Toast vs. Square: 2024 Comparison of Features, Pricing & Integrations

Orders come in, deliveries go out, and customers wait. Running a restaurant is truly a challenge. And the last thing you need is a setback with your restaurant management software. This software helps your restaurant operations, minus all the hassles. Having this app brings numerous benefits, such as improvements to your sales reporting, credit card processing, and inventory control processes. Your restaurant will also reap the benefits of having efficient services, menu and inventory integrations, and theft prevention protocols.

Dominated by traditional companies for many years, the restaurant management industry has finally welcomed new and promising providers in the field. Take this Toast vs. Square article as your cheat sheet in choosing your restaurant management platform.

Over the last 10 years, the restaurant industry has witnessed drastic changes, especially since the COVID-19 onset. Restaurants began working on multiple delivery firms and offering smooth online ordering processes all at once. Small businesses cannot manage this type of service on their own, and that is why outsourcing technology requirements have become a trend.

In Toast’s 2019 Restaurant Success report, 52% of restaurant owners disclosed that food and high operating expenses are their biggest challenges. Following that report, restaurants responded by using a POS software to administer inventory, review sales, and more.

The evolution of the restaurant POS into a far-reaching management tool navigated the industry’s growth. Digital developments are the driving factors in changing how people send and receive payments. These innovations gave birth to a culture constructed on quality service.

Studies show that 56% of single-store retailers do not use a restaurant POS and still rely on manual operations in the forms of cash registers and Excel. If you are one of them yet want to be on par with your competitors, do not get left behind and switch to a restaurant management software.

Overview of Toast and Square

Toast

Toast is a cloud- and tablet-hosted restaurant management tool. It was built to do away with your old POS and provide business and control visibility. It also provides a system that has numerous features, which include POS, CRM, reporting, and more.

Toast POS equips you to optimize your restaurant processes and manage your business more productively. It helps you save on budget while streamlining your restaurant’s required technologies. It can also be integrated with major third-party apps.

Moreover, Toast helps you hasten your payroll, timesheet approval, and new hire onboarding processes. Popular users of this software are Beach Hut Dell, Fresh City, Paris Creperie, and Lakewood Brewing Company. Currently, it is only available in the United States.

Toast POS

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Square

Square was designed to bring a solid and efficient POS tool to businesses. It can accept payments using any device and can be used on the go. It also accepts payments via credit and debit cards as it comes with free downloadable software and a Square magstripe reader.

With Square, you can oversee your inventory. At the same time, your employees can clock in and out directly at your point of sale. Each transaction is connected to an employee, thus expediting reconciling tips and commissions.

Square can let you manage different locations from a single account. You can also review the financial performance of your business. As a transaction-based system, it will charge you a specific percentage of each tap, dip, or swipe on your smartphone or tablet.

Comparison of Toast vs. Square

Toast and Square are created especially for restaurants. Both are dynamic, versatile systems that can manage orders in any location, take payments, and promote a restaurant over time. Have a glimpse at how these two vary in terms of their core features.

Core Features

Looking for a fail-safe restaurant management software? Both Toast and Square are terrific options. While they have a lot of similarities, there are also prime differences where one outperforms the other.

POS

Toasts’ POS system is strong enough to manage any restaurant. Toast Now™ helps restaurant owners set up online ordering and e-gift cards worry-free. This feature does not need a purchased hardware to work.

Toast also has the TakeOut app, where customers can order ahead, pay instantly, and pick up their order at your location. This is a quick and accurate way of taking orders because your customers no longer need to wait in line.

Square for Restaurants delivers plenty of features specific to restaurants, including online ordering, delivery app integrations, gift cards, and loyalty programs, among others.  This POS system was devised to hasten restaurant operations, be it front-of-house and back-of-house or deliveries and pickups.

Menu Management

Toast is a restaurant-friendly system. It has menu management features that can set time-particular menu pricing, like the happy hour menu, personalizing menus differently for online and offline customers, and organizing the overall menu that includes all customer groups. Its restaurant ordering system lets users separate menu orders and bills, automatically alerts the server once the order is ready, and has the ability to take orders on the spot.

Toast having all the features of restaurant management

Square’s menu management allows you to personalize your items grid and present famous items front and center. In its inventory, you can change items such as price or quantity in real-time.

Labor Management

Toast can eliminate manual hours entry and external processes, making it an absolute time-saver. Its POS system also enables you to automate the syncing of your payroll and, eventually, speed up your labor management processes. You also get to speed up the processing of new hires and rule out double entry of information on independent systems.

In the Square Dashboard, you can edit employee timecards. You are also provided with reporting features that can filter reports by employee, place, and device. Furthermore, you can produce revenue-per-labor-hour reports to see your business standing.

Optimized Payment System

Toast and Square provide their own payment systems. If you are fine with their rates, this should not be a problem. Toast offers quote-based rates, but it has been an inexpensive choice for large restaurants. Meanwhile, Square offers a flat rate of 2.6% plus, $0.10 for general transactions and 2.9% plus, $0.30 for digital transactions.

Toast’s pay-at-the-table feature simplifies payments for you and your clients as it prints receipts or emails you and tip servers straight out of a device. Customers, on the other hand, can redeem loyalty points from their payments.

In Square, you can pick between printed and digital receipts. It has open tickets and a split tender system that keeps tabs open to let customers pay whenever they can. This system also splits a tab by cards or accepts payments in several ways.

Inventory Management

Toast gives you visibility into your inventory and enables you to minimize waste. By monitoring your inventory reports, you can have a full grasp of which items are mostly used.

Toast also monitors real-time menu sales and gives extensive reporting of product mix across menus. Concurrently, it has a real-time inventory app that tracks suppliers, food inventory, and units and prices, all from your mobile device or computer. In this way, you can reorder items whenever you can. You can instantly download food prices and menu and inventory reports, too, helping you modify your menu to promote them.

Square offers real-time inventory as well. Upon signing in to your Square Dashboard, you can manage your inventory wherever you are. You can download reports on the latest inventory, update inventory, get daily email alerts, and import products with CSV spreadsheets. On top of that, Square offers a sales tracker and an item handling system.

Reporting and Analytics

Toast can deliver you the kind of business insights any restaurant needs. See real-time order data, sales, and more, anytime and anywhere. You do not have to wait to access your statistics. Every night, you will also receive key metrics in your email. All the insights are compressed in one summary report, which means you do not need to manage extra reports.

You can check out your KPIs from any device with Toast. Its interface lets you use features such as comparative reporting, where you can assess sales for your restaurant branches in a single report. You can also set a filter to be in charge of the sales of a certain product.

Square offers the same reporting and analytics features, but you cannot view them all on a single screen.

Integrations

Toast’s app integrations include UberEats and GrubHub, just to name a few. It also teams up with KitchenSync, Bevspot, OpenTable, LevelUp, Shipday, and more. In addition, it has other great choices for tableside purchasing and contactless payments.

Toast’s integration with Shipday

Square integrates with multiple accounting software, which include QuickBooks, Xero, and TurboTax. Its inventory integrations are those with SkuHarmony, Shopventory, and Faire, among others. Its delivery and ordering integrations include Slice, Chowly, and Postmates. Meanwhile, its restaurant partners are BentoBox, Fresh KDS, MarketMan, and more.

Toast is integrated with payroll management. At the same time, it has customer-facing screens where you can gather more data while clients finish transactions, leave feedback, and avail of loyalty programs. They are integrated into the digital checkout flow, meaning they do not have to join plastic card-based programs and sign-up rate boosts for you.

Square also integrates with apps for invoicing, employee management, and other POS solutions. The Square Connect API can allow you to make your own custom applications and systems too.

Pricing

Toast offers customized and flexible pricing plans. Contact the vendor to get a quote that fits you.

• Starter Kit – This plan is perfect for small restaurants needing one or two terminals to get going. It offers a cloud-based POS, hardware configuration, real-time sales and menu reporting, payment processing, 24/7/365 customer service, order and table management, and unlimited software updates.
• Essentials – This plan serves restaurants that have been in the industry for a while. It offers services from the Starter Kit alongside digital ordering, delivery services, Toast takeout app, and three months of free online ordering (priced at $75/month).
• Custom – Restaurants aiming to grow profit and improve operations should try this plan. It includes everything in the Essentials plan plus, email marketing, gift cards, and loyalty programs; scheduling, payroll, and tips; and 100+ integrations with prominent restaurant applications.
• New Restaurant Basics – This plan is best for restaurants that want to save on their budget. It includes everything in the Starter Kit plus, Scheduling Lite, Payroll and Team Management Lite, business insurance, Vestwell 401K, and Toast PayCard.

Square’s POS app and Reader for Magstripe are free. You will be charged 2.75% of the amount of customer payment per swipe for MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover. You may also purchase the Reader for Contactless and Chip for $49, which applies a similar charge for each dip of major credit cards or mobile payment of your customer.

For advanced solutions, you can upgrade to the Square for Retail plan anytime. This plan is a monthly subscription, starting at $60 per location per month and a 2.5% charge plus, $.10 per swipe, dip, or tap.

Ease of Use

Both Toast and Square are hailed for their simplicity, convenience, and functionalities. Employees and customers commend the apps for their ability to be easily set up.

Toast has a modern look but does not exceed to look too lavish. Its color-coding scheme and table mapping are simple and offer one of the best and most detailed menu creation systems.

Within a few minutes, Square can already be used. It does not have an overwhelming interface as it thrives on simplicity. You can adjust its brightness, though, which is easy to do. Similarly, its table layout displays an easy and functional color-coding system.

Getting Started

Setting up your restaurant management system entails a number of steps, such as installing the router, cash drawers, printers, and wireless network. Then you will need to set up your menu, payment systems, and so on.

Although setting it up is pretty facile, Toast still offers help to set it up. It also provides training and on-site installation. Anyway, the vendor’s customer service is available 24/7 if you have issues getting started or any other concerns.

As for Square, simply download the free app and install it on your smartphone or tablet. For ease of operation, use its drag-and-drop feature to arrange and move products, items, and categories. Its ticket handling feature lets you keep tickets open so that you can make, save, and add to orders. For inquiries, you can contact the vendor 24/7 via phone or email.

Use Cases

A close look at Toast’s and Square’s clientele shows diverse types of food businesses that hugely benefit from their core or expanded capabilities:  small-town cafes,  family-oriented restaurants, food kiosk businesses, grocery stores, and fast food restaurants, among a host of others.

While the COVID-19 crisis saw many restaurants flounder across the world, many that adopted their ecommerce siblings’ business model managed to survive through online food delivery models. Amid that shift, Toast and Square played their part providing cloud and mobile support to enable food establishments reach out to customers confined to their homes.

While both restaurant management platforms cater to the same diverse classes of food establishments, Toast offers a handy offline tool that lets establishments run in the event of internet outage, automatically syncing once the connection is back. For many types of food services that rely on mobility and speed, its a special function that comes in handy.

Square’s Activity Log lets you monitor your team’s actions, like processed refunds, discounts, updates to inventory, and more.

Toast vs. Square Comparison Table

Toast vs. Square—Which Is Better?

This Toast vs Square comparison reckons that your restaurant POS system should diminish the expenses and troubles related to payments. Most essentially, it should help your restaurant rise to the next level.

Square is still a considerable choice for restaurants looking for a low-cost app. If budget is an issue and you do not really need a real powerhouse offering, go for it.

Having said that, is Toast better than Square? Yes, Toast’s software and hardware have features that Square does not have. It may be difficult to set up, but its features are more in-depth, can fulfill even the most intricate of needs, and can withstand extreme restaurant conditions.

Key Insights

• Comprehensive Feature Set: Toast offers a wide range of features including POS, CRM, reporting, online purchasing, labor and inventory management, credit card processing, and gift and loyalty programs, making it a more robust solution compared to Square.
• User Experience: Both Toast and Square are praised for their simplicity and ease of use, but Toast’s menu creation system and detailed interface stand out.
• Integration Capabilities: Toast integrates with various apps like UberEats, GrubHub, and OpenTable, while Square offers integrations with accounting software such as QuickBooks and Xero, as well as other POS solutions.
• Pricing and Affordability: Square offers a straightforward, low-cost pricing model suitable for budget-conscious restaurants, while Toast provides customizable pricing plans catering to more comprehensive needs.
• Inventory and Reporting: Toast excels in providing real-time inventory visibility and comprehensive business insights on one screen, a significant advantage over Square.
• Labor Management: Toast automates payroll syncing and labor management, speeding up processes and reducing manual entry errors. Square offers similar labor management features with detailed reporting capabilities.
• Payment Systems: Toast provides quote-based rates and features like pay-at-the-table and loyalty point redemption. Square offers a flat-rate pricing model with various payment options, including split tender and open tickets.
• Customer Support and Onboarding: Both systems offer 24/7 customer support. Toast additionally provides training and on-site installation services, which Square lacks.
• Unique Features: Toast’s offline mode and digital kitchen display screens are valuable for ensuring continuous operation and efficiency, especially in busy restaurant environments.

FAQ

1. Which software is easier to set up and use, Toast or Square? Toast and Square are both known for their ease of use. Square is particularly simple to set up, requiring only the download of an app and installation on a smartphone or tablet. Toast, while slightly more complex due to its extensive feature set, offers training and on-site installation to assist with setup.
2. What are the main differences in payment processing between Toast and Square? Toast provides quote-based rates and features like pay-at-the-table, email receipts, and loyalty point redemption. Square offers a flat rate of 2.6% plus $0.10 per general transaction and 2.9% plus $0.30 for digital transactions. Square also supports open tickets and split tender options.
3. How do Toast and Square compare in terms of inventory management? Both Toast and Square offer real-time inventory management. Toast provides extensive reporting of product mixes and real-time inventory tracking through a mobile app, allowing easy reordering and menu adjustments. Square’s inventory management is accessible via its dashboard, with capabilities to update inventory in real-time and receive daily email alerts.
4. Can I integrate other apps with Toast and Square? Yes, both systems support multiple integrations. Toast integrates with restaurant-specific apps like UberEats, GrubHub, and OpenTable. Square integrates with accounting software such as QuickBooks and Xero, inventory management apps like Shopventory, and various other POS solutions.
5. What are the key features that set Toast apart from Square? Toast offers more comprehensive features tailored to complex restaurant needs, including a detailed menu management system, advanced labor management, and a digital kitchen display. It also has an offline mode for continuous operation during internet outages. These features make Toast particularly suited for busy restaurants with intricate requirements.

By Nestor Gilbert

Nestor Gilbert is a senior B2B and SaaS analyst and a core contributor at FinancesOnline for over 5 years. With his experience in software development and extensive knowledge of SaaS management, he writes mostly about emerging B2B technologies and their impact on the current business landscape. However, he also provides in-depth reviews on a wide range of software solutions to help businesses find suitable options for them. Through his work, he aims to help companies develop a more tech-forward approach to their operations and overcome their SaaS-related challenges.