Toast, the global technology platform built for restaurant and retail businesses, introduced Toast IQ Team, a new labor management solution for restaurant and retail operators, alongside a significant expansion of Toast IQ Grow, the complete marketing solution Toast introduced earlier in 2026. From building schedules that help manage labor costs to turning great guest experiences into five-star reviews, Toast IQ Team and Toast IQ Grow mark another step toward an agentic platform that absorbs the hardest work of running a business and gives operators measurable proof that it’s working.

Restaurant and retail operators juggle everything from scheduling and payroll to marketing, often on thin margins. Many are turning to AI for relief: nearly 9 in 10 restaurant operators surveyed (86%) are experimenting with AI for business purposes, according to Toast’s 2026 Voice of the Restaurant Survey.1 When those tools exist outside of the platforms operators normally use, they risk becoming one more burden to manage. Toast IQ Grow and Toast IQ Team are designed to work differently, with features integrated into the Toast platform, grounded in the user’s own sales, employee, and guest data—and with context on both the user’s business and the jobs to be done. Users get fast, deep insights so operators can take immediate, informed action, without sacrificing the judgment and oversight hospitality requires by keeping humans in the loop. That means less time on tedious work and more time running the businesses.

“While every operator wants a packed house or a line out the door, higher volume often brings higher operational complexity,” said Mike Miller, Chief Product Officer at Toast. “We continue to build on our vision for the Toast IQ ecosystem to take on the heavy lifting for restaurants and retailers, especially in the heat of a busy shift. The enhancements to Toast IQ Grow are engineered to attract more guests to an operator’s front door and keep them coming back, while Toast IQ Team is designed to start tackling back office work that comes with that growth. Toast is building agentic solutions that deliver real outcomes.”

Toast IQ Team: built to take on labor costs and keep teams happier

Toast IQ Team is a new solution that combines forecasting, agentic scheduling and gamification features with payroll and tip management to help operators manage labor costs, run more productive shifts, and create a better employee experience. Scheduling is a high-stakes balancing act: too few people can hurt service, while too many can erode margins, and constantly changing staff availability, time-off and shift-swap requests only add to the challenge. That kind of complex, context-dependent work is exactly what Toast IQ is built to take on. Toast restaurants using the scheduling solution within Toast IQ Team averaged 41% fewer overtime hours per employee than those Toast restaurants not using it.2

Staff it right
  • Sales forecasting [New | AI]: Uses an operator’s historical POS data to help operators plan staffing around anticipated demand, bringing more predictability to labor costs.
  • Scheduling Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Builds a complete schedule in seconds based on employee availability, expected sales, and overtime risk. One of the most essential and time-consuming management tasks becomes a quick review-and-adjust process.
  • Team Performance [New | AI]: Lets operators launch in-platform contests to help motivate staff around high-margin specials, with live leaderboards in MyToast, Toast’s mobile app for restaurant and retail employees. Restaurants running menu item contests have seen an average 10% total sales lift on featured items3, including a 14% lift in alcohol sales during a recent contest at MugShots Bar & Grill.4
Retain the team
  • MyToast employee app: Newly enhanced app gives staff one place on their phones to view schedules, swap shifts, check earnings, and track contest leaderboards.
  • Tips Manager: Automates tip pool calculations and provides digital receipts employees can review.
  • Payroll Benefits: Operators can offer health insurance and 401(k) plans integrated directly with payroll.5,6

In a recent Toast survey, 92% of restaurant employees who use Toast said it has a positive influence on their happiness at work, compared to 74% of employees at other POS providers.7

Peace of mind, every shift 
  • Timekeeping in Toast POS: Syncs schedules directly with the POS so operators can monitor early clock-ins and shift end times.
  • Payroll Success Partners (PSP) [New]: Dedicated human payroll support that operators know by name, offering ongoing guidance after onboarding so operators can run payroll with confidence. Nine out of 10 customers who worked with PSPs rated their support experience a 5 out of 5.8

“Toast IQ Team has saved me countless hours—from payroll, to scheduling, to contests, to tip management, and tip pooling policy,” said Tricia Rowley, Director of Operations, Madi Group. “All of it together saves me about 10 to 15 hours a week.”9

Toast IQ Grow: new capabilities to drive guest demand

Toast IQ Grow, introduced earlier in 2026, combines agentic AI with a dedicated human marketer to help run digital marketing for operators who don’t have time to do it themselves. New SEO, Reviews, and Offers agents are all grounded in each business’s own Toast data.

Get found
  • SEO Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Continuously reviews a business’s online presence and its own Toast data to identify what may be limiting its discoverability across traditional and AI-powered search, then provides actionable, tailored recommendations to close those gaps, such as highlighting a trending menu item on their website. Working continuously in the background, it can catch gaps a one-time audit might miss, helping guests discover the business wherever they’re searching.
  • Photography Services [New]: Two in-person photoshoots a year with a professional photographer, providing edited photos that put a business’s website and listings in their best light.
Win trust
  • Reviews Agent [New | AI]: Helps keep a business’s online reputation working in its favor and removes a task from the operator’s day. The agent automatically prompts guests for reviews at moments they’re already engaging with the business, such as an online order confirmation, and gives unhappy guests a direct channel to share feedback so operators can respond quickly. Among U.S. restaurant diners who tried a new restaurant in the past three months, 77% said positive ratings or reviews influenced their choice to do so. 10
Bring them back
  • Offers Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Recommends offers around goals an operator sets, such as welcoming a new guest or winning back a lapsed one, built on that business’s own guest and transaction data rather than a one-size-fits-all discount. 
  • Marketing Agent [AI]: Acts as an always-on marketing strategist and copywriter, analyzing a business’s own data to build personalized email, SMS, and social campaigns for approval, so operators can engage guests without doing all of the manual work themselves.

Tinku Saini, Owner of Tarka Indian Kitchen, said the Reviews Agent has improved their online reputation. “We have seen a significant increase in Google reviews since we started using the Toast Reviews Agent, with the overall number of reviews up 39% and 5-star reviews increasing 41% when comparing 10 weeks pre- and post-launch. I also like seeing the Toast IQ analysis of recent trends, which shows the main positive callouts and the issues we need to address.”11

More Toast IQ agents, available through early access

Toast is continuing to expand Toast IQ to take on more of the everyday work operators handle, from optimizing menus to answering the phone, with additional agents available to existing customers through the Test Kitchen:

  • Menu Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Identifies and executes menu optimizations like improved descriptions, finds missing or weak digital menu content, and gets pricing recommendations.
  • Answering Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Helps answer the phone so operators capture more guest interactions with fewer interruptions.
  • Toast IQ Configurable Agents [New | AI] (Beta): Enables operators to set up AI agents from prebuilt templates, with little technical expertise required, to accomplish tasks like catching missed clock-outs before payroll closes, flagging an unusual void within the hour, or forecasting how much of each item to prep before the kitchen starts.

Investing across the platform

Toast is also making several additional updates to improve the everyday operator experience:

  • Toast, now in more languages: Toast Web, the Toast IQ AI assistant, and the software running on Toast Go handhelds and terminals are now available in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Québec French, allowing servers to change language by hardware device on the KDS, POS, and Toast Go® to enable multilingual teams to work in the language they know best.
  • Toast Fuel: Brings fuel operations and payments onto Toast’s retail platform, giving convenience store and fuel operators a single system for fuel, retail, and foodservice.
  • A more modern dining experience with Toast Tables:
    • Seamless Checkout: Lets guests save a payment method when booking through Toast Tables and pay automatically at the end of the meal.
    • Ticketing: Lets restaurants sell tickets for special events directly through Toast Tables, connecting ticket sales, payments, and guest data in one place.

To learn more about the full Fall Release, visit pos.toasttab.com/innovation-hub

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