Toast is a restaurant point-of-sale system that also handles payments, online ordering, menus, labor, guests, and marketing. Toast IQ is the AI assistant built across those products.
For this review, we assessed what Toast IQ can answer, which changes it can make, how much control the manager keeps, and what happens when important restaurant data sits outside Toast.
The main strength is that Toast IQ can act. A manager can investigate sales or labor, compare locations, change menu details and prices, mark items out of stock, update channel availability, correct certain clock-out issues, and set up upsells. Menu changes still require publication before going live.
The weakness is coverage. Toast IQ only knows what is recorded in Toast. It cannot account for unlogged waste, incorrect recipes, outside catering orders, local events, or labor changes made elsewhere. An answer can be accurate for Toast’s data and still be incomplete for the restaurant.
Toast IQ Grow combines a beta Marketing Agent, campaign software, and a human Marketing Success Manager. Its attribution may use estimated visits and average order values, so reported return is directional. Moving more operations into Toast improves IQ and increases switching costs.
