Scaling Up While Keeping Costs Down: How Madi Group Grew to Five Restaurants with Toast

That growth meant replacing instinct with systems that could scale – which led Madi Group to Toast in 2022. Today, Toast IQ Team helps Tricia build the right schedules for her growing staff, create a workplace where they thrive and stay, and have peace of mind on payday.

Challenge

Growing Fast on Fragmented Systems

Before consolidating onto Toast, Madi Group was managing its operations across a patchwork of tools:

• Payroll handled through a separate system, reconciled by hand across locations.

• Scheduling built in spreadsheets and distributed by email, then printed and posted in the kitchen.

• Cash tips divided and tracked on a notepad, then stapled into envelopes for each employee.

• Sales, labor, and P&L data scattered across email threads and monthly accountant reports.

As the group opened its second, third, and fourth locations in quick succession, those legacy processes and tools started to strain.

"Prior to using Toast, we faced a lot of challenges with systems that were completely fragmented. There was payroll over here, scheduling on a spreadsheet over here, email, and getting accounting to send us a P&L every month. It was chaotic,” she says.

That fragmentation had a real cost, in both time and focus. Every hour spent piecing together payroll or chasing a spreadsheet was an hour Tricia couldn't spend training staff or working the floor – the parts of the job she says she loves most.

After adopting Toast, Madi Group was quick to consolidate this work to Toast’s payroll and scheduling tools. Most recently, they are bringing these areas together within Toast IQ Team – a labor management solution incorporating agentic tools that brings payroll, tips, scheduling, and performance together.

Solution

Scheduling With Toast IQ Team: Forecasts, Weather, and Fewer Errors

Manager Jonny Camargo, who oversees day-to-day scheduling for Madi PB’s roughly 30-person team, saw a similar shift in how long scheduling took each week.

"Before using Toast, it took about three to four hours to schedule my team. Now it takes about an hour or two at the most**,” says Jonny.

Part of the time savings comes from data the team didn't have easy access to before – previous years' sales by day part, staff unavailability, and even the local weather forecast. For a restaurant with an outdoor patio in a beach neighborhood, knowing whether next Tuesday will be sunny or rainy changes how many people get scheduled.

"One of the best ways Toast IQ Team has helped me run my business efficiently is the forecast feature in scheduling. It tells me when it's raining or if there's a heat wave, and I can schedule accordingly. A lot of our locations have outdoor patios, so it's important to know that information,” says Tricia.

Tricia says the scheduling tool also flags things she might otherwise miss – an upcoming neighborhood event, a staff member drifting into overtime – before they become a problem.

Toast IQ agents, currently in beta, also flag basic clock-in and clock-out issues automatically - a small feature that Tricia says removes one of her most persistent sources of stress.

"I get notified at 4:00 PM if anyone has forgotten to clock out, and so do my managers. It catches problems as they're happening in real time, and I can be anywhere. It saves me from having to be in five places at once, which is obviously impossible,” says Tricia.

Payroll and Tips: From a Full Day to 30–45 Minutes

Payroll was the clearest example of how much time the old systems were costing the business. Tricia estimates the group was spending 10 to 15 hours processing payroll each week, much of it spent tracking down staff who had forgotten to clock out.

Tip management saw a similar shift. The group's old process – dividing cash tips by hand, tracking the split on a notepad, and stapling envelopes for each employee – left room for error and gave staff little visibility into what they'd actually earned.

"We used to handle tips by putting everyone's cash tips in an envelope and stapling it, and keeping track on a notepad. It was archaic, and it was not sustainable as we expanded. Now, you put in exactly the right amount per weighted staff member, and it's all there. It goes directly into Toast payroll when I'm ready to process it,” she says.

Tricia also credits Toast's Payroll Success Partner program with catching small administrative gaps she didn't know she had.

"I've had nothing but incredible experiences with our Payroll Success Partner. There was an administrative thing I wasn't doing correctly, and he helped me set it up – it saved me another 45 minutes I didn't have. That kind of access has been a game changer,” Tricia says.

Keeping a Growing Team Connected with MyToast and Contests

As the group added locations and staff, both Tricia and Jonny needed a way to keep communication simple without adding more of their own time to the job. The MyToast App gives every employee direct access to their own schedule, tips, and time-off requests.

Providing this level of transparency and support is just one way to help keep team members engaged in the competitive San Diego labor market.

The group has also used Toast Contests to build friendly competition into service – something the staff had done informally for years, but now with data both managers and employees can see in real time. Winners of a recent mimosa-sales contest and a table-turnover contest for support staff each received a $50 gift card.

"My employees love the contests. They motivate everybody to deliver better service, and everybody can participate and be on top of their tables,” says Jonny.

Results

Continuing to Grow with Toast

Tricia points to a few key metrics when she talks about the impact of Toast IQ Team on operations.

"Our labor at Madi Pacific Beach is currently at 24.6% of sales, and we think Toast has been a big part of helping us optimize. Being able to easily flag overtime and having payroll, Tips Manager and scheduling in one platform makes our operation a lot more efficient**,” says Tricia.

Consolidating to Toast has helped Madi Group to:

• Cut weekly payroll processing from a full business day to 30–45 minutes per location with Toast Payroll.

• Replace hand-divided cash envelopes with an automated, transparent split that flows directly into payroll with Toast Tips Manager.

• Cut scheduling time roughly in half and include weather and event forecasting with Toast Scheduling.

• Provide staff self-service access to hours, tips, and time-off requests in the My Toast app.

• Turn service goals into friendly, data-backed competitions with real prizes with Toast Contests.

With over 200 employees and a fifth location now opening, having a system that scales with their ambitions is more important than ever. For Tricia and the leaders at Madi – it allows them to spend less time on administrative work and more time on the part of hospitality they enjoy most – the people.