Your Guide to Toast for Restaurant Retail

If you own a hybrid-concept restaurant you know how frustrating it can be to maintain two different software systems. A hybrid-concept restaurant is one that does both food service and sells some sort of merchandise. Think grab-and-go concepts, bookstore cafes, or even wine bottles being sold in a bistro. Historically, if you wanted to sell items, you would need a separate POS system to make those sales. Not anymore. 

Introducing Toast for Restaurant Retail, a first-of-its-kind, unified food service and retail POS. Restaurant Retail gives food and beverage businesses access to powerful inventory management tools that make creating SKUs, adding inventory, and publishing rich product descriptions across all your channels a breeze.

Ready to learn more? Let’s dive in. 

The importance of a unified food service and retail POS

So why is it important to have a unified POS for both your revenue streams? 

Saves your business money

Running multiple systems can be costly in terms of software licenses, hardware, and maintenance. Consolidating into a single POS system can reduce these costs, saving your business money in the long run.

Improves efficiency 

Restaurant Retail simplifies the management of various aspects of your business. Reducing the need for separate systems can eliminate confusion and inefficiencies. And, having unified reporting and analytics all in one place will keep your business organized, instead of having to pull two separate documents when tracking your numbers and metrics. 

Better inventory Management

Tracking inventory for both food and merchandise is critical for controlling costs and ensuring you have the right products in stock. A unified POS system, such as Restaurant Retail, can provide real-time inventory updates and alerts when items are running low. 

Enhances the customer experience

Having your guests pay for their food service in one place, and purchasing items in another can harm the overall customer experience. Having a POS that can send food orders to the kitchen while also checking out a merchandise purchase makes for a seamless dining experience. 

Ultimately, it can help you run a more profitable and competitive business in the evolving restaurant and retail landscape. Restaurant retail helps by managing your inventory, creating new SKUs, and working alongside your food service – all in one singular platform. 

Manage your retail items with ease

With out-of-date POS systems, you may find yourself entering retail items individually, taking up hours of your staff’s time. With Toast for Restaurant Retail, you’re able to manage your items in bulk, mass update prices, and price items by margin – making your day-to-day operations so much easier. 

You also don’t have to worry about running out of items or overstocking. Restaurant Retail gives you the ability to set up par levels, so when you’re low stock you’ll get re-order queues. Inventory management has never been easier! 

Easily create new SKUs

What most restaurant POS systems lack is a scanner, making it difficult to produce SKUs (scannable bar codes). However, Toast SmartScan pulls in key metadata for new SKUs such as product image, vintage, abv, brand, and other key information, and is as simple as scanning a barcode with your mobile phone. 

For example, say you’re selling cookbooks. When you scan a book that has a strong web presence, its description can automatically be added to your system. Whether selling in-store, for pickup & delivery, or nationwide shipping, all of your SKUs can be managed in one place regardless of where they’re being sold. That’s one great way to stay organized! 

This also enables you to generate and print barcodes directly from Toast for all your items, and ensures the latest information is always tied to the barcode. Click here to learn how to start using Toast SmartScan. 

Manage your entire business in one place

With both food service and retail on one platform, you can offer guests a seamless experience across your entire business – regardless of how they order.

Picture this: A customer comes into your deli or grocery store and wants to order a sandwich and purchase one of your jars of homemade pickles. They can place the order at one terminal and the sandwich ticket can route to your kitchen while you’re still cashing them out. This is all on one system. 

Similarly, whether you’re looking to update inventory, pricing, or other key information for one or all items you can do so on one easy and intuitive item management screen. This means no more consolidating reports from multiple systems. All of your key reporting information for both sides of your business lives in one place.

For more deli/grocery resources check out this site. 

Shopify integration coming soon!

Coming soon, Toast for Restaurant Retail will be offering a Shopify integration, enabling your restaurant business to sell merchandise online. This is a great opportunity to expand your reach and increase your bottom line – make sure to look for this new integration soon. 

Hear from our customers

Read on to hear what our customers are already saying about Toast for Restaurant Retail.

Also, check out this customer story on how Toast for Restaurant Retail helped Snowy Owl become a hybrid retailer.

Your all-in-one restaurant solution

You have a lot going on, and we get it. This is why having an all-in-one solution for all your restaurant operations is crucial in such a competitive industry. Thankfully, you can leverage the rest of the world-class Toast platform, from online ordering to the kitchen display system, without having to sacrifice your retail operation.