Toast, Inc.
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2015 to present
Aman Narang is the CEO of Toast, in the role since 2024. The first chief executive was Chris Comparato, from 2015.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aman Narang | Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer | 2024 | Present | 2 |
| Chris Comparato | Chief Executive Officer | 2015 | 2023 | 8 |
Toast, Inc. (NYSE: TOST) builds the operating software and payment rails for restaurants. Founded in 2011 by Aman Narang, Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm, who had worked together at enterprise search firm Endeca, it replaced server-based legacy POS systems with Android terminals connected to the cloud. Toast reported $6.15 billion in revenue and $342 million in net income for 2025, served about 180,000 locations by June 2026 and is led by CEO Aman Narang and CFO Elena Gomez. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
Toast sells restaurants a bundled platform and monetizes it in three ways. Financial technology solutions, mainly card processing on the gross payment volume that runs through Toast terminals and online ordering, make up the large majority of revenue (roughly four-fifths in recent filings), though payments carry thinner margins than software. Subscription services, charged per location or per module for POS software, kitchen display, online ordering, payroll, scheduling, inventory and marketing tools, form a smaller but high-margin share. Hardware and professional services (terminals, Toast Go handhelds, installation) are sold near or below cost to win accounts. Toast also offers Toast Capital working-capital loans through a partner bank. Management tracks 'recurring gross profit' from subscriptions and fintech, which grew 33% in 2025 and 28% in Q2 2026.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
2024 – Present
2 years (current)
Narang took over as CEO to re-accelerate growth and repair restaurant relations following a controversial (and quickly reversed) $0.99 fee applied directly to consumer online orders.
He successfully guided the company toward GAAP profitability while maintaining massive market share growth against rivals like Square and Clover.
Chief Executive Officer
2015 – 2023
8 years
Comparato led Toast through the devastating 2020 restaurant lockdowns, cutting 50% of the workforce before aggressively rebounding to take the company public in a massive 2021 IPO.
As CEO from 2015 to 2023, he scaled the company from a small startup into the dominant cloud POS provider in the US restaurant industry, increasing locations served to over 100,000.
Toast's main challenges are price competition from Block's Square, Fiserv's Clover, Shift4 and SpotOn; high natural churn among independent restaurants; sensitivity to consumer dining spend; hardware cost pressure from tariffs and memory-chip prices, which management flagged in its 2026 outlook; and the cost of building sales and payments capability in newer markets such as enterprise chains, retail and international.
Aman Narang serves as Chief Executive Officer of Toast, having assumed the role on January 1, 2024, after co-founding the company in 2011 and previously serving as Co-President and Chief Operating Officer.
Aman Narang earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from MIT. He worked in software development and product management at enterprise search pioneer Endeca prior to founding Toast.
Since becoming CEO in 2024, Narang achieved full-year GAAP profitability, pushed ARR past $2.4 billion, expanded the platform to over 180,000 locations, launched international markets, and accelerated enterprise franchise expansion.
Chris Comparato led Toast as CEO for over eight years. He scaled the company from a small Boston startup with dozens of employees to a public company with over 4,500 employees, navigated the 2020 pandemic shutdown, and took Toast public on the NYSE in 2021.
Co-founder Steve Fredette, also an MIT graduate and former Endeca engineering leader, served as Co-President and Director, architecting Toast's core cloud infrastructure and leading product engineering for over a decade.
Co-founder Jonathan Grimm, an MIT computer science graduate, served as Chief Technology Officer and later as President of Toast Community, spearheading customer support, corporate social responsibility, and cultural initiatives.
Elena Gomez serves as Chief Financial Officer of Toast, having joined in 2021 from Zendesk. She managed Toast's NYSE IPO, guided capital allocation, and led the company's transition to GAAP profitability.
Toast's Board of Directors includes co-founders Aman Narang and Steve Fredette alongside seasoned software leaders, including Lead Independent Director Mark Hawkins (former Salesforce CFO) and Bessemer Venture Partners managing partner Kent Bennett.
Executive compensation is heavily weighted toward performance-based equity incentives tied to recurring gross profit growth, adjusted EBITDA expansion, and total shareholder return relative to the Russell 2000 index.
CEO Chris Comparato and COO Aman Narang acted swiftly and humbly: recognizing that the $0.99 fee damaged customer goodwill, they publicly apologized in a founder letter and repealed the fee entirely within two weeks.
Narang promotes a "restaurant-first" culture where executives and engineers regularly work shifts inside restaurant kitchens and bus tables to experience first-hand the operational stresses of restaurant workers.
Narang envisions building the definitive global platform for hospitality, powering every aspect of how food and beverage businesses operate, manage labor, source inventory, and delight diners worldwide.
Compare executive leadership tenures and strategic transitions
Explore Toast
Core profile pages, founders and related research hubs for this company.