“We Power Over 160,000 Restaurants”: Toast’s CFO Makes the Case for a Data-Driven Moat

Elena Gomez, President and CFO of Toast (NYSE: TOST), sat down with Julia Boorstin to sermon however the institution is turning its edifice web into a data-driven competitory moat. The anchor of her statement was straightforward: "We powerfulness implicit 160,000 restaurants. So you tin ideate the information that sits successful our platform."

Toast ended 2025 with astir 164,000 full edifice locations globally, up 22% twelvemonth implicit year, adding a grounds 30,000 nett caller locations crossed the afloat year. The institution has grown from astir 140,000 locations astatine the commencement of 2025 to a web that present spans the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, and Australia.

Gomez highlighted Toast's benchmarking merchandise arsenic a factual illustration of however that information creates worth for operators. The level tin archer a edifice proprietor that a cheeseburger costs $12 connected mean crossed the US, and if they are not astatine that terms point, it is an accidental worthy examining. That benignant of insight, drawn from aggregated transaction information crossed tens of thousands of locations, is hard for immoderate single-restaurant bundle vendor to replicate.

Regarding AI: it is not a question of "if" but "how fast" Toast tin thrust innovation with it. She noted she personally uses AI each day. The institution has already launched Toast IQ, a conversational AI adjunct for restaurants that includes paper upsells, shift-at-a-glance operational visibility, an AI selling assistant, and advertizing capabilities.

The concern results enactment the narrative. Full twelvemonth 2025 gross came successful astatine $6.153 billion, up 24.05% twelvemonth implicit year, portion gross nett reached $1.593 billion, up 33.87%. ARR crossed $2.05 cardinal arsenic of Q4 2025, up 26% twelvemonth implicit year. CEO Aman Narang has acceptable an ambitious semipermanent target: "We're assured we're gathering a level that tin service galore multiples of our existent locations and standard to $5 cardinal and $10 cardinal successful ARR implicit the adjacent decade."

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Enterprise wins are accelerating that path. Toast signed Applebee's successful Q1 2025, its largest endeavor woody successful institution history, and much precocious agreed to rotation retired crossed 1,000+ Papa Murphy's US locations via MTY Food Group. In March 2026, Teriyaki Madness adopted Toast endeavor exertion crossed implicit 200 US locations.