Toast Point of Sale vs TouchBistro

• We are in a space with 10 other vendors, so the ability to swipe a card, pre-authorize it, and give it back to the customer so helpful!
• The offline mode is another awesome perk! Should the internet go down, all the transactions are held and processed again once the connection is restored. This also allows us to take one of the handhelds to an event with us to sell drinks or merch.
• Our previous POS required that my email be logged into the device which meant anyone could read through it. With Toast, it automatically sends out the receipts via text or email without having to have anything logged in.
• This is one of the few POS systems that allows you to tip on gift cards which is extremely helpful. Most folks these days do not carry cash, so this allows them to still tip staff without having to run a separate card. They also offer electronic gift cards! We were able to put a link to the site on our website and social media to increase visibility.

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• Easy to learn being iOS-based
• Being cloud-based, your product mix, as well as your detailed modifier list, is available immediately
• Able to access reports, sales, hours, etc. from mobile app

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• As a client of ToastPOS since Oct 2015, I have submitted a multitude of feature requests over the years. Some were considered and implemented, some were of course not. But I still have a list of (what I feel are) glaringly obvious features that are missing from the product that, had I known of them, I may not have chosen ToastPOS for my business in the first place (assuming other POS systems do offer these features?). I will lay them all out in detail here:
• Gift cards are *not redeemable* on Toast's Online Ordering Platform (ToastOO). This includes both physical gift cards purchased in person through the POS *and* e-gift cards purchased online via a website that is directly linked to the POS. Aka a customer goes to our branded website to purchase an e-gift for our pizza shop, but when they go to our branded online ordering website to order pizza Delivery (also provided by Toast), they cannot use their e-gift card to pay. They must either call the shop or show up in person to pay using their gift card. Gift cards not being redeemable online is 100% a missed opportunity that frustrates every customer to whom we issue a gift card. This is also not a good method to entice customers who are loyal to 3rd party website such as Grubhub/UberEats, to switch to ordering direct from ToastOO (saving thousands in commissions). A customer would love FREE money to redeem at a restaurant they already regularly order delivery from, but not at the expense of not being able to order online. At the very least, until there is a solution, Toast should add verbiage to the gift card purchasing page (as well as on the checkout cart page) that states gift cards are not accepted as payment online, to better manage customer expectations.
• Quote times are too complicated/difficult to manage. This is my staff's biggest pain-point operationally and is management's biggest pain-point since it is so difficult to train something so unintuitive. Say your standard quote time is 30 min Take-out and 60 min Delivery, but these vary all day long every day of the week depending on weather conditions, how busy we are, time of day, etc. Rather than a simple and straightforward "Take-out Quote Time"=30 and "Delivery Quote Time"=60 setting on the POS itself, you have to open a browser, login to the Toast Back-end, set “Default Prep Time (OO/API)”= 30mins & “Default Delivery Time” = 30mins, hit Save, and hit Publish separately. Yes, you have to add the two quotes together in order to come to the Delivery Quote that will be displayed on ToastOO (30 + 30 = 60). If we wanted Take-out to be 45, and Delivery 60, settings would be “Default Prep Time (OO/API)”= 45mins & “Default Delivery Time” = 15mins (45 + 15 = 60 minute delivery time), Save, + Publish. Unnecessarily complicated in a chaotic restaurant environment, especially when most restaurants are managing quote times across multiple 3rd party platforms on top of their own direct ordering website.
• The online Ordering Schedule is too complicated/difficult to manage. Best explained with an example. If your restaurant is open until 10pm, and you want to accept orders up until 10pm, but your “Default Prep Time (OO/API)” is set to 30 minutes (aka 30 minute Take-out quote), you need to set your Online Ordering Take-out Schedule to be open until 10:30 pm in order to accept Takeout Orders up through 10pm.....and similarly for “Default Delivery Time” = 30 (which actually means a Delivery Quote time of 60 minutes, as explained above), you need to set the Delivery Schedule to close at 11:00pm in order to accept Delivery orders up through 10pm. The frustrating part is that this caveat isn't explained anywhere on the settings page, so you if you didn't happen upon this by attempting to place a Delivery order on your own website past 9pm (and not being allowed to), or noticing a late-night drop in Online Orders, you'd never know your website wasn't accepting orders up through 10pm as you wished.
• Digital receipts. Toast cannot send digital emailed receipts for $0 orders. Aka if you are making an In-Kind donation (which we do several times per month) and the non-profit requires a receipt (which all do), you have to print the receipt and email them a picture of the paper copy. You cannot just email them a receipt stating the amount of the donation. This is frustrating as Tax Exempt businesses are typically the only customers these days who actually need receipts. It's a shame the ones we send them must look so unprofessional.
• Toast Loyalty Rewards Program. Pro: purchases are linked to customer Credit Cards so points can add up automatically once they've linked their CC. Con: Because of this, you can only sign-up at the register itself (in-store). I instead would suggest customers be able to enroll online [make it part of the check-out process on ToastOO]. Then customers could enroll, and manage their associated CC's without holding up the line in-store. We are a quick-serve pizza-by-the-slice shop, and the goal is to move the line as quickly as possible, not having customers fumbling to sign up for a rewards program.
• Bad Hardware. For 3+ years we've had to attach our Elo (think big check-out screen at the front register) to our cash drawer using 6 monster zip-ties, which looks very unprofessional. Toast does not provide any actual hardware (nuts/bolts/etc) to attach the ~$1k+ computer to the cash drawer so it doesn't fall off of the counter when flipped over for signature. Toast has only provided us with Velcro as a solution, which I, of course, do not trust considering the cost to replace the Elo when it inevitably crashes to the floor.
• ToastOO Delivery Platform does not require a house number, a full 10-digit phone number, and we also have addresses within our delivery zone that get rejected from ordering direct because the system says their address is not in our zone. ToastOO Delivery is currently partnered with Mapbox for address verification. Valid House/Phone numbers are not required, which allows orders through with missing information. It requires our staff to spend unnecessary time on the phone, sometimes not being able to get ahold of the customer. This has been reported to Toast and they claim to be upgrading to a different mapping platform at some point in 2019. The 10-digit phone number issue was discovered as of 1/13/19 and has also been reported to Toast, with no follow-up as of yet. Mapbox rejecting customer addresses within our zone was discovered 10/2/18 and still has not been resolved; forcing those customers who can't get through to order from Grubhub, which of course costs us a hefty commission on orders that should be 0% commission.
• Promo Codes are not robust enough for a modern digital age. Toast does allow setting up Promo Codes for customer use on ToastOO, but it cannot do basic functions such as limiting the dates/times the promo code can be redeemed, or Limiting the promo code to 1 redemption per user.
• No branded app. It doesn't seem to me like it would be a far stretch for Toast to offer a branded App option. Restaurants want fewer partners, not more. Partnering with a 3rd party app company just adds one more menu to manage, aka rather than submitting in ToastPOS that we're out of "Green Peppers", and having that translate to ToastOO and a branded Toast App, we'd instead need to login to a 3rd party App provider to mark "out of Green Peppers", along with all other 3rd party online ordering platforms (Grubhub, etc). It gets to be too much for a small staff to manage, and an all-in-one solution with your already-created POS company/Menu, all linked together flawlessly, would be ideal.
• General Ledger Accounting Report. This is a truly useful report for accounting purposes, but if you accept AMEX payments at your restaurant, this report does not account for AMEX fees, which you must manually calculate separately. Not a huge deal of course, but added time. UPDATE: As of 3/22/2019, Toast has finally updated the General Ledger report to include AMEX fees in your restaurant's accounting reports. It's no longer a separate manual calculation for bookkeepers. Hooray!
• Menu Set-up Limitations. You cannot make certain items available for Delivery but not for Take-out, or vice versa.
• No integration with Instagram. There is no partnership between Toast, despite Toast claiming on Twitter to be a restaurant's most important social media platform. Because of this, a restaurant using ToastOO cannot have a "Start an Order" button right on their Instagram page, making it most convenient for customers to order direct.

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• There needs to be a way to stop TouchBistro from printing a customer copy every credit card transaction. Nobody wants this copy and I’m using double the amount of thermal paper

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• Owners are able to monitor what menu items are selling the most making it easier to delete items & add new ones.
• Gives us a clearer picture of what's going on a daily basis even if we're not there.

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• Planning from previous dates.
• On the go reporting in order to cut staff when slow.
• Negative to rely on internet connection.
• Negative to have to rely on updates from Apple.

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