Independent Grocers Opt for Toast Retail Solution
As more retailers have started to offer made-to-order and prepared foods, several indies have chosen cloud-based all-in-one digital technology platform Toast to support their increasingly complex operations, enabling them to seamlessly use various service models and checkout experiences in-store and online.
“At Herban Market, we care deeply about providing convenient, high-quality experiences for our customers,” said Ashlea Hogancamp, co-founder of Franklin, Tenn.-based Herban Market. “When we decided to offer [prepared foods] alongside our grocery items, our original POS created major issues for us as volume increased. We lost hundreds of dollars a day from ticketing and checkout issues. We switched to Toast because they were one of the only partners we could find that could help us manage our high-volume retail and foodservice business on one platform. Since we switched to Toast, not only have prepared food orders been seamless, the inventory management insights have helped us better curate our SKUs so we always have our customers’ favorites in stock – helping us be competitive with the big-box grocers and restaurants.”
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Kris Larson, owner of Becket’s, a restaurant in Oshkosh, Wis., and Wagner Market, an independent grocery store that offers meat, including handmade brats and sausages; craft beers; local produce and cheeses; and more, uses Toast for both businesses.
“[Toast] SmartScan has been a paradigm shift for us — training employees to add new inventory used to take hours, and now it takes minutes,” noted Larson. “What transferred from restaurant POS to grocery POS better than any of us expected was the speed of the operation – checking people out rapidly. Other retail POSs are designed only to handle simple items. You can control Toast’s POS like a restaurant menu where you’ve got infinite control of categories, and it gives you a better view of reporting. The fact that what works for a restaurant works for the retail side is still unbelievable to me.”
“Toast has more than a decade of experience helping restaurants of all sizes and types adopt new technology so they can run more efficiently and deliver memorable guest experiences. Now we’re doing the same for the food and beverage retail community,” noted Steve Fredette, president and co-founder of Boston-based Toast. “As the lines between retailers and restaurants continue to blur and more retailers transition to the cloud, we see a clear opportunity for Toast to be the technology platform of choice for convenience stores, bottle shops and grocers — providing a modern inventory management experience in an easy-to-use platform and helping to serve consumers in new ways. We look forward to continuing to build our offerings for the retail community.”
Toast Retail aims to help users save time, streamline inventory management and enhance the customer experience with the following features:
Smart inventory planning with historical sales data
Mobile-first technology with SmartScan, which takes a new SKU from scan to shelf in seconds
With Bulk Actions, repricing items, printing barcodes, changing stock status and many other common operations can be performed on thousands of SKUs at once
Multi-Location-Management and Cross-Location Inventory Transfer features to help retailers expand to multiple locations without losing an accurate view of their inventory
Thorough retail hardware support via Toast’s integration with barcode scanners, grocery scanners, scales and deli scales
Point-of-sale and handheld terminals for a faster checkout experience
Online ordering to allow customers to order groceries and a sandwich for curbside pickup, and Toast’s Kitchen Display System to help staff fulfill deli orders
SNAP EBT payment processing in partnership with Forage
Integrations with Vroom, an online ordering system that enables consumers to place orders from local c-stores, and CityHive, an e-commerce online ordering solution for the wine and spirits industry
Toast will be at the NRF Retail’s Big Show, scheduled for Jan. 12-14 at New York City’s Javits Center, at Booth #203 in the Food Innovation Zone.
