Toast has recently expanded its offerings by introducing Restaurant Retail, a platform that integrates restaurant and retail management through a single Point of Sale (POS) system.
This platform aims to address the needs of hybrid-concept restaurants that combine food service with retail sales.
The Practical Benefits of Toast for Restaurant Retail
For hybrid restaurant concepts that juggle food service with merchandise sales, this single POS system eliminates the need for separate management tools for different sides of the business, offering both cost savings and a simplified operational workflow.
Streamlined Inventory Management
Managing both food ingredients and retail items can be a logistical challenge. Toast for Restaurant Retail’s inventory management system allows for real-time updates, bulk item handling, and setting of par levels for automatic re-order alerts.
These features aim to curb inefficiencies, reduce waste, and optimize stock levels, ensuring that businesses can meet customer demand without excessive inventory overhead.
SKU Management Made Simple
Creating and managing Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) is a task that Toast for Restaurant Retail has made more intuitive. The platform’s scan feature can scan and populate product metadata with just a barcode scan, efficiently capturing details such as product images, vintage, ABV, and brand information.
The ability to generate and print barcodes directly within Toast ensures that inventory data is accurately and consistently maintained.
Unified Reporting and Insights
Another significant benefit is the consolidation of reporting. By unifying food service and retail operations, Toast for Restaurant Retail enables managers to access comprehensive insights from a single system.
This unified approach to analytics can lead to more informed decision-making, as it provides a holistic view of sales trends, inventory levels, and customer preferences.
Looking Ahead: Shopify Integration
Future developments promise to expand the platform’s capabilities even further. A Shopify integration will allow restaurants another way to venture into online merchandise sales, thereby opening up a new channel for revenue growth and brand expansion.
Using Retail to Enhance Restaurant Revenue and Branding
Incorporating retail into your restaurant’s offerings provides significant commercial and branding advantages. Merchandise sales enable customers to extend their connection with the dining experience, fostering brand loyalty and turning them into ambassadors who promote the restaurant outside its walls.
Key Benefits:
- Brand Loyalty: Branded merchandise serves as a reminder of the customer’s dining experience, encouraging repeat visits and personal endorsements
- Revenue Stability: Merchandise offers an additional, less volatile income stream compared to seasonal dining trends.
- Organic Promotion: Customers sporting or using restaurant-branded items provide free, organic advertising.
- Marketing Efficiency: Merchandise acts as a cost-effective marketing tool, with a long-lasting impact beyond initial production costs.
Toast for Restaurant Retail simplifies this integration by managing retail operations alongside dining services, making it more accessible for restaurants to capitalize on the benefits of selling branded merchandise.
Read more: 12 Clever Restaurant Merchandise Ideas to Grow Your Brand
Conclusion
Integrating food service with retail provides restaurants the opportunity to leverage brand identity and diversify revenue streams through merchandise.
With platforms like Toast’s Restaurant Retail, management of such integrations could become more centralized and efficient, potentially adding value to the restaurant’s operations and customer experience.
More information on Toast:
My detailed Toast Review provides an even more in-depth look into this POS system.
Toast is also featured in my review of the top cafe POS systems
and in my review of the best bakery POS systems
