How Toast IQ Grow Uses AI to Power Restaurant Marketing

Busy restaurant operators shouldn't have to wear the marketing hat, too. According to Toast's 2025 Voice of the Restaurant Industry Survey,¹ 46% of operators say advertising is moderately or extremely challenging, and attracting new guests remains one of the industry's biggest pain points. In 2026, that changes.

Meet Toast IQ Grow: Toast's AI marketing agent, using your own POS data to build campaigns that actually know your business—your menu, your regulars, your slow Tuesdays. It plugs your marketing and advertising directly into your ordering channels, so more of your traffic comes directly to your first-party ordering channels, helping you reduce third-party commissions.

This is your guide to Toast IQ Grow, an AI-powered solution built specifically for restaurant marketing.

What is Toast IQ Grow? 

Toast IQ Grow is an automated marketing package for restaurants that pairs together a specialized AI Marketing Agent with dedicated human support to drive customers directly to your ordering channels, with less manual work.

Toast IQ Grow is built specifically for the busy operator and is built directly into your POS to learn from your business’ transactions. 

How the AI marketing agent works

Toast IQ Grow connects directly to a restaurant's native Toast POS data, sales history, and Guest CRM, and can incorporate local market insights like seasonal slowdowns, all without relying on third-party data syncs, since it lives inside the Toast ecosystem.

From there, it works two ways. Proactively, it identifies slowdowns or opportunities in your sales data and automatically drafts campaigns across email, SMS, social media, and digital ads, segmenting your Guest CRM to target specific diners — lapsed guests, frequent lunch regulars, and more. On demand, operators can type natural-language requests like "Draft an email campaign for our summer sale" or "Draft an SMS campaign for slow Tuesday lunch," and the AI Marketing Agent builds it from there.

Either way, Toast IQ Grow creates drafts and asks for permission before implementation. It will never send or schedule a campaign on its own. Every draft generates a link where the operator can review, edit, and manually trigger or schedule the send.

The human side: Your dedicated marketing success manager

Every Toast IQ Grow account includes a dedicated Marketing Success Manager (MSM) — a real person, not a shared support queue. The AI Marketing Agent drafts and segments; your MSM reviews that work alongside you, aligning it with your brand voice and guidelines, and makes sure nothing goes out the door without your approval.

What's included in Toast IQ Grow

This premium package includes:

• Integrated AI: The Toast IQ Marketing Agent for instant campaign planning and asset creation.

• Managed Marketing Services: A dedicated Marketing Success Manager to strategize and run your campaigns.

• Digital Storefront Pro: Custom websites, commission-free online ordering, and Toast Delivery Services®

• Toast Advertising Pro

Marketing Essentials: Email and SMS marketing, loyalty, gift cards, and Toast Social Media marketing.

Toast IQ Grow vs. other AI tools for restaurant marketing 

Plenty of tools promise "AI-powered restaurant marketing." However, few can prove it moved the needle because most aren't built on your actual sales data, and most leave you to run the strategy yourself.

Toast IQ Grow is different: it's trained on your POS data, backed by dedicated human support, and built directly into the ordering channels where your sales actually happen. That combination shows up in the numbers. With Toast IQ Grow, Spirits Food & Friends reduced monthly marketing agency spend by 71% and can now directly tie marketing to sales, attributing 24% of total sales to marketing since launch.*

Here's how that combination stacks up against the other major restaurant POS providers:

Toast IQ Grow marketing results

Don't just take our word for it. Here's what operators are saying about the impact Toast IQ Grow has had on their business.

"Connecting marketing and sales used to be a blind spot for us, but Toast IQ Grow has made it seamless. We even have regulars come back and tell us they visited because they saw our emails. Our email and phone-number lists continue to grow every week, and having everything together in Toast makes it easy to manage.***" - Huseyin Ozer, Owner, Bodrum NYC

"As business owners, we already wear so many hats... I know that email marketing will pay off for us, I just didn't have the time to do it. With Toast IQ Grow, I know that emails are going out, and the more eyes we get on us repeatedly, our sales will naturally grow.***" - Tyler DellaRatta, Owner, Morning Mugs Coffee, Baltimore, MD

"I am a firm believer that marketing is make-or-break for most businesses, and the biggest mistake is not doing it at all. That was what happened with email and text. We were collecting this information and not utilizing it. With Toast IQ Grow, we have the opportunity to work with a specialist and ensure we take advantage of these channels.***" -  Tyler DellaRatta, Owner, Morning Mugs Coffee, Baltimore, MD

“My favorite feature is the insights and ROIs. I can really see the comparisons on all of the campaigns we’ve run; I can really see the reporting. Especially when I present to the owners, they’re stoked.***” - Junction Bar & Grill, Evan Dinha, Manager, San Diego, CA

Is Toast IQ Grow right for your restaurant?

Toast IQ Grow is built for operators who want restaurant marketing working in their favor, but don't have the time, staff, or budget to run it themselves. It's a strong fit if:

• You're already building a guest list with opt-in contact details (email, phone, loyalty)

• You've tried self-serve marketing tools and found you don't have time to act on them

• You're paying an outside agency and want to see clearer, more direct ROI

• You want marketing tied to your actual POS and ordering data, not a separate system you have to reconcile manually

• You don’t have the time to actually focus on your restaurant marketing, but you know it’s important to

Let AI (and a real person) handle your restaurant marketing

Restaurant marketing in 2026 has often come down to a trade-off: hand it off to an AI tool and hope it "gets" your business, or hire (and pay for) a human agency that actually understands your regulars but can't move at algorithm speed. Toast IQ Grow skips the trade-off entirely.

Toast IQ Grow is built to uniquely combine advanced AI with dedicated human support. Clover, Square, and SpotOn offer one or the other—not both. Toast IQ Grow's AI marketing agent learns from your actual POS data, not a generic template, so campaigns reflect your menu, your week nights, and your regulars from day one. 

Dedicated human support means there's always someone who can course-correct, answer questions, and make sure the strategy stays sharp as your business changes. And because it's built into your existing ordering channels, the guests it brings in land directly with you, not with a third-party app taking a cut.

Ready to see what AI-powered, human-backed marketing can do for your restaurant? Learn more about Toast IQ Grow.

FAQs

What are AI tools for restaurant marketing?

AI marketing tools for restaurants use technology to automate tasks like drafting emails, building SMS campaigns, segmenting guest lists, and running social or digital ads — often based on sales data, guest history, or local trends. Some tools generate content from a simple prompt; others, like Toast IQ Grow, go further by learning directly from a restaurant's POS data and pairing that AI output with human review before anything goes out.

How do restaurants use AI?

Beyond marketing, restaurants use AI to forecast sales and staffing needs, manage inventory and reduce waste, personalize menu recommendations, automate guest communications (like reservation confirmations or review responses), and analyze performance data to spot trends a busy operator might miss. 

Is AI worth it for a small or independent restaurant?

For independent operators without a dedicated marketing team, AI can close a real gap — turning guest and sales data into campaigns without requiring hours of manual work or an agency retainer. 

What is included with Toast IQ Grow?

This premium package includes:

• Integrated AI: The Toast IQ Marketing Agent for instant campaign planning and asset creation.

• Managed Marketing Services: A dedicated Marketing Success Manager to strategize and run your campaigns.

• Digital Storefront Pro: Custom websites, commission-free online ordering, and Toast Delivery Services®

• Toast Advertising Pro

• Marketing Essentials: Email and SMS marketing, loyalty, gift cards, and Toast Social Media marketing.

How do I know if my marketing campaigns are actually driving sales?

Toast provides closed-loop reporting. Because your marketing is integrated directly with your Toast POS, you can know when a campaign turns into a transaction. You’ll receive monthly performance reports showing your real return on investment (ROI), plus a detailed marketing-driven sales report accessible at all times.

*Based on comparison of customer-provided data on monthly marketing agency costs prior to Toast IQ Grow start date (Sept 2025) v. marketing agency spend after start date; and Toast internal data on total marketing attributed sales percentage since start date. Individual results will vary.

**Competitive information and data on this page compiled as of August 2026 and is based on publicly available information. This information is subject to change or update without notice. Toast does not make any representations as to the completeness or accuracy of the information on this page.

***Results self-reported by customer. Individual results will vary.

¹2025 Survey Methodology - To help better understand the restaurant industry, Toast conducted a blind survey of 712 restaurant 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 both full-service and quick-service restaurants. Respondents were not made aware that Toast was fielding the study. Panel providers granted incentives to restaurant respondents for participation. Using a standard margin of error calculation, at a confidence interval of 95%, the margin of error is +/- 4%.