[October 06, 2026]

New Toast IQ Team and Expanded Toast IQ Grow Help Businesses Drive Profits, Attract Guests, and Manage Labor

Toast (NYSE: TOST), the global technology platform built for restaurant and retail businesses, today introduced Toast IQ Team, a new labor management solution for restaurant and retail operators, alongside a significant expansion of Toast IQ Grow, the complete marketing solution Toast introduced earlier in 2026. From building schedules that help manage labor costs to turning great guest experiences into five-star reviews, Toast IQ Team and Toast IQ Grow mark another step toward an agentic platform that absorbs the hardest work of running a business and gives operators measurable proof that it's working.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261006538986/en/

Restaurant and retail operators juggle everything from scheduling and payroll to marketing, often on thin margins. Many are turning to AI for relief: nearly 9 in 10 restaurant operators surveyed (86%) are experimenting with AI for business purposes, according to Toast's 2026 Voice of the Restaurant Survey.¹ When those tools exist outside of the platforms operators normally use, they risk becoming one more burden to manage. Toast IQ Grow and Toast IQ Team are designed to work differently, with features integrated into the Toast platform, grounded in the user's own sales, employee, and guest data-and with context on both the user's business and the jobs to be done. Users get fast, deep insights so operators can take immediate, informed action, without sacrificing the judgment and oversight hospitality requires by keeping humans in the loop. That means less time on tedious work and more time running the businesses.

"While every operator wants a packed house or a line out the door, higher volume often brings higher operational complexity," said Mike Miller, Chief Product Officer at Toast. "We continue to build on our vision for the Toast IQ ecosystem to take on the heavy lifting for restaurants and retailers, especially in the heat of a busy shift. The enhancements to Toast IQ Grow are engineered to attract more guests to an operator's front door and keep them coming back, while Toast IQ Team is designed to start tackling back office work that comes with that growth. Toast is building agentic solutions that deliver real outcomes."

Toast IQ Team: built to take on labor costs and keep teams happier

Toast IQ Team is a new solution that combines forecasting, agentic scheduling and gamification features with payroll and tip management to help operators manage labor costs, run more productive shifts, and create a better employee experience. Scheduling is a high-stakes balancing act: too few people can hurt service, while too many can erode margins, and constantly changing staff availability, time-off and shift-swap requests only add to the challenge. That kind of complex, context-dependent work is exactly what Toast IQ is built to take on. Toast restaurants using the scheduling solution within Toast IQ Team averaged 41% fewer overtime hours per employee than those Toast restaurants not using it.²

Staff it right

• Sales forecasting [New | AI]: Uses an operator's historical POS data to help operators plan staffing around anticipated demand, bringing more predictability to labor costs.
• Scheduling Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Builds a complete schedule in seconds based on employee availability, expected sales, and overtime risk. One of the most essential and time-consuming management tasks becomes a quick review-and-adjust process.
• Team Performance [New | AI]: Lets operators launch in-platform contests to help motivate staff around high-margin specials, with live leaderboards in MyToast, Toast's mobile app for restaurant and retail employees. Restaurants running menu item contests have seen an average 10% total sales lift on featured items,³ including a 14% lift in alcohol sales during a recent contest at MugShots Bar & Grill.⁴

Retain the team

• MyToast employee app: Newly enhanced app gives staff one place on their phones to view schedules, swap shifts, check earnings, and track contest leaderboards.
• Tips Manager: Automates tip pool calculations and provides digital receipts employees can review.
• Payroll Benefits: Operators can offer health insurance and 401(k) plans integrated directly with payroll.^5,6

In a recent Toast survey, 92% of restaurant employees who use Toast said it has a positive influence on their happiness at work, compared to 74% of employees at other POS providers.⁷

Peace of mind, every shift

• Timekeeping in Toast POS: Syncs schedules directly with the POS so operators can monitor early clock-ins and shift end times.
• Payroll Success Partners (PSP) [New]: Dedicated human payroll support that operators know by name, offering ongoing guidance after onboarding so operators can run payroll with confidence. Nine out of 10 customers who worked with PSPs rated their support experience a 5 out of 5.⁸

"Toast IQ Team has saved me countless hours-from payroll, to scheduling, to contests, to tip management, and tip pooling policy," said Tricia Rowley, Director of Operations, Madi Group. "All of it together saves me about 10 to 15 hours a week."⁹

Toast IQ Grow: new capabilities to drive guest demand

Toast IQ Grow, introduced earlier in 2026, combines agentic AI with a dedicated human marketer to help run digital marketng for operators who don't have time to do it themselves. New SEO, Reviews, and Offers agents are all grounded in each business's own Toast data.

Get found

• SEO Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Continuously reviews a business's online presence and its own Toast data to identify what may be limiting its discoverability across traditional and AI-powered search, then provides actionable, tailored recommendations to close those gaps, such as highlighting a trending menu item on their website. Working continuously in the background, it can catch gaps a one-time audit might miss, helping guests discover the business wherever they're searching.
• Photography Services [New]: Two in-person photoshoots a year with a professional photographer, providing edited photos that put a business's website and listings in their best light.

Win trust

• Reviews Agent [New | AI]: Helps keep a business's online reputation working in its favor and removes a task from the operator's day. The agent automatically prompts guests for reviews at moments they're already engaging with the business, such as an online order confirmation, and gives unhappy guests a direct channel to share feedback so operators can respond quickly. Among U.S. restaurant diners who tried a new restaurant in the past three months, 77% said positive ratings or reviews influenced their choice to do so.¹⁰

Bring them back

• Offers Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Recommends offers around goals an operator sets, such as welcoming a new guest or winning back a lapsed one, built on that business's own guest and transaction data rather than a one-size-fits-all discount.
• Marketing Agent [AI]: Acts as an always-on marketing strategist and copywriter, analyzing a business's own data to build personalized email, SMS, and social campaigns for approval, so operators can engage guests without doing all of the manual work themselves.

Tinku Saini, Owner of Tarka Indian Kitchen, said the Reviews Agent has improved their online reputation. "We have seen a significant increase in Google reviews since we started using the Toast Reviews Agent, with the overall number of reviews up 39% and 5-star reviews increasing 41% when comparing 10 weeks pre- and post-launch. I also like seeing the Toast IQ analysis of recent trends, which shows the main positive callouts and the issues we need to address."¹¹

More Toast IQ agents, available through early access

Toast is continuing to expand Toast IQ to take on more of the everyday work operators handle, from optimizing menus to answering the phone, with additional agents available to existing customers through the Test Kitchen:

• Menu Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Identifies and executes menu optimizations like improved descriptions, finds missing or weak digital menu content, and gets pricing recommendations.
• Answering Agent [New | AI] (Beta): Helps answer the phone so operators capture more guest interactions with fewer interruptions.
• Toast IQ Configurable Agents [New | AI] (Beta): Enables operators to set up AI agents from prebuilt templates, with little technical expertise required, to accomplish tasks like catching missed clock-outs before payroll closes, flagging an unusual void within the hour, or forecasting how much of each item to prep before the kitchen starts.

Investing across the platform

Toast is also making several additional updates to improve the everyday operator experience:

• Toast, now in more languages: Toast Web, the Toast IQ AI assistant, and the software running on Toast Go® handhelds and terminals are now available in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Québec French, allowing servers to change language by hardware device on the KDS, POS, and Toast Go® to enable multilingual teams to work in the language they know best.
• Toast Fuel: Brings fuel operations and payments onto Toast's retail platform, giving convenience store and fuel operators a single system for fuel, retail, and foodservice.
• A more modern dining experience with Toast Tables:
  • Seamless Checkout: Lets guests save a payment method when booking through Toast Tables and pay automatically at the end of the meal.
  • Ticketing: Lets restaurants sell tickets for special events directly through Toast Tables, connecting ticket sales, payments, and guest data in one place.

To learn more about the full Fall Release, visit pos.toasttab.com/innovation-hub.

About Toast

Toast [NYSE: TOST] is a global technology platform built for restaurant and retail businesses. From the busiest local restaurants and shops to large hospitality brands, Toast helps owners and operators manage their businesses more efficiently, drive guest demand, and build lasting success.

Toast integrates software, agentic AI, payments, financial technology solutions, and hardware with a broad partner ecosystem. Powering billions of purchases throughout local commerce, Toast delivers the precision and innovation required for modern restaurant and retail environments. For more information, visit www.toasttab.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements," within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the context of the statement and generally arise when Toast or its management is discussing its beliefs, estimates or expectations. Such statements generally include the words "believes," "plans," "intends," "may," "will," "expects," "anticipates," "outlook," "continues," or similar expressions. These statements are not historical facts or guarantees of future performance, but represent the beliefs of Toast and its management at the time the statements were made regarding future events which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside Toast's control. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecast in such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding Toast's business plans and strategy; the anticipated development, timeline, capabilities, performance, benefits, agentic AI and automation features of Toast's current and future products; business arrangements with Toast's partners and customers and the anticipated benefits thereof; and Toast's product and innovation strategies for convenience and retail operations.

The forward-looking statements contained in this release are also subject to other risks and uncertainties, including those more fully described in Toast's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including in the sections entitled "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in Toast's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, Toast's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and Toast's subsequent SEC filings. Toast can give no assurance that the plans, intentions, expectations or strategies as reflected in or suggested by those forward-looking statements will be attained or achieved. The forward-looking statements in this release are based on information available to Toast as of the date hereof, and Toast disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Toast's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

TOST-CORP

¹Toast conducted a blind survey of 676 restaurant decision-makers operating 16 or fewer locations in the United States, including both Toast and non-Toast customers, from April 3, 2026, to April 20, 2026. 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 of +/- 4%.
²Based on Toast internal data and customer-provided data from July 2025-2026 comparing Toast restaurants using Scheduling Pro before it was bundled as part of Toast IQ Team vs. Toast restaurants not using Scheduling Pro. Individual results will vary. Data does not account for other Toast IQ Team offerings.
³Based on Toast internal data from 96 menu item contests conducted between February and June 2026, reflecting a weighted average of percentage increases in featured items sold and sales dollars. Individual results will vary.
⁴Based on customer data and internal Toast data comparing 4-day contest period over June 4-June 7, 2026 v. same period in the previous week. Individual results will vary.
⁵Group health insurance policies available through Ten 250 Corporation, dba SimplyInsured, pursuant to its licenses. Neither Toast, Inc., nor any of its affiliates or subsidiaries, sells or underwrites insurance. However, Toast Insurance Services, Inc. ("TIS") maintains various insurance licenses and may receive compensation in connection with policies purchased through SimplyInsured. Not all applicants may qualify. Policy documents govern, terms & exclusions apply.
⁶Toast is not a retirement plan sponsor, provider, recordkeeper, administrator, third-party administrator, investment advisor, or fiduciary. Retirement plans available through Vestwell and are administered by Vestwell.
⁷Based on a blind survey conducted by Toast between February and March 2026 of a weighted effective sample of 90 Toast restaurant employees and 486 employees at other POS brand restaurants in the United States, including front of house, back of house, and managerial roles. Respondents were not informed that Toast was conducting the study, and panel providers offered incentives for participation. Weighting was applied based on role type, age, and POS technology use to reflect expected distribution, which may increase variability. The margin of error is approximately +/-4% at a 95% confidence interval overall, and varies by subgroup.
⁸Based on a survey of 86 Toast Payroll customers who used Payroll Success Partners services between May 2025 and March 2026, including pilot participants. Individual results will vary.
⁹Results based on data self-reported by the customer with 150+ employee business comparing to previous non-integrated systems. Individual results will vary.
¹⁰Based on a Toast blind, incentivized survey from September 2026 of n=1225 U.S. restaurant guests over the age of 18 who dined in, ordered takeout, or ordered delivery in the previous three months. Respondents indicated they had tried at least one new restaurant in the last 3 months. Average margin of error is +/-3%, but varies by subgroup.
¹¹Based on data self-reported by the customer in Beta trial over period prior to use of product (4/15/26 - 6/23/26) v. period after adoption of product (6/25/26-9/3/26). Individual results will vary.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261006538986/en/

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