Running a restaurant has never been easy. That reality is at the center of Toast’s “Built for Busy” brand platform.
“We have learned over 14 years that it’s not easy,” Toast Chief Marketing Officer Kelly Esten said on the Digital Hospitality podcast. “It’s actually super hard.”
Recorded at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, Esten joined host Shawn Walchef to talk about Toast’s evolving role in the restaurant industry, the company’s investment in AI and why technology must deliver measurable results for operators.
Bringing “Built for Busy” to Times Square
Toast launched its new brand platform with five minutes on a wraparound billboard in Times Square. Restaurant operators, Toast employees and industry leaders gathered to watch the campaign go live.
But the larger campaign was not limited to a digital billboard.
Toast used its data to identify eight of the busiest restaurants in New York City and transformed their windows into advertisements. Each restaurant displayed a statistic that showed what “busy” looked like inside its operation, from the number of bagels sold each week to the number of meatballs served each day.
“The busiest restaurants are the best advertisement for the technology,” Esten said.
One of those restaurants was Carmine’s, which celebrates an average of 45 birthdays a day. The restaurant also showed how technology can create more room for hospitality. By adopting Toast handhelds, Carmine’s reduced its reliance on traditional server stations and reclaimed dining-room space for guests.
Instead of turning their backs to the floor to enter orders into a stationary computer, servers can remain present with their tables.
Toast Is Becoming a Restaurant Operating System
Esten sees Toast as more than a point-of-sale provider.
“Toast is now the operating system for the restaurant underneath,” she said.
That system must be reliable, fast and easy for restaurant employees to use. Toast is now building AI-powered tools on top of that foundation to address different parts of the business, including marketing, scheduling and finance.
Toast IQ Grow is the company’s first package of AI agents built around that approach. It combines Toast’s existing software, agentic AI and support from a restaurant marketing professional.
The goal is to give operators both the technology and accountability needed to improve their marketing.
Participating restaurants are seeing an average sales lift of 8%, according to Esten. Restaurants building their digital marketing presence from scratch have increased sales by as much as 40%.
The AI studies the performance of previous email campaigns and uses those results to improve future campaigns. Toast plans to expand those capabilities across SMS, Meta, Google and Google Maps.
For operators facing flat or declining same-store sales, that support can create more time to focus on bringing guests back.
Restaurant AI Must Improve the Business
Esten believes restaurant AI should be measured by the business outcomes it creates.
“We want to do it in service of business outcomes for restaurants,” she said. “Your restaurant gets more profitable.”
That requires accurate financial information.
Monthly profit-and-loss statements often arrive too late for operators to use them effectively. Daily or weekly financial information creates a clearer baseline, allowing restaurants to see whether a marketing campaign, scheduling decision or operational change produced the intended result.
Better data can also make forecasting more accurate.
Operators can use sales forecasts to plan labor, order food and prepare their teams for the week ahead. As AI improves those forecasts, restaurants can make decisions based on what is happening inside the business.
Why Restaurant Executives Need to Create Content
Esten’s presence on LinkedIn and Instagram has led people to recognize her and introduce themselves at industry events. It is proof that people are paying attention, even when they do not like or comment.
Creating content also gives Toast a recognizable human voice and strengthens the company’s presence in AI-generated search results.
The same principle runs through Toast’s technology and its “Built for Busy” platform: understand the reality operators face, show up when the work gets difficult and build tools that help restaurants move forward.
