How Chef Zhao optimized operations and supercharged marketing with Toast

Chef Zhao has been a staple in California’s Bay Area culinary scene for over two decades — a badge of honor in an extremely competitive region. 

Chinese restaurant concepts are notorious for firing dishes at the speed of light, despite often having expansive menus. In a trial by fire, Chef Zhao’s first restaurant relied on painstaking handwritten tickets. As his restaurants evolved, his POS requirements did too. To accommodate these high-velocity demands, restaurants like his need a rock-solid POS partner to help support growth. 

After 20 years, five restaurants in five different cities, and two POS systems, Chef Zhao found his partner in Toast and hasn’t looked back. From promotional offers — including one that generated 23x ROI¹ — to year-over-year sales growth of over 26% during the busy holiday season², Chef Zhao continues to find ways to help boost his business with Toast solutions — a far cry from the early days of buggy independent POS’s and clunky legacy systems.

A common language with functionality lost in translation

In 2006, when Chef Zhao opened his second restaurant in Milpitas, he was introduced to a niche Chinese POS system. After a fast implementation, problems quickly mounted up.

First, he discovered many of his software solutions were only trials. Despite being sold on a vision of a complete POS, he was left with less functionality and more subscriptions to pay.

Then, operational gaps surfaced. For example, payments batching and POS ordering were separate. This meant tips were not being automatically captured in nightly batches, so they had to manually input gratuities for batches after-hours.

The missing features and increased labor due to manual processes made Chef Zhao realize he needed a true all-in-one POS, not just one with a common language.

Leaving the wrong kind of “legacy”

After culinary school, Chef Zhao found his peers were using an integrated legacy POS to run restaurants. This was especially true of family-owned businesses, which led Chef Zhao to look into a legacy POS provider.

In 2016, when he reopened his Palo Alto location, he implemented a popular legacy POS system with integrated ordering, plus newer features like gift cards and loyalty. While he was excited to finally have a professional POS system, he once again was hit with harsh reality checks.

“The fees were extraordinarily high. It was around $13,000 for setup. This was 10 years ago, just for setup! It was just for two POS monitors, one backup house server, one display monitor, and security like firewalls. One week later, I found out it wasn’t as easy to use as I thought. We bought their online ordering system, which was around $2,000… but it never got installed, so we had to do takeout the hard way. We basically had to makeshift online orders via table service tickets, and then literally manually highlighted everything and hit the takeout button to mark it after they order.³”

Within a couple of years, more problems cropped up. Guests became frustrated as credit card transactions took 10+ seconds to complete. Meanwhile, Chef Zhao began to experience chargebacks at a higher clip than before as the legacy POS only supported magstripe swipes.

Labor-intensive manual work once again was the final straw. “We weren’t able to update pricing for everything at once. We literally went in and spent hours clicking individual items to change prices, and adding new items was even more painful.”

By 2024, Chef Zhao was fed up and knew it was time to leave his legacy system in the past.

Toast to an all-in-one partner

Operational efficiency was at the top of Chef Zhao’s priorities. As an all-in-one platform purpose-built for restaurants like his, Toast immediately met his needs. Enhanced menu management capabilities allowed him to edit prices in bulk and add or remove menu items, which would flow across in-person service to online ordering to back of house operations.

Soon after, Chef Zhao began utilizing more tools to help unlock even more business with his new Toast POS.

“I always believed that technology can impact a business either in a good or in a bad way. Since it’s been over a year after we switched to Toast, we are seeing convenience that we provided to our customers and our staff through programmed integrations thanks to the Toast team. Every module that we choose  has worked well, and I personally am really happy with the result.”

“If you waste a customer’s time, you also waste their money”

Chef Zhao understands that money makes money. One example is his investment into Toast’s KDS (Kitchen Display System). 

For example, Chef Zhao recounts how his Golden Beef Noodle Soup is one of his most popular items. People keep coming back for the flavor — and its generous portion size. It’s so popular that Chef Zhao has had to minimize time-to-table for each bowl: two minutes. 

Though the dish takes hours to prep, dishing it out takes just minutes by arming his front of house servers with Toast Go® handhelds, and his back of house cooks with the KDS. Chef Zhao sees many of his Chinese restaurant peers that are averse to technology, but he views it not as replacing service, but rather enhancing hospitality through speed, and thereby a better guest experience.

“A guest’s time is valuable, and so is ours. If you waste a customer’s time, you also waste their money.”

Dealing out deals

Chef Zhao is a restaurant owner-operator by trade, but a marketer at heart. He understands the power of promotions, gift cards, email marketing, and loyalty programs — and he gets it all with Toast’s Marketing Suite.

Chef Zhao’s promotional offers have been immensely successful. Not only do his timely promos help bring in new guests, but it also reengages stagnant ones. Plus, it keeps his regulars happy by rewarding them with discounts.

He usually creates offers every one or two weeks. Sometimes they’re sweeping promotions like a spend-and-save, or specific promotions to get customers to try a new item.

First party, branded online ordering means more money in your pocket

Third-party marketplaces help restaurant owners broaden their reach and capture new demand. However, building a strong first-party ordering channel is equally important for fostering direct guest relationships while controlling margins and costs.

Chef Zhao prioritizes direct ordering by using Toast Digital Storefront. Built-in SEO with automatic enhancements to his branded website gets his page ranked higher on Google, helping guests find his business first. Toast Advertising boosts his business even further with campaigns that are easy-to-run yet powerful — his current Google Ads campaign has driven an excellent 7.8x return on ad spend**.

Once guests arrive at his direct online ordering page, they gravitate toward Chef Zhao’s promotions and rewarding loyalty program. These solutions offer enticing pricing while Toast Online Ordering’s commission-free platform and smart upsells help Chef Zhao boost his revenue — and keep more of it.

Enrolled guest information is then stored in his guest directory, allowing him to easily run email and SMS marketing campaigns powered by Toast Marketing Suite. These campaigns keep customers in the loop about new dishes and target them with promotions designed to bring them back

Toast’s ecosystem lets him own his guest relationships, protect his bottom line with commission-free ordering, and build lasting guest loyalty.

Building a bond with loyalty

Another way Chef Zhao brings more of his online business to his own Toast Online Ordering portal is by coupling it with Toast Loyalty while supercharging it with the rest of the Toast Marketing Suite.

"I tell the customer that if you don't want to pay extra fees, consider ordering from us directly! Our ordering system is basically giving value and you're getting loyalty combined."

For Chef Zhao, Toast Loyalty has helped him build and engage with his community. He notes that customers fall into two camps: those who redeem immediately, and some "super-loyalists" who hoard points — sometimes up to $700 or more — because they respect the business's hard work and don't want to take advantage of him.

He couples this loyalty program with Toast Email Marketing and SMS Marketing to reach his audiences with different channels. Lastly, he builds a loyal following through Toast Marketing Suite’s Gift Cards functionality, often pairing gift cards with a promotional offer. He recently offered a $10 voucher with the purchase of a $100 gift card, which resulted in a 4x ROI for a quick campaign⁵.

The bottom line for helping maximize margins

With 20+ years of experience, Chef Zhao has a treasure trove of tips and tricks for Chinese restaurants and other full-service restaurants alike. It really comes down to choosing a trusted POS partner like Toast, and keeping some major themes in mind.

1. Cost shouldn’t be your only criteria. For example, speeding up front-of-house operations with a Toast Go^® handheld, or back-of-house operations with a KDS, pay dividends with greater efficiency and higher guest satisfaction.

2. Marketing is a huge key to help unlock major growth. Chef Zhao uses Toast Marketing Suite to build enticing promotional offers, bring guests back with Loyalty, attract new guests with Gift Cards, and more.

3. Protect your profits by owning your online ordering. Third-party online ordering marketplaces still have a place since it helps grow your brand awareness. However, it’s key to dig into some math to balance your discoverability with your costs. Ultimately, you can maximize your margins when you own your online ordering in the long run. Plus, guests can benefit when they’re in your loyalty program too.

Disclosures: Testimonial reflects the experience of the merchant. Results may vary. ROI is the net sales driven by an offer divided by the cost to run it.

¹ Based on internal Toast data for promotion attributed net sales divided by cost of promotion from 9/24/25 to 10/31/25. Individual results will vary.

² Based on internal Toast data from 2/18/26 to 3/25/26. Data based on actual online order values, as well as estimated store visits and average on-premise order value. Individual results will vary.

³ Based on internal Toast data comparing sales in Q4 2024 and 2025. Individual results will vary.

⁴ Costs and results self-reported by customer. Individual results will vary.

⁵ Based on internal Toast data for promotion attributed net sales divided by cost of promotion from 10/1/25 to 11/2/25. Individual results will vary.