Toast Announces $101 Million in Additional Funding


BOSTON, July 25, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Toast, the all-in-one restaurant technology platform and one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the U.S., today announced an additional $101 million in financing led by new investors Generation Investment Management and Lead Edge Capital. Existing investors including Bessemer Venture Partners also participated in the oversubscribed round. Toast plans to use these new funds to continue building the market-leading cloud platform that empowers restaurants of all sizes to offer the best technology-enabled guest experience.

“The restaurant industry has historically been slower than others to adopt technology, leading to operational inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Advances in hardware, software and cloud computing are shifting that dynamic,” said Greg Wasserman, partner at Generation Investment Management. “Toast is leading this digital shift with its powerful, yet easy-to-deploy platform that is democratizing access to best-in-class technology. With Toast, all restaurants can maximize revenue, optimize operations, digitize paper processes, reduce food waste and other costs, and ultimately deliver a superior dining experience.”

Innovation
Toast will use this funding to build on its track record of innovation, including:

  • Investing further in Toast Online Ordering, enabling a best-in-class ordering experience across various devices and channels
  • Enhancing key areas of the platform such as self-ordering kiosks, handheld pay-at the-table experiences, CRM and marketing tools, advanced reporting, inventory, loyalty, and more
  • Creating the industry’s most robust cloud-based restaurant platform, including modern, commercial grade hardware
  • Leveraging the immense amount of data restaurants collect to enable a more personalized guest experience and  improve labor and food cost profiles

"We’ve rapidly expanded our business over the past year by delivering on our mission and promise to be obsessed with customer success," said Chris Comparato, CEO of Toast. "We plan to accelerate our growth even faster in the year ahead with strategic investments that will help our restaurant customers focus on delivering great food and guest experiences."

Toast Customers and Partners
“We found that the Toast POS system is fast and intuitive for our cashiers to use. During peak times, we can process about 20 percent more transactions after introducing Toast to our restaurants,” said Jeff Jacobson, COO of Costa Vida. “Our team has been with Toast since 2015; they are a true partner and a key factor in our ability to focus on excellent service and great food.”

Joe Guenther, the owner of O’Maddy’s, an iconic Florida-based restaurant and bar, echoed, “We never expected that we could bring the ‘Apple Store experience’ to our restaurant. Handheld tablet ordering resulted in faster table-turns and increased revenue by 20 percent.  At our restaurant, this equates to a potential increase in revenue by one million dollars.”

  • In addition to Costa Vida and O’Maddy’s Bar & Grille, Toast’s 50+ midmarket and enterprise-level customers include Pieology, Beef 'O' Brady's, Bareburger, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, b.good, The Human Bean, Protein Bar, and Sticky Fingers Ribhouse
  • The Toast API Partner Program boasts integrations with companies like Grubhub, Samsung Pay, Paytronix, and LevelUp
  • Toast continues to add local restaurants to its growing customer list from small coffee shops to fine dining

"From its differentiated, all-in-one restaurant management and point of sale solution, to its explosive growth and world-class team of cloud technology engineers with a passion for restaurants, we know Toast is the future of restaurant technology," said Brian Neider, partner at Lead Edge Capital. "Out of all the feedback we gained from key players in the restaurant and food technology space, Toast customers and partners had an overwhelming sentiment of excellent product and customer success feedback.”

Growth and Hiring
The investment will also support the company’s hiring plan to double year-over-year; key appointments thus far include Hugh Scandrett, VP of Engineering, formerly of IBM and Kronos, as well as John Morrison, VP of Services, who joins Toast from Oracle MICROS. Toast currently boasts over 500 employees nationwide, and is on track to hire nearly 1,000 more in the next 18 months.

ABOUT TOAST
Founded by Steve Fredette, Aman Narang and Jonathan Grimm, Toast is a restaurant technology platform that enables customers to simplify and streamline all elements of their operation and deliver a better guest experience. Toast offers a mobile, cloud-based point of sale system (POS) that easily integrates with front-of-house, back-of-house, online ordering, gift card and loyalty programs, as well as labor and sales reporting. Since launching in 2013, the company has grown to over 500 employees. Toast was named one of the world’s hottest cloud computing companies in the 2017 Forbes Cloud 100. Learn more at www.toasttab.com.

ABOUT GENERATION
Generation Investment Management LLP is dedicated to long-term investing, integrated sustainability research, and client alignment. It is an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and headquartered in London, with approximately $17 billion in assets under management. Its Chairman is former Vice President of the United States Al Gore and its senior partner is David Blood. Generation Investment Management LLP is authorized and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority.

ABOUT LEAD EDGE CAPITAL
Lead Edge Capital is a late-stage investment fund based in New York City and Southern California with nearly $1 billion under management and portfolio companies in the internet, software and consumer space. The fund is well-known for highly differentiated representative limited partners that come from c-suite roles at Neiman Marcus, Dell, Charles Schwab, McAfee, Tory Burch, Lockheed Martin, eBay, and more that play a huge support role for entrepreneurs, connecting them to their own network of decision makers and helping their businesses grow and succeed.


            

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