LinkedIn: Toast reported a strong Q3 and put real weight behind product, AI, and a new Uber partnership that will matter for how restaurants run digital orders.
Global POS players and regional incumbents should assume faster competitive pressure as Toast’s localized stack, AI features, and marketplace integrations roll into more markets.
1/ Footprint and customers
~156,000 live locations (+23% YoY) after ~7,500 net adds. New rollouts include Nordstrom – a major U.S. department store chain deploying Toast at nearly 200 cafés and restaurants inside ~100 stores – TGI Fridays – the U.S. casual-dining chain moving its U.S. footprint to Toast – and everbowl – a fast-growing superfood bowl brand.
2/ Product and AI in use
Management said ToastIQ – the conversational assistant inside the platform – is already used by 25,000+ restaurants with 235,000+ sessions since its early October launch. Toast Advertising lets operators run Google and Meta campaigns with AI suggestions and clear attribution; one operator cited roughly $400k seasonal sales at ~20x ROAS (return on ad spend – revenue attributed to the ads divided by the ad cost).
3/ Going global and beyond restaurants
Last month, I noted Toast is rolling out internationally with a platform built for localization (read here https://lnkd.in/dWZwVd_d). Q3 adds more proof points: international SaaS ARPU is up ~20% YoY, and enterprise + international + food and beverage retail together are on pace for about $100M ARR in 2025 – roughly ~5% of total ARR.
4/ Integration with Uber
Following Uber’s earnings call (see my post https://lnkd.in/dZvzPf2s), Toast repeated the news about a multi-year strategic partnership that starts in the U.S. and Canada. Product integration will allow faster onboarding, menu and image sync, and joint go-to-market.
5/ Operations resilience
During the recent AWS outage, restaurants ran in offline mode – taking orders, sending them to the kitchen, and capturing card details – then syncing payments after recovery. Toast said it is working on added resilience for both first-party ordering and partner integrations so those channels stay available when upstream cloud services wobble.
6/ Orders and money
ARR $2.0B (+30% YoY) – GPV $51.5B (+24%) – non-GAAP subscription + fintech gross profit $506M (+34%) – adjusted EBITDA $176M (35% margin) – net income $105M – free cash flow $153M.
The restaurant tech market is getting more intense. Toast is scaling beyond POS into a broader operating platform, while tying directly into demand channels like Uber Eats. Very interesting.