rather than a documented no.

inventory-bar-partial-bottle

Checked xtraCHEF-Inventory-Counts and xtraCHEF-Inventory-Getting-Started on support.toasttab.com: counting is by unit of measure against the item's purchase unit, with no scale integration, no weight capture and no bottle-fraction entry documented; xtraCHEF-Advanced-Inventory-Training likewise covers recipe costing and actual-vs-theoretical without any partial-bottle mechanic. Also checked the two beverage integrations Toast publishes: Beverage-Metrics-Integration-Inventory-Analytics is "a beverage inventory and analytics integration that provides a read-only integration to control costs and reduce waste and shrinkage" for draft beverages, "leveraging Toast's orders, menus, and configuration data", with no measurement method stated, and Get-Started-With-the-PourThat-Integration turns out to be a guest drink-ordering and payment app rather than pour hardware. Toast does document a Datalogic Magellan scanner-scale and a generic scale workflow, but both are retail weigh-and-price at the POS, not liquor inventory. No page states that partial-bottle counting is unsupported, so this stays unknown.

inventory-cogs-gl-export

xtraCHEF automatically syncs accurately coded invoice data to accounting systems with GL coding. Specific named target formats and per-category mapping detail not enumerated publicly. https://pos.toasttab.com/products/xtrachef · retrieved 2026-08-01

inventory-native-not-partner differentiator

Toast help centre documents Recipes as a feature of 'Toast's Inventory Management': the recipe is tied to a 'Menu item from your POS', ingredients are added with quantity and unit of measure, and 'Toast automatically calculates the cost contribution of each item and the total recipe cost from its ingredients', recalculating 'instantly whenever an ingredient's price changes' so COGS stays current. Purchase data feeds it from Toast-owned xtraCHEF invoice capture. No MarginEdge/MarketMan/R365 contract is required, though inventory is a paid Toast module rather than base-POS functionality. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Get-Started-With-Recipes · retrieved 2026-08-06

inventory-menu-margin-linkage differentiator

Variance Analysis and Product Mix reports join recipe cost to Toast sales mix to spotlight where menu changes lift profitability. A configurable below-threshold margin flag is not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/xtraCHEF-Recipe-Reporting · retrieved 2026-08-01

reporting-realtime-dashboard

Toast Web plus a manager mobile app give near-live sales off-premise; specific latency not published.

reporting-eod-closeout

Same defect - the note reasons from the Cash Management API rather than from any documented close-out report. adversarially verified

reporting-pmix-modifier-level

Product mix at item and modifier level, filterable by daypart and revenue center; not verified against a specific report doc.

reporting-comps-voids-audit

Comps/voids/discounts attributed to employee and approver with reason codes; immutability not verified.

reporting-cash-over-short

Justified by the existence of a Cash Management API, which is not the same as a drawer/shift/employee over-short report in the reporting UI. Inference from an API surface to a report is over-generous. adversarially verified

reporting-labor-productivity

Sales per labor hour and labor percent by hour and employee, sourced from POS time clock data.

reporting-server-scorecards differentiator

Per-server reporting is documented only as item sales: "you can also view individual server's item sales by selecting Server from the first drop-down and Item name in the second", and only for date ranges of seven days or less. SHORTFALL: average check per server, items per check, attachment rate for named categories and tips as a percentage of sales are not present in this documentation. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Sales-Reports-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-02 adversarially verified

reporting-channel-profitability differentiator

Revenue centers can isolate each third-party channel for revenue reporting, but margin net of marketplace commission is not documented as a built-in report. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Revenue-Centers-for-3rd-Party-Online-Ordering-Integrations · retrieved 2026-08-01

reporting-scheduled-delivery

Recurring emailed report delivery is standard in Toast Web; cadence and recipient-list configuration not verified against a doc.

reporting-public-api differentiator

Docs are fully public and self-serve Standard API credentials exist — but they are GET-only and require an RMS Essentials+ subscription per location. Write access needs a partner agreement. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/devApiAccessFAQs.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

reporting-webhooks differentiator

Webhooks exist but are provisioned by contacting the Toast integrations team with your endpoint; retry behavior and payload signature verification are not published. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

reporting-api-not-upcharged differentiator

Verified verbatim in Toast's own dev FAQ: "Standard API access only supports GET requests" and every location requires "a subscription to Toast Restaurant Management Suite Essentials or higher." Vendor-affirmed plan gating - a legitimate 'no'. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/devApiAccessFAQs.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

reporting-tier-paywall differentiator

Core sales/labor/PMIX reporting is included with the POS plan, but multi-location comparison and API/analytics access sit behind higher Restaurant Management Suite tiers.

reporting-history-retention differentiator

Toast documents the window: "You can access data for the last 48 months, and you can filter a report for six months at a time." That exceeds the 24 months the claim asks for. Shortfalls: retention is not uniform across the reporting UI - "The Sales Summary can show data from the past 15 months. For data older than 15 months, contact Customer Care" - so there is per-report truncation well ahead of the 48-month figure and an archive-retrieval step through support, though no fee is stated for it. Toast also notes "At this time, there is no single export of your Toast data", that "data backup/retention availability may differ by market" with some international markets as short as 30 days, and that after account closure "your data will be accessible for 60 days." https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Can-I-download-a-back-up-of-all-of-my-Toast-data · retrieved 2026-08-08

reporting-anomaly-alerts differentiator

Toast IQ is the pattern-deviation half: it "proactively surface[s] key insights about your business and the local market" and identifies "changes in item sales or local events that may impact your business", delivered into a "For You feed". Shortfalls: the article documents no push or email delivery for those insights and no configuration at all, and the rest of Toast's notification surface is enumerated and event-driven rather than threshold-driven - the Toast app sends exactly three notifications (new online order, KDS-fulfilled ticket, offline payment retry failed), and Text Alerts are manual, with Toast stating "At this time, these text alerts are not automatic - the user on the POS will need to manually send a text alert." There is no operator-configured metric threshold on sales, voids, discounts or labor percentage anywhere in these screens. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-IQ-Overview · retrieved 2026-08-08

reporting-nl-query

Toast IQ expanded in 2026 from smart features into an AI assistant positioned to answer questions against operator data. Marketing announcement, not product documentation. https://pos.toasttab.com/news/toast-expands-toast-iq-smart-ai-assistant · retrieved 2026-08-01

reporting-guest-cohorts differentiator

New-vs-returning and lapsed cohorts drive Toast Marketing automations; a dedicated guest cohort analytics report with lifetime spend was not verified.

reporting-sales-forecast differentiator

Toast markets forecasting feeding labor planning; a daypart/hourly forecast exposed in the reporting UI was not confirmed in documentation.

reporting-tip-tax-compliance

Tips Manager plus Toast Payroll produce declared vs charged tip detail, pool distribution records and payroll-ready tip reporting. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Payroll-Tips-Manager-Setup · retrieved 2026-08-01

multi-location-org-hierarchy

Restaurant management groups are a first-class Enterprise-module object that shared configuration, menus and reporting scope to. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/sharingMenusAndOtherInformationAmongRestaurants.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

multi-location-central-menu-publish

Menus (or portions of menus), void reasons, employees and job descriptions are authored once and shared to selected locations. A publish/version history log of what was pushed, when and by whom is not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Copying-Menus-to-Other-Locations-Using-Multi-Location-Management · retrieved 2026-08-01

multi-location-price-zones

Menu versions let one shared item carry different prices/offerings per location without duplicating the item record and without polluting above-store reporting. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformMenuManagerMenuAndMultiLocationRestaurants.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

multi-location-consolidated-reporting

Above-store reporting aggregates across selected locations from one place. Store-vs-store ranking and automatic variance flags not explicitly documented. https://pos.toasttab.com/products/multi-location-management · retrieved 2026-08-01

multi-location-cross-location-giftcard

Locations added to a shared Gift Card/Loyalty group redeem interchangeably: "your customers can purchase or redeem gift cards or loyalty points at any location within the group", configured under Location groups > Loyalty. Outstanding liability is reported - setting the Gift Card Liabilities report's start and end dates to the same day gives an Ending Liability value that "is your total outstanding gift card liability as of that date" (liability = Total Sales minus Total Redemptions). Inter-store settlement is explicit: the report "tracks each transaction in relation to the store that owns the card's liability (the original purchase store) versus the store that redeemed the value", "The redemption store is always owed the amount for accepting the original store's gift card and honoring that liability", with Debit and Credit columns, and it "allows you to periodically audit how much each store owes the others based on liability amount vs. redeemed amount." https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Using-Gift-Cards-at-Multiple-Locations · retrieved 2026-08-08

multi-location-cross-location-loyalty

A single Toast Loyalty profile and balance spans the brand's locations; not verified against a doc page.

multi-location-multi-brand differentiator

Toast implements a second brand as a second location with its own back end, not as a mode on one terminal: "Since your virtual restaurant is a separate location and thus has an individual back-end, it's important to be able to compare sales across all locations." The hardware condition in the claim is documented as impossible - "There must be a separate device for each virtual restaurant, even if you are operating multiple ghost kitchens out of the same location" - plus "At least one hard-wired terminal in order to run a virtual restaurant." Separate menus, ticket differentiation via dining options and prep stations, and separately reportable revenue are all supported; running them on the same terminal and drawer is not. Toast also notes the setup "will not work with Kitchen Display System (KDS)" - virtual brand orders print but do not appear on KDS screens. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Setting-Up-a-Virtual-Restaurant · retrieved 2026-08-08

multi-location-multi-tax-jurisdiction

Per-location tax configuration with multiple simultaneous rates and inclusive/exclusive handling; jurisdiction-specific prepared-food rules and per-location exemptions not verified.

multi-location-central-labor-policy

Overtime rules are configurable per restaurant at Employees > Employee management > Overtime rules, with Rule Type (weekly hours, daily hours, or consecutive days worked), a threshold value, and an overtime rate factor. Shortfalls against the claim: they are reporting constructs, not terminal enforcement - configured rules "impact your Labor Summary and payroll reports" and surface under Labor reporting, with no clock-in block or terminal warning documented. The one rule that is enforced at the terminal, the clock-in and clock-out window around a scheduled shift (manager passcode or swipe card to override), "requires a scheduling integration that works with schedule enforcement" rather than being native. Toast documents configuration at the individual restaurant level only - no per-location-group scoping of labor rules appears - and no predictive-scheduling compliance rule exists at all. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Creating-New-Overtime-Rules · retrieved 2026-08-08

hardware-commodity-devices differentiator

Toast's own app-installation article supplies the direct prohibition: "You should not use an Android mobile device/phone (or any other non-Toast hardware) to operate your business, take payments, or use Toast POS." Sideloading the APK is sanctioned only so a device can act as an emulator for viewing menus and features, and "The Toast app is not available for iOS" at all, which rules out the standard-iPad route. This sits alongside the Non-Supported Hardware Devices article, which retires the generic tablets Toast once ran on (Samsung 7, 8 and 10 inch, Acer, Azpen, OnePlus, Elo V1) and states they will require a new device to be purchased, and the Toast Hardware Hub, which enumerates the vendor-supplied terminals (Flex 3, Flex 14, Flex for Guest and Kitchen, Go 2 and 3, Kiosk, Elo V2, V3 and V4). https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Installing-an-APK-Link-1492745822838 · retrieved 2026-08-08

hardware-os-platforms

Toast documents and identifies its own device lineup (Flex, Go 3, KDS) and Toast Web runs in a browser, but there is no supported-third-party-OS matrix because third-party clients are not supported. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/What-Kind-of-Hardware-Do-I-Have · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-handheld-purpose-built

Toast Go 3 is a purpose-built handheld with an integrated card reader. Published drop and IP ingress ratings were not verified in this pass. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware/toast-go · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-handheld-battery-swap differentiator

Toast publishes a step-by-step operator procedure for replacing the Toast Go 2 battery in the field and sells the part as the "Toast Go 2 Battery Replacement Kit" - the article carries a stock notice reading "The Toast Go 2 Battery Replacement Kit is temporarily out of stock starting the week of August 10, and we expect it back in stock in mid-October." The battery is therefore field-replaceable by the operator rather than a depot repair, which is the branch of the disjunctive claim that is satisfied. Narrower reading: Toast does not describe the swap as hot (the procedure powers the device down), and no published rated battery life in hours or per shift was found for Toast Go 2 or Toast Go 3 on support.toasttab.com or pos.toasttab.com/hardware. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Replacing-the-Battery-and-Card-Reader-in-Your-Toast-Go-2 · retrieved 2026-08-08

hardware-handheld-lte

Toast explicitly sells a 'Wi-Fi Only Handheld' starter kit, which implies an LTE-equipped variant exists, but the LTE failover behavior is not documented in what was retrieved. https://pos.toasttab.com/shop/starter-kits/handheld-starter-kit · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-offline-mode

Confirmed including the sharp caveat - EMV chip mode is listed as unavailable, swipe only. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

hardware-kds

First-party KDS hardware and software with station routing, expo, prep-time firing and all-day counts. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware/kitchen-display-system · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-kiosk differentiator

First-party kiosk on the same menu engine with integrated payment. Countertop vs freestanding SKUs and ADA conformance documentation were not verified. https://pos.toasttab.com/hardware · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-drive-thru

Toast Drive-Thru (April 2026) is a unified hardware + software solution with Speed of Service measurement and Drive-Thru KDS. Outdoor menu boards, confirmation displays and headset integration are not itemized publicly. https://pos.toasttab.com/news/toast-drive-thru-launch-2026 · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-printer-compatibility

Toast supports LAN kitchen printers and historically Epson/Star ESC/POS models, but Toast sells and provisions its own printers and no public multi-manufacturer compatibility list was located.

hardware-peripherals

Cash drawers, barcode scanners, scales and customer-facing displays are supported through Toast Shop; a published third-party compatibility list was not found.

hardware-p2pe-terminal

Toast confirms all payment devices meet or exceed PCI requirements and takes on most PCI obligations, but does not publish a validated P2PE listing or name the merchant's SAQ type — it instead says most customers need not submit an SAQ/AOC at all. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/What-is-PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-tap-to-phone differentiator

Toast enumerates its contactless acceptance surface and it is entirely vendor hardware. Take Payments on the POS lists mobile wallet support on "Toast Go 2, Toast Go 3, and Toast Tap (on-counter or direct-attach)", and the dedicated article states that Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay are not accepted directly on the Toast tablet (POS) - acceptance requires the Toast Tap reader or a Go handheld with a built-in NFC reader. There is no Tap to Pay on iPhone or Tap to Pay on Android offering: the Toast app is not available for iOS at all, and Toast instructs operators not to use a non-Toast Android phone to take payments. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Which-Toast-devices-support-Apple-Pay-Google-Pay-and-Samsung-Pay · retrieved 2026-08-08

hardware-pricing-transparency differentiator

Starter kits are publicly priced (from $0 upfront for the first device) and Toast Shop is public, but per-SKU list prices for Toast Flex and Toast Go 3 are not visible without an account. https://pos.toasttab.com/shop/starter-kits · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-ownership-vs-lease differentiator

Toast documents multiple payment routes for starter kits including outright purchase, a no-upfront-cost option and a pay-as-you-go all-in-one platform rate, plus third-party financing at fixed monthly or percentage-of-sales. Which SKUs can be owned outright at what price is not fully published. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/How-customers-can-pay-for-Toast-Starter-Kits-Internal · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-usable-after-churn differentiator

Toast now documents the lock directly: "each hardware device running Toast software needs a matching software subscription to stay active"; when a device is unlicensed the operator has 14 days, and "if no action is taken within the 14-day grace period, the unlicensed device will lock, and you'll see a message on-screen prompting you to purchase a subscription before continuing use." Reuse is documented only within the Toast ecosystem — Reusing Approved Hardware Devices at a New Location requires a factory reset and says access-point reuse is allowed "provided that the hardware was originally purchased from Toast." So the vendor's own docs confirm the device is software-locked to an active Toast subscription; nothing documents usability with other software after cancellation. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Device-Licensing-FAQ · retrieved 2026-08-02 adversarially verified

hardware-rma-sla differentiator

Toast's US Limited Hardware Warranty publishes both halves. Term: Toast Products "will not have substantial defects in materials and workmanship, for 12 months from the date of shipment for all handheld devices, and 24 months from the date of shipment (the 'Warranty Period') for all other Toast Products", and "Any replacement hardware will be warranted for the remaining duration of the original Warranty Period, or 30 days, whichever is longer." Advance-exchange SLA: "If a Toast Customer Care representative has issued you an RMA number, we will make reasonable efforts to ship an advance replacement product to you by next day air saver service by the next business day", with the faulty unit due back within 30 days of the advance replacement shipment or the operator is charged for the part. The support-side RMA article adds standard shipping of three to five business days and expedited of one to two. https://pos.toasttab.com/limited-warranty · retrieved 2026-08-08

hardware-byod

Toast prohibits the staff-BYOD pattern the claim describes: "You should not use an Android mobile device/phone (or any other non-Toast hardware) to operate your business, take payments, or use Toast POS", and it warns specifically against using such a device to send orders to the kitchen. Sideloading the app onto a personal Android device is sanctioned only as an emulator for previewing menus and features, and "The Toast app is not available for iOS." The Toast apps that are documented for personal devices are not ordering or payment apps: MyToast is an employee payroll and shift app, Toast Now is a manager reporting app, and Toast Tables is a host and reservation app with its own documented device list. There is therefore no documented permission and security model for staff taking orders or payments on their own phone. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Installing-an-APK-Link-1492745822838 · retrieved 2026-08-08

hardware-remote-device-management differentiator

Toast exposes a Device Details API and device visibility in Toast Web. Remote reboot, software-version visibility and staged rollout controls for operators were not documented. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

hardware-selfpour-scales

Checked the two beverage-hardware-adjacent integrations Toast documents on support.toasttab.com. Beverage-Metrics-Integration-Inventory-Analytics is "a beverage inventory and analytics integration that provides a read-only integration to control costs and reduce waste and shrinkage", covering draft beverages alongside draft line cleaning analytics and "leveraging Toast's orders, menus, and configuration data" - the data flow is Toast to Beverage Metrics, and no pour posts back to a check. Get-Started-With-the-PourThat-Integration is not pour hardware at all: "PourThat is an all-in-one app for drink ordering and payment processing" with AI drink suggestions. No article for a self-pour tap wall, flow meter or liquor pour spout (PourMyBeer, iPourIt, Drink Command and similar) was found in the support.toasttab.com sitemap (828 URLs, enumerated 2026-08-08) or via targeted search, and Toast's scale articles (How-do-I-use-a-scale-1493051941341, Set-Up-Your-Datalogic-Magellan-Scanner-Scale-With-Toast) are retail weigh-and-price at the POS, not beverage dispensing. No page states such integrations are unsupported, and a partner-directory listing would not settle it either way, so this stays unknown.

hardware-callerid-integration

Toast documents a first-party Caller ID module with named hardware: "Toast supports two types of Caller ID boxes: Vertex (VoIP) and Whozz Calling (Analog)", with compatible models listed as Whozz Calling? Basic 2 Line version 2.8, Basic 4 Line version 12, and Vertex VoIP Unit 2 Line version 85-19. The record pop is real - "a pop-up will appear during an incoming call that allows the server to start the order, put the order on hold, or ignore the order", and "When a returning customer calls, their name, number, and address will automatically be populated in the delivery information screen." Shortfalls: the pop surfaces contact details only, not the guest's order history as the claim requires; the pop-up "will only appear when a server is in Quick Order Mode" and in other modes such as Table Service the call is only a corner notification; the module must be enabled by Toast Customer Care and the software module purchased; and "At this time, Caller ID is only available for restaurants located in the U.S." https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Caller-ID-1492794310341 · retrieved 2026-08-08

extensibility-public-api-docs

doc.toasttab.com is fully public — API overview, authentication, scopes, rate limits and example requests all readable with no NDA or sales call. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-api-access-cost differentiator

Confirmed. Note the FAQ states the subscription requirement but no dollar figure, so the magnitude of the upcharge is unknown. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/devApiAccessFAQs.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

extensibility-free-sandbox differentiator

Sandbox credentials and hostname are issued by the Toast integrations team when you begin building an integration — there is no self-serve free sandbox for developers without that relationship. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiClientAccounts.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-oauth-partner-apps

OAuth 2 client-credentials grant with bearer tokens and documented scopes — machine-to-machine, not an operator-facing authorization-code consent flow. Restaurant access is granted through Toast's partner connection process rather than a per-app consent screen the operator can individually revoke. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/authentication.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-webhooks-push

Real-time webhooks exist for integration and order lifecycle events, but they are partner-provisioned — you supply your endpoint to the Toast integrations team rather than self-configuring. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-webhook-reliability differentiator

Two of three legs are documented. Signing: the message-signing page states the body and timestamp are concatenated, hashed and signed with HMAC-SHA256 using the subscription's secret key and published in the Toast-Signature header. Retry: on timeout, 404, 429 or 5xx the platform 'will wait five minutes and then resend the update', then waits 10 minutes and resends a second time, and 'if the second resend attempt fails, the Toast platform does not send the update again' (restaurant availability updates alone 'retry five times in a minute with exponential back-off'). Missing leg: no replay endpoint, redelivery request or stored event log for missed deliveries appears anywhere in the webhooks section of doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide - after two failures the event is lost and the integrator must backfill from the Orders API. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiRetrySupport.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

extensibility-order-injection-api

The Orders API accepts externally originated orders as first-class Toast tickets that route to KDS/printers and land in reporting; a Tender API also exists for external payment. Partner-gated. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-menu-write-api differentiator

The developer guide states flatly: 'Menus API supports data retrieval only', and that 'Menus API supersedes configuration API and menu data export for menu data retrieval'. The Menus V3 OpenAPI reference exposes exactly two operations, 'Get menus' and 'Get menu last modified timestamp', both GET. The Configuration API 'returns information about the configuration of a restaurant and its menus, such as menu items' with no create/update operations. The complete OpenAPI index at doc.toasttab.com/openapi lists Analytics, Authentication, Cash Management, Configuration, Credit cards, Device details, Kitchen, Labor, Menus V2, Menus V3, Order management configuration, Orders, Packaging configuration, Partners, Restaurant availability, Restaurants and Stock - no menu, modifier or price write API among them. Stock allows updating item availability, not item, modifier or price definitions; the Orders API's plu field is explicitly 'a read-only value and your integration cannot set or modify this value in a POST request'. Menu authoring is a Toast Web operation, not an API operation. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiGettingMenuInformationFromTheMenusAPI.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

extensibility-doordash-preferred differentiator

Confirmed against DoorDash's own newsroom: Toast is in the 2026 Preferred Integrations cohort alongside Checkmate, Chowly, Deliverect, Otter, PAR, Qu, Square, Stream and UrbanPiper. Researcher gave no URL for a 'documented' score - supplying it. https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-preferred-integrations-program-2026 · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

extensibility-first-party-delivery-integrations differentiator

Toast-owned direct integrations with DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats and Caviar — no paid middleware layer required. https://pos.toasttab.com/third-party-delivery-integrations · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-middleware-compatibility

Not verified against any middleware vendor's own documentation by the researcher, and not by me. Deliverect/Chowly/Otter/Checkmate support for Toast is plausible but unsourced here. adversarially verified

extensibility-accounting-connectors

xtraCHEF syncs GL-coded invoice and COGS data into accounting systems as mapped entries rather than raw CSV. The full list of named target systems was not enumerated publicly. https://pos.toasttab.com/products/xtrachef · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-payroll-export

Labor hours do leave the system without re-keying: Toast Web has a 'Payroll Export' under Reports > Labor > Labor summary, downloaded as an Excel file from the Employee Summary section (requires the 3.12 Shift Review permission). The Automated Nightly Data Export additionally delivers a Labor/Employee 'Time Entries' data set to an S3 bucket over SFTP. Shortfall against the claim as worded: no named third-party payroll provider. Neither the payroll export article, the Toast Payroll Export Employee Data article, the nightly data export article, nor the 137 partners in the pos.toasttab.com integrations sitemap name Gusto, ADP, Paychex, Paylocity or any equivalent, and no provider-specific export format is documented. The only named payroll destination is Toast's own Toast Payroll (Toast Payroll and Toast POS Integration Guide). The export is a generic spreadsheet, not a provider-formatted feed. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/I-can-t-download-the-payroll-export · retrieved 2026-08-08

extensibility-app-marketplace

Toast operates a public partner directory of named third-party integrations that operators can browse. https://pos.toasttab.com/partners/directory/stream · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-headless-embedded

The Orders and Tender APIs let a third-party UI drive Toast transactions (this is how partner kiosks and ordering front-ends work), but Toast does not market or document a formal headless mode. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/apiOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

extensibility-data-portability-exit differentiator

Machine-readable and broad in scope: the export covers Sales/Finance (Order Details, Payment Details, Item Selection Details, Modifier Selection Details, Kitchen Details, Cash Management, Product Mix), Labor/Employee (Time Entries), Accounting, and Configuration (Menu), delivered to an S3 bucket reached over SFTP with credentials and SSH keys. Shortfalls against 'complete historical export on demand at contract end': it is a rolling nightly feed generated 'within one hour after each restaurant's configured closeout hour' containing 'the previous business day' only; 'data is stored for seven days before being cycled out'; no historical backfill mechanism is documented; and access is not self-serve - 'you must contact Toast Customer Care to receive data export access' plus the 8.3 Data Export Config permission. Guest/customer records are not among the listed data sets and must be pulled separately from the Guestbook CSV. At contract end the Merchant Agreement section 8.5 gives 30 days of access to retrieve a copy rather than a delivered export package. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Automated-Nightly-Data-Export-1492723819691 · retrieved 2026-08-08

reliability-offline-order-entry

Order entry continues on-terminal; printer connections remain functional during internet outages since the LAN is unaffected. Devices enter offline mode roughly 40 seconds after losing connectivity. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminOfflineModeOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-offline-card-auth differentiator

No authorization happens offline. Toast's own doc: card data is encrypted and stored, then "sends the stored card information to the card networks for authorization" only on reconnect - no floor-limit or offline approval. It must be pre-enabled, and under the new local-sync architecture "EMV credit card mode (credit cards must be swiped)" is explicitly unavailable, so chip acceptance dies during the outage. That is degraded store-and-forward, not offline card authorization. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminOfflineCCPayments.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

reliability-offline-decline-liability differentiator

Toast states the merchant is responsible for declined, expired or disputed offline payments and warns authorizations may expire within 24 hours. An optional per-transaction cap with manager override is configurable; no cumulative cap is documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Prepare-to-Operate-in-Offline-Mode-During-Service-Disruptions-or-Outages · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-lan-degraded-multi-terminal differentiator

Verified verbatim: "Orders sent from one POS device cannot be seen on another device unless it is a KDS device." Toast even advises each employee stay on a single device while offline. Kiosks also stop entirely offline. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

reliability-local-transaction-engine differentiator

There is a local hub device — an ordinary Toast terminal, typically a hardwired stationary one, auto-designated as relay — but it is not a dedicated on-premise transaction engine or edge server. Toast is migrating all customers onto this local-sync model and deprecating the older offline method. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-offline-kds-printing

KDS devices receive all orders from every POS on the LAN via the local hub during an internet or cloud outage, and printers keep working. During a local network failure, however, there are no printer connections. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-printer-fallback

Failover is documented and configurable. The Add-a-kitchen-printer page describes a Backup Printer field: 'If printing fails at this printer, the system redirects tickets to the backup printer.' The platform guide further advises that in a KDS-primary restaurant you add a kitchen printer to act as the backup when the system is offline, that a single backup printer should be assigned to every prep station, and that with a backup printer configured and a local network connection an Autofire-assigned device still fires and prints tickets. Shortfall: the alerting half of the claim is undocumented. Neither adminAddKitchenPrinter.html, the Kitchen Printer Troubleshooting FAQs nor Get Help With Printers Going Offline describes any banner, on-screen alert or notification telling staff that a printer was unreachable or that a ticket was rerouted - the failover is silent as documented. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/adminAddKitchenPrinter.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

reliability-sync-conflict-handling

What is documented is the avoidance design, not a resolution algorithm. The local-sync page states 'orders sent from one POS device cannot be seen on another device unless it is a KDS device' and recommends 'each employee choose a single device to place and update orders'; the support guidance to operators is 'Stick to one device per employee so order and payment information stays together.' Toast also documents the failure mode when that is not observed: 'If you found duplicate or additional items on checks after using your Toast device in Offline Mode, you must void (remove) the extra or duplicate item(s) to close the check.' Shortfall: no stated conflict-resolution behaviour. Neither platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html, adminOfflineModeOverview.html nor the offline-mode support articles name a rule (last-write-wins, merge, operator prompt), describe reconciliation on reconnect, or say what happens if the local hub device itself fails. The documented remedy is manual voiding after the fact. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-08

reliability-offline-feature-matrix

Best-in-class here. Toast explicitly enumerates what is unavailable offline: gift cards (sale and redemption), loyalty redemption, Tender API payments, text to pay, customer credits, comp cards, house accounts and card pre-authorization. Under local sync, EMV chip readers are also disabled and kiosks stop entirely. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflinePaymentsOverview.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-public-status-page

status.toasttab.com is public with per-component status (Order Processing/KDS, Card Processing, POS app) and incident history. No published uptime percentage. https://status.toasttab.com · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-247-live-support

Sole source is the pricing page, which could not be retrieved (403). This is an unverified marketing claim contradicted by the dossier's own complaint section. Marketing copy is not capability. https://pos.toasttab.com/pricing · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

reliability-onsite-install differentiator

Enterprise marketing page only; no product documentation of an on-site installation offering, coverage area, or what it costs. Claim-level at best. https://pos.toasttab.com/restaurant-pos/enterprise · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

reliability-menu-build-service differentiator

The Remote/Onsite Onboarding Guide states 'Toast configures your menu from customizable templates that you then edit', and the engagement includes an assigned Onboarding Consultant and a scheduled menu review session. Shortfall: this is not a turnkey menu build. The same guide makes the operator responsible for the input - customers must 'Complete the Get Started With Toast Menus course and finalize your menu template' as preparation for the review appointment - so Toast supplies and configures the template structure while item-level entry and finalization sit with the restaurant. No documented full menu-entry-as-a-service, and the scope is not stated to vary by package on any retrievable page. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Remote-Onsite-Onboarding-Guide · retrieved 2026-08-08

reliability-hardware-replacement-sla

The Return Merchandise Authorization article documents an advance-exchange flow with a published turnaround: standard shipping 'three to five business days', expedited 'one to two business days but may incur additional fees'. Replacement is free for in-warranty devices covering 'hardware or software functionality failure, unresolved errors, card reader issues, power issues, and port issues'; physical damage and out-of-warranty devices are replaced at full price. The replacement ships first and the faulty unit is returned 'within 30 days' using a prepaid shipping label included in the replacement box. Note this is a shipping turnaround, not a contractual uptime SLA with remedies. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Replacing-Faulty-Hardware-RMA · retrieved 2026-08-08

reliability-pci-dss-4-attestation

Toast states it is a PCI-DSS-compliant Level 1 Service Provider assessed by a QSA and provides PCI Responsibility Guides through Customer Care. A published v4.0/4.0.1 AOC covering post-March-2025 future-dated requirements was not located. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/What-is-PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-mfa-role-based-access

Role-based permissions are core to Toast Web and the POS. Enforceable MFA on back-office and POS administrative logins was not verified in documentation.

reliability-self-serve-training

Toast Central and support.toasttab.com are free, public, extensive training libraries; Toast also provides a POS training mode for staff onboarding. https://support.toasttab.com/en · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-failover-terminal-role differentiator

Toast automatically designates an eligible device — typically a hardwired stationary terminal — as the local hub, so hub election is automatic. But because terminals cannot share check state offline, this is relay failover, not full master-role failover. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/platformguide/platformOfflineModeLocalSync.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

reliability-cellular-backup

Toast sells LTE-capable handhelds (a 'Wi-Fi Only' variant is explicitly distinguished) and supplies networking gear, but automatic cellular failover for terminals is not documented. https://pos.toasttab.com/shop/starter-kits/handheld-starter-kit · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-month-to-month-contract differentiator

The $0 Starter Kit is marketed with no monthly subscription and no upfront cost. Paid tiers are consistently reported by operators as 1–3 year terms; Toast does not publish a month-to-month option for its core paid POS tier. https://pos.toasttab.com/pricing · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-no-early-termination-fee differentiator

Merchant Agreement section 8.4: Merchant 'may terminate this Agreement at any time following the Effective Date' but 'shall incur and pay (a) an early termination fee equal to either (i) the remaining Fees for Software Subscription Fees that would have otherwise been due for the remainder of the then-current Term, or ii) for a Pay-as-you-go subscription, one-hundred and fifty dollars ($150.00) multiplied by the number of months remaining in the then-current Term, as applicable ("Early Termination Fee"), and (b) any applicable processing fee related to Software financing.' Section 6.1 adds that 'All Fees are non-cancelable and non-refundable'. There is exactly one carve-out: under section 6.2 a merchant terminating because Toast raised card processing rates or the core POS tablet subscription fee is exempt from the Early Termination Fee, other than the software-financing processing fee. https://pos.toasttab.com/merchant-agreement · retrieved 2026-08-08

commercial-autorenew-terms-published

Merchant Agreement section 8.1: after the Initial Term 'the term of this Agreement with respect to such applicable Order(s) shall automatically renew for successive one (1) year periods (each a "Renewal Term")', and 'either party may terminate an Order, and this Agreement with respect to such Order, by providing at least thirty (30) days' written notice of its intent not to renew prior to the end of the then-current Term.' Section 8.1 also warns that each Renewal Term is governed by the then-current version of the Merchant Agreement and that promotional terms lapse at renewal. The one figure that remains order-form-only is the length of the Initial Term itself, which section 8.1 defers to 'the initial term outlined in the Order' - but the claim asks for the auto-renewal term and the notice window, and both are published. https://pos.toasttab.com/merchant-agreement · retrieved 2026-08-08

commercial-processing-not-bundled differentiator

Same correction: now vendor-documented exclusivity, not operator inference. https://pos.toasttab.com/payment-processing-terms · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

commercial-interchange-plus-published differentiator

Toast publishes blended flat rates only. No interchange-plus option with a stated bps + per-transaction markup was found on any Toast page.

commercial-rate-increase-clause differentiator

No cap, but a real exit right. Section 6.2: software fees 'will remain unchanged during the Initial Term', while 'Toast reserves the right to change (i) Card processing rates and other non-Software Fees at any time during the Term upon thirty (30) days' prior written notice' and '(ii) any Fees at the beginning of, or at any time during, a Renewal Term upon thirty (30) days' prior written notice'. Nothing limits increases to pass-through interchange or network changes. The merchant's remedy is split: for 'a change in Card processing rates or in the Fee for Toast's monthly POS core tablet subscription' the merchant may 'elect to terminate this Agreement', and 'the Early Termination Fee under Section 8.4 shall not apply (other than the processing fee for Software financing)'; for a non-software fee increase or an increase on any other software subscription module the remedy is only to remove that product or module. Shortfalls: the penalty-free exit does not extend to every increase, silence is deemed acceptance, and 'any amounts prepaid by Merchant as of the date of such removal or termination shall be non-refundable.' https://pos.toasttab.com/merchant-agreement · retrieved 2026-08-08

commercial-pricing-published

Partial is right for the wrong reason. Toast does name plans and a $0 entry point publicly, but the pricing page is not machine-retrievable, per-terminal pricing is quote-based, and processing rate is custom-quoted per merchant. Do not let this read as 'Toast publishes its rates'. https://pos.toasttab.com/pricing · retrieved 2026-08-01 adversarially verified

commercial-module-unbundling differentiator

Modules are sold per-Order and can be dropped, but not cleanly. Section 6.2 grants an unconditional removal right in one situation only: where Toast raises the fee on 'any Software subscription module (other than Toast's monthly POS core tablet subscription)', the merchant may give written notice that it 'has elected to remove such applicable non-Software product or service or the Software subscription module that is subject to the Fee change' - and Toast's repricing right is carved out for that case. Otherwise: 'in the event that Toast permits Merchant to modify an Order to remove a product, service or module at any time during the Term (other than in connection with a price increase by Toast as set forth in the immediately foregoing paragraph), Toast shall have the right to update pricing across the Merchant's remaining products, services or modules.' So mid-term removal is discretionary on Toast's side and does trigger repricing of the rest, and section 6.1 makes all fees 'non-cancelable and non-refundable' with prepaid amounts non-refundable on removal. The pricing page (retrieved 2026-08-08, last updated 8 July 2026) markets packages plus add-ons but publishes no per-module cancellation terms. https://pos.toasttab.com/merchant-agreement · retrieved 2026-08-08

commercial-hardware-purchase-outright

Outright purchase is offered alongside no-upfront-cost and pay-as-you-go platform-rate options, so no lease is mandatory. But published per-SKU prices are limited to starter kits. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/How-customers-can-pay-for-Toast-Starter-Kits-Internal · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-hardware-not-locked differentiator

Toast's own Compatible Printers article lists non-proprietary Epson models alongside Toast-branded units: Epson TM-T20 II, TM-U220B, TM-M30, TM-T88V, TM-L90 and L100. The Hardware Hub additionally names Elo terminals and guest/kitchen displays, Zebra (DS2208, DS9308, DS2278) and Honeywell (MK7580, 1472G) scanners, a Brecknell 6710U scale and Meraki routers, and links out with "Don't have a Toast printer? See what other printers are compatible with Toast." The claim asks only whether at least one non-proprietary hardware option is documented; it plainly is. Separately note the terminal itself is a different question, scored under hardware-commodity-devices. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Toast-Compatible-Printers · retrieved 2026-08-02 adversarially verified

commercial-data-export-self-serve

CSV report export exists in Toast Web, and programmatic export exists via Standard/Analytics API access — but the API route is GET-only and requires an RMS Essentials+ subscription for every location, so full self-serve export is plan-conditional. https://doc.toasttab.com/doc/devguide/devApiAccessFAQs.html · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-export-customer-and-loyalty differentiator

Two of three ledgers export cleanly. Guests: 'To export the current view of Guestbook (after any filters and segments you have applied), select Download list'; Toast emails a unique download URL and the file is a CSV carrying contact information, order date, number of orders, average spend per check, order source, dining option, loyalty status, house account status, marketing preference, guest tags, booking counts and guest feedback. Gift cards: the Gift Card Balances report 'lists every active gift card account and its current balance' with a download icon producing a .csv, and the Gift Card Liabilities report is delivered by 'Email Export' as an Excel attachment where 'the Ending Liability value displayed is your total outstanding gift card liability as of that date'. Shortfall: loyalty. Guestbook exports 'Loyalty status' but not the balance - loyalty balance and rewards are visible only inside the guest profile via the Loyalty Module, which directs 'To add or adjust points or rewards, use the Loyalty platform', and no documented CSV/report exports a per-guest loyalty point balance or point ledger. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Access-Your-Guest-Data-with-the-Guest-Report · retrieved 2026-08-08

commercial-post-termination-export-window differentiator

Merchant Agreement section 8.5: 'at Merchant's request if received within thirty (30) days of termination of the Order or Agreement for any reason other than termination by Toast for Merchant's uncured material breach, to the extent Merchant is otherwise unable to access the information itself, Toast will permit Merchant to access the Services solely and exclusively to the extent necessary for Merchant to retrieve a copy of Merchant Data, Customer Data, and any other data, materials, and information collected by the Merchant as part of the Services and contained in Merchant's Toast Account.' The same section fixes the outer bound: 'Toast has no obligation to retain Merchant Data and ... will have the right to irretrievably delete and destroy Merchant Data after thirty (30) days following the termination of this Agreement.' Two conditions worth recording: the window is void if Toast terminated for the merchant's uncured material breach, and it is request-based rather than automatic. Section 5.2 separately confirms 'Merchant owns all Merchant Data.' https://pos.toasttab.com/merchant-agreement · retrieved 2026-08-08

commercial-data-ownership-clause differentiator

Toast publishes a Merchant Data Processing Addendum, which is more than most competitors offer publicly. Whether it affirmatively states merchant ownership and constrains Toast's own product/marketing use of that data beyond aggregated de-identified use was not verified. https://pos.toasttab.com/privacy/merchantdpa · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-pci-p2pe-tokenization

Toast says it assumes most PCI requirements, all payment devices meet or exceed PCI requirements, and most customers need not submit an SAQ or AOC at all — but it does not name the applicable merchant SAQ type or cite a validated P2PE listing. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/What-is-PCI-Compliance · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-pci-dss-4-controls

MFA exists but does not reach the coverage the claim describes. The support article: 'Multi-factor authentication (MFA) ... adds an extra layer of security to your Toast Web login', by authenticator app or SMS one-time code; 'MFA is required for users with 8.1 Financial Accounts or 8.7 Instant Deposits permissions, and for HR+ Toast Payroll users'; and decisively, 'MFA does not apply when you log in on a Toast POS device.' The platform guide adds that other users may enrol voluntarily - 'ideally, anyone with access to critical systems or operations should enrol' - and documents no admin switch to require MFA org-wide. On the standard itself, Toast's PCI Compliance Overview says only that Toast 'obtained independent validation of its payment software' and 'completed independent third-party assessments of our payments ecosystem'; it names no PCI DSS version, does not mention the 31 March 2025 future-dated requirements, and says nothing about payment-page script inventory or integrity monitoring under Req 6.4.3 / 11.6.1. Note the merchant-facing framing: Merchant Agreement section 4.1(f) and the Definitions section push PCI-DSS compliance onto the merchant and point to pcisecuritystandards.org rather than stating Toast's own control posture. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Setting-Up-Multi-Factor-Authentication · retrieved 2026-08-08

commercial-privacy-dsar-tooling

Toast publishes privacy-compliance guidance for operators and an executable Merchant DPA. Dedicated in-app DSAR tooling to locate, export and delete an individual guest's records across loyalty and marketing is not documented. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Managing-Your-Privacy-Compliance-Obligations · retrieved 2026-08-01

commercial-wcag-kiosk-accessibility differentiator

Checked and unresolved. On pos.toasttab.com I walked the sitemap index and all 21 section sitemaps (pages, productsPages, products, integrations, resources, custom.xml) and found no accessibility, VPAT or conformance page; /accessibility, /accessibility-statement, /vpat, /compliance and /pci all return 404, trust.toasttab.com does not resolve, and the site-wide footer legal block on both /pricing and /security links only Privacy Statement, California Privacy Statement, Your Privacy Choices, Terms of Service, Merchant Agreement, Report IP and Report a Vulnerability - no accessibility statement. The kiosk hardware page pos.toasttab.com/hardware/restaurant-kiosk does make a relevant assertion: 'Help blind and low vision guests navigate, customize, and complete kiosk orders with greater independence using screen reader support and compatible tactile controls.' That is a marketing landing page (grade D) with no WCAG version, no conformance level and no linked report, so it cannot establish the claim, which is about publishing a VPAT/ACR. On support.toasttab.com the 828-URL sitemap contains no article matching accessib*, WCAG or VPAT, and the two kiosk articles (Kiosk-Mode-Overview-1493053499500, Kiosk-Placing-Orders-Making-Payments-and-Tipping) describe no non-visual access mode. Unresolved rather than absent because that sitemap indexes only 739 English articles out of a much larger help centre, and vendors commonly release ACRs on request or through a trust portal rather than by publishing them.

commercial-dual-pricing-compliant differentiator

Toast Credit Card Surcharging identifies debit and prepaid by BIN and excludes them automatically, caps at the 3% card-brand maximum, excludes tips and taxes, is gated to eligible US states with state-specific guidance (e.g. New York), and documents the required point-of-entry and point-of-sale disclosure wording. https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Credit-Card-Surcharging-FAQ · retrieved 2026-08-01