To drive investment in R&D, recruiting and expansion, Toast announced on Tuesday (July 10) that it has raised $115 million in Series D funding. The funding round, which was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., values the restaurant management platform company at $1.4 billion, the company said in an announcement.
“The way restaurants serve their customers is going through a fundamental change, and the technology that enables restaurant operations must respond to these new demands. Toast does this,” T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund Portfolio Manager Henry Ellenbogen said in the press release. “Our investment in Toast reflects our belief in the firm’s ability to become much larger over time. We look forward to working with Toast’s management team as they help their clients and grow the business.”
The Toast platform brings together an Android-based point-of-sale experience and solutions geared toward increasing revenue and improving restaurant operations. According to the company, revenue has increased 150 percent over the past year, as restaurants such as honeygrow, The Pizza Press and B.GOOD joined its customer community.
“Toast enables our team to streamline operations in a way that wouldn’t be possible with legacy technology,” Austin Brinson, VP of analytics at B.GOOD, said in the announcement. “Thanks to Toast’s focus on the unique needs of restaurant operators, our entire organization is empowered to make data-driven decisions.”
The news comes after Toast raised $101 million in a venture capital (VC) funding round. According to a 2017 news report, the funding round was led by Generation Investment Management, a firm co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, and New York-based Lead Edge Capital. Other investors include previous backer Bessemer Venture Partners. The company plans to use the venture capital funds to expand by hiring 1,000 people around the country during the next year and a half. Toast also raised $30 million in a VC round early last year from Google Ventures, which is now known as GV.
In May 2017, mobile takeout and delivery marketplace Grubhub announced its integration with two leading restaurant point-of-sale (POS) systems, Breadcrumb and Toast. Restaurants using these POS systems will now be able to manage the full scope of their orders — from in-house to takeout and delivery — from a single device.
