Do you need a website if you have Toast?
Toast gives you an ordering page, and for some restaurants that's enough to start. But an ordering page is built to take orders, not to be found: it lives on Toast's address, it looks like every other restaurant's, and it doesn't tell your story.
A website of your own is where new guests decide to come in, and where Google sends people searching for what you serve. The two work together: your site wins the visit, and Toast takes the order.
How online ordering connects
The simplest and most reliable way is a link: every Order button on your site opens your Toast ordering page, ready for pickup or delivery. Orders land in Toast as they do now, on the same tablets and printers, in the same reports.
Nothing about how the kitchen works changes. The site sends more guests to the ordering page, and sends them there from a page that looks like you.
Your menu, where Google can read it
Search engines read a menu that's a real page on your site far better than one inside an app or a PDF. We build your menu as a page of its own, with dishes, descriptions and prices, marked up so search engines know it's a menu.
Where your Toast plan includes API access, the menu can be read from Toast directly. Otherwise we update it when your menu changes, as part of looking after the site.
Gift cards, reservations and catering
Toast eGift cards, Toast Tables for reservations and waitlists, and catering requests each have a page of their own in Toast. We link each one from the right place on your site, so a guest can buy a gift card from any page, or book a table from the menu.
If you take reservations through OpenTable, Resy or another service, it links in the same way.
Seeing what the site brings in
Every Order and Book button is counted in your analytics, so you can see how many guests the website sends to Toast each week, and from which pages. Toast's own reports show what they ordered.
- Order clicks counted
- Bookings counted
- Reports in plain English
