No Wasted Talent: How Dos Toros Taqueria Allows Staff to Focus on Food & Guests with xtraCHEF's Toast Integration

With 21 locations in New York City and Chicago, Dos Toros relies on key technologies, especially xtraCHEF and Toast, to create efficiencies that allow their teams to deliver on that mission. 

“We strive to take care of our staff because they’re at the heart of what we do,” says Grant Lieberman, Dos Toros Director of Technology. “I call it no wasted talent. We’re always finding ways to free up our team so they can spend more time on our food and our guests.”

Growing 1.5x with Toast

Dos Toros needed new tools that would help them scale, starting with a point-of-sale system that would work better for their team. "We experienced several points of failure every day with our previous POS. It was a frustrating ten-step process to identify and fix issues, which divided our team's attention between that and serving our guests,” says Grant.

“We've created efficiencies on multiple levels by using Toast. And we've increased our throughput, supporting our growth,” says Grant. "Dos Toros believes in servant leadership, leading by example and being hospitable towards guests and our team members at the store level. When evaluating new tools, we first observe our team and put ourselves in their shoes. We then determine how we can help them provide the best food and service possible."

At all times, Dos Toros looks to reduce the operational load on staff so they can focus on providing genuine hospitality. "Ease of use is essential: Our staff finds Toast intuitive to use and training has been minimal. If a guest ordered the chicken burrito, placing the order would take five clicks on our previous POS. It just takes two clicks with Toast. And our team can put most of their energy and enthusiasm towards creating amazing food and serving our guests,” says Grant.

What else has been crucial for increasing efficiency? Reliability. “We love Toast’s offline feature, which allows us to keep business going. If the network were to go down, Toast still operates as normal for FOH and BOH staff due to the great offline feature. Once it's back online, Toast sends our sales transactions automatically, and everything syncs up painlessly," says Grant. 

Increasing Profit with xtraCHEF and Toast

Dos Toros was also drawn to Toast for their ability to integrate with other restaurant technology solutions like xtraCHEF.

According to Toast's Restaurant Success Report, 52% of restaurateurs ranked high operating and food costs as their top challenge to running a restaurant. Growing quickly, Dos Toros needed to replace the manual touchpoints of their accounts payable process. They wanted a consistent workflow that would eliminate data entry without sacrificing visibility and be straightforward to implement across all locations. In their search for a solution, Dos Toros found xtraCHEF to be a perfect fit. 

Before automating invoice processing, gathering invoice data was painstaking and labor-intensive. “Prior to using xtraCHEF, our store managers scanned invoices individually and emailed each one to corporate," says Irfan Shikari, Dos Toros Financial Controller. "We've significantly reduced the number of steps in the process. Our staff uses xtraCHEF's mobile app to easily capture, search, or access invoices from anywhere on any device.”

Dos Toros found that xtraCHEF improves data accuracy and minimizes the time that managers spend doing paperwork. "We've saved countless hours by implementing xtraCHEF. This directly impacts our customers. If our store managers and in-store employees have more time, they can provide a better guest experience," says Irfan. “We always find ways to optimize each restaurant's operations while making it easy for our staff. They're not necessarily tech or accounting people, so we want tools that are easy to use and reduce errors.” 

They've also been able to save time by simplifying the reconciliation process for statements they receive from their vendors. “We're now able to have a holistic view of our vendor statements using xtraCHEF instead of checking them one-by-one for each vendor. So, we're able to approach our vendors about any discrepancies before paying our invoices," Irfan says.

Set It and Forget It

xtraCHEF's Toast integration has enabled Dos Toros to seamlessly import daily sales data to compare against their purchases. “The integration is so painless that it’d be silly not to have it. We automate as much as possible. And we want to reduce the workload on storefronts so our team can focus on what matters the most: the food and the people,” says Grant.

From an accounting perspective, the integration is all about the flow of information. “Toast has allowed us to set it and forget it. We found it easy to get our sales accounts, AR accounts, and other accounting activities set up," says Irfan. "We care about the strength of the information and its accuracy. We value how painless it is to fix the flow of information or map and set it up.”

Dos Toros has also been able to increase their profits. They're able to compare sales data flowing from Toast against food cost categories coming from invoice line-items extracted by xtraCHEF. And they're able to manage food costs with less effort and at a more granular level. 

“We now have more accountability at the store level. Our managers are more in tune with their weekly food cost reporting. And it gives them the tools they need to hold themselves and staff responsible,” Irfan says. "We have more visibility. And we can more closely monitor our food costs and priority ingredients. This allows us to proactively make adjustments to ensure we're profitable."