Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Toast built a $30B business by defying Silicon Valley (cnbc.com)
27 points by cmogni1 on Sept 25, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



Used them recently for brunch. Super easy, scan the receipt, and go.

They seem to have ignored a few sacred truths. They scaled more slowly, raised capital less aggressively, and shockingly have real human customer support.

This is the interesting bit: https://pos.toasttab.com/products/toast-delivery-services

Get started for free* and pay one flat fee per order, not a percent of sales.

Their own driver network for deliveries, and if you’re already integrated with everything Toast, why not?


They work with door dash iirc, it's not their own driver network


Toast is nothing more than a payment processor. They have horrible customer service like every other web 2.0 company. Scale over quality. Any issue with orders they don't have the power to resolve. Its always "please contact the store to ask for a refund". Not a very good customer experience at all.


"Defying Silicon Valley" ?

Odd way to describe a company that was incubated by a silicon valley VC firm.


One of the few cloud-based solutions to get this bit right[1]:

"Always available - 24/7 support, top-tier reliability, and full offline mode keep your restaurant moving."

Does anyone know if Toast also enables downloading/backing up critical data in a parsable format in case something were to happen to them/your account/etc.?

[1] https://pos.toasttab.com


Boston is still a fertile tech hiring environment with MIT, WPI, NEU around plus the Harvard MBAs. There’s some exciting VC backed and bootstrapped companies in town. And people are better adjusted/more well rounded than they are in SV. However the housing crisis, transportation/traffic problems and quickly growing COL are going to drive people away.


Great story! Can’t remember if I’ve used it or not because tbh I don’t pay that much attention to POS branding etc, but this is a great success tech story.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: