Toast, Inc. (NYSE: TOST) is a Boston-based restaurant technology company founded in 2011 by Aman Narang, Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm. It sells cloud point-of-sale software and hardware, handheld ordering devices, kitchen displays, online ordering, payroll and integrated card processing. Toast reported $6.15 billion in revenue and $342 million in GAAP net income for 2025, and served about 180,000 locations by June 2026.
How Does Toast Make Money?
- Financial technology solutions: card processing on the payment volume that runs through Toast, about $195 billion in 2025. This is the largest part of revenue.
- Subscription services: recurring fees for POS software and modules such as online ordering, payroll, scheduling, inventory and marketing.
- Hardware and professional services: terminals, Toast Go handhelds and installation, typically priced to win new accounts.
Origins
The founders worked together at Endeca, an enterprise search company Oracle agreed to buy in 2011. Toast began as a pay-by-phone app for diners, but restaurant owners said their outdated POS systems were the real problem, so the team built an Android-based cloud POS for restaurants instead.
Growth and Financials
Revenue grew from $665 million in 2019 to $1.71 billion in 2021, when Toast listed on the NYSE, and to $6.15 billion in 2025. Toast posted its first annual GAAP profit in 2024 and added a record 30,000 net locations in 2025. In Q2 2026 revenue rose 23% to $1.91 billion, net income was $154 million and annualized recurring run-rate reached about $2.4 billion.
Leadership
Co-founder Aman Narang became CEO on January 1, 2024, succeeding Chris Comparato, who led Toast from 2015 through its 2021 IPO. Elena Gomez is CFO. Toast had about 6,500 employees at the end of 2025.
Competitors
Toast competes with Square for Restaurants (Block), Clover (Fiserv), Shift4, SpotOn, Lightspeed, NCR Voyix and Oracle Micros. Its pitch is a restaurant-only platform that ties ordering, kitchen operations, payroll and payments together.
Setbacks
In April 2020, COVID-19 closures led Toast to lay off about half its staff. In 2023 it reversed a $0.99 diner fee on online orders after customer backlash.
