Toast Delivers Precision Insights, Action, and Efficiency for Retailers

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Key Terms

sku technical

A SKU (stock keeping unit) is a unique code a company assigns to a specific product variant—think of it as a product’s name tag that distinguishes size, color, model or packaging. Investors use SKUs to track which items sell, how fast inventory turns, and where profit comes from, so they reveal customer demand, supply-chain efficiency and revenue drivers much like each item in a supermarket tells the store which shelves are performing.

return on ad spend financial

A marketing metric that shows how much revenue a company earns for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated by dividing sales attributed to ads by the ad spend. It matters to investors because it reveals how efficiently marketing turns money into sales — much like measuring how much crop you get for each bag of seed — and influences profit margins, growth prospects, and budget decisions.

01/08/2026 - 08:00 AM

New AI-powered features give retailers instant visibility into stock, margins, and catalog health; additional platform enhancements enable easy advertising and help drive a faster, more seamless experience

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Toast (NYSE: TOST), the digital platform built for hospitality, announced its latest platform updates for retailers, including retail-specific capabilities to its Toast IQ AI assistant and a host of core platform updates designed to help retailers operate faster and more efficiently, driving their businesses forward. The company will showcase these updates at the 2026 National Retail Federation Show in New York City.

The Toast IQ AI assistant enables retailers to move at the speed of conversation by instantly showing users what’s selling, what’s running low, and where margin opportunities lie in their business.

“Retailers need new ways to unlock greater efficiency and growth—without adding time spent or operational complexity,” said Omri Traub, COO, Retail at Toast. “With Toast IQ, operators have an AI-powered ‘right hand’ partner that understands the flow of inventory and pricing as naturally as a store manager does, surfacing helpful, actionable insights at the right time. And features like Advertising make it easy to reach new customers. These updates are designed to help our retail customers gain a critical edge. We will continue to innovate in collaboration with customers as we grow our retail community on Toast.”

New Toast IQ capabilities drive insights and action

Recent Toast research shows that over 83% of food and beverage retail operators plan to increase their use of AI tools in 2026.¹ The Toast IQ AI assistant enables retailers to move at the speed of conversation by instantly showing users what’s selling, what’s running low, and where margin opportunities lie in their business. Responding to natural language prompts, Toast IQ’s latest updates bring powerful restocking, pricing, seasonal, and SKU management insights into the Toast platform, helping retail operators simplify daily tasks and make personalized, relevant data-driven decisions faster.

Toast IQ connects insight to execution directly within the Toast platform—surfacing opportunities and enabling retailers to ask complex questions and take action. Examples include:

Inventory insights: Toast IQ can be prompted to identify items nearing depletion, out of stock, or inactive for 30+ days, allowing operators to adjust replenishment strategies. Retailers can simply ask: “What needs restocking this week?” or “Which items that sold recently are low in stock?” or “What items aren’t moving?”

Pricing intelligence to help improve margins: Retailers can receive margin-based pricing information, flag underperforming products, and rebalance costs with one prompt. For example: "Suggest margin and pricing changes that would allow me to increase sales by $1,000 next month" or “What prices should I set for my items to maintain a 30% margin?”

Take real-time action: Toast IQ can create and edit items or mark a SKU out of stock—directly from the chat interface, completing these tasks in seconds. Retailers can say: “Mark the California olive oil out of stock” or “Write an item description for the new peach salsa.”

Organizing and optimizing product catalogs: Toast IQ can highlight missing or duplicative items and barcodes, identify out-of-date shelf labels, and make recommendations to help stores maintain clean, searchable catalogs. Operators can also proactively prompt: “Show items with missing barcodes” or “Which of my shelf labels are out of date?”

Additional Toast platform updates designed for the rhythms of retail

Retailers rank all-in-one functionality as one of the most important criteria when selecting a point-of-sale system.¹ Toast is designed to support complex retail operations, enabling operators to use multiple service models and checkout experiences in-store and online. Toast also plans to enhance its platform with a host of other features for retail operators, including:

AI invoice scanning:* When users scan invoices into the Toast platform, AI can pull the information into Toast's receiving workflows, reducing the manual labor of individually entering invoice details line by line and making it easier to maintain accurate inventory counts and costs.

Cloud-enabled scales and labeling:* Through new integrations with DIGI America and Upshop 360, Toast will expand its retail ecosystem to include connected weighing and labeling solutions, enabling users to make hundreds of daily price changes on weighted items instantly, transforming this highly manual and error-prone process. These cloud-enabled scales and labeling systems will integrate seamlessly with Toast’s point of sale, allowing retailers to manage pricing, labeling, and inventory with greater precision and speed, delivering a more unified, data-driven retail experience.

Advertising: Toast Advertising enables retailers to reach new customers with easy-to-launch digital ads across Google and Meta. Designed for simplicity, the platform uses AI-powered suggestions and pre-filled recommendations so retailers can go live in minutes—no marketing expertise, agencies, or extra tools required. Advertising offers clear, actionable ROI insights by connecting campaign performance directly to online and in-store sales, delivering results retailers can see. Typical beta users running Google Ads campaigns with Toast Advertising are seeing a return on ad spend of over 8X.²

Toast Go^® 3 handheld with barcode scanning:* Handhelds are powerful companions to retail operators, and the Toast Go 3 with cellular capabilities enables staff to roam freely—from the floor to the back room to off-premise locations—without losing connectivity at checkout. With the upcoming development of handheld barcode scanning, staff will be able to process sales, check inventory, and execute stock-takes quickly, all from the floor. This will help reduce the need for separate, dedicated scanning equipment and streamline a manual process.

For Kirsten Maitland, Co-Owner at Rebel Cheese in New York City, Toast helps her take control of inventory management and provides the real-time visibility she needs to run her business efficiently:

“Even with all the complexities of selling cheese by the quarter-pound and accounting for samples, Toast makes the whole system run smoothly. The team can update inventory in seconds, and Toast keeps everything accurate across in-store and delivery channels. It takes what could be a really complicated process and makes it simple and reliable—and because of that, we haven’t had an out-of-stock issue in a long time.

“Margins and cash flow are things I’m constantly watching, and Toast makes that so much easier. Prices are always fluctuating, so I rely on Toast to monitor my margins and alert me when something drops below my threshold. If an item falls under 40%, I know right away and can either raise the price or stop carrying it. With hundreds of products, you can’t track every single item manually—Toast gives me the visibility to protect my margins and take action fast.”

Visit our retail page and National Retail Federation Booth #6345 to learn more.

*Indicates early development and early release features.

About Toast

Toast [NYSE: TOST] is a cloud-based, all-in-one digital technology platform purpose-built for the entire restaurant community. Toast provides a comprehensive platform of software as a service (SaaS) products and financial technology solutions that give restaurants everything they need to run their business across point of sale, payments, operations, digital ordering and delivery, marketing and loyalty, and team management. We serve as the restaurant operating system, connecting front of house and back of house operations across service models including dine-in, takeout, delivery, catering, and retail. Toast helps restaurants streamline operations, increase revenue, and deliver amazing guest experiences. For more information, visit www.toasttab.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements,” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the context of the statement and generally arise when Toast or its management is discussing its beliefs, estimates or expectations. Such statements generally include the words “believes,” “plans,” “intends,” “may,” “will,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “outlook,” “continues,” or similar expressions. These statements are not historical facts or guarantees of future performance, but represent the beliefs of Toast and its management at the time the statements were made regarding future events which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside Toast’s control. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecast in such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding Toast’s business plans and strategy in serving retail customers, Toast’s innovation strategies, the development and release of Toast IQ product and features and additional platform updates, including their intended functionalities and anticipated benefits to Toast and its customers, customers’ perceptions of these existing and future products, features and updates, and the arrangements between Toast and its partners and the anticipated benefits of such partnership on Toast’s business and operations.

The forward-looking statements contained in this release are also subject to other risks and uncertainties, including those more fully described in Toast’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including in the sections entitled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations'' in Toast’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, Toast’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, and Toast’s subsequent SEC filings. Toast can give no assurance that the plans, intentions, expectations or strategies as reflected in or suggested by those forward-looking statements will be attained or achieved. The forward-looking statements in this release are based on information available to Toast as of the date hereof, and Toast disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Toast’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

TOST-CORP

¹ To help better understand the retail industry, Toast conducted a blind survey of 492 Retail decision-makers operating 16 or fewer locations in the United States including both Toast and non-Toast customers from April 18, 2025 to May 13, 2025. Respondents include a mix of convenience stores, bottle shops, and grocery stores. Respondents were not made aware that Toast was fielding the study. Panel providers granted incentives to respondents for participation. Using a standard margin of error calculation, at a confidence interval of 95%, the margin of error on average is +/- 5%.

²Based on Toast Advertising data from beta users from January 1, 2025 to October 30, 2025 for live Google Ads campaigns with at least $300 in ad spend and that launched on September 30, 2025, or before. Data based on actual online order values, as well as estimated store visits and average on-premise order value. Individual results will vary. Ad spend excludes any applicable service fees from Toast.