Toast is a cloud-based technology platform built specifically for restaurants and food and beverage businesses. The core product is a fully integrated POS system running on Toast's own Android-based hardware — terminals, handhelds, kiosks, and kitchen displays — that connects front and back of house operations. Restaurants use Toast to take orders, process payments, manage their kitchen, run scheduling and payroll, handle inventory, and execute marketing, all within a single platform. Toast sells primarily through a direct, localized field sales force, and roughly two-thirds of demand is inbound, driven by word-of-mouth referrals. Toast currently serves approximately 164,000 locations, which it estimates is about 20% of the U.S. restaurant market. Toast makes money two ways: per-location SaaS subscription fees and payment processing take rates on GPV. Toast processes essentially all payments for its customers, and its net retention rate of 109% reflects customers adding locations and adopting more products over time. Toast also offers Toast Capital, short-term loans to restaurant operators underwritten using Toast's own POS and payments data. Hardware gross profit is negative — Toast uses hardware as a customer acquisition tool. Beyond the core U.S. SMB and mid-market segment, which represents roughly 95% of ARR, Toast is expanding into enterprise chains, international markets, and food and beverage retail. Toast launched ToastIQ, an AI assistant embedded in the platform, in late 2025, with over half of all locations using it within four months of launch.