Toast, the Leading Restaurant POS Company, Raises $30 Million in Series B Funding to Fuel Growth
Restaurant Tech Company Toast, Inc. Attracts Funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, GV, and Private Investors
BOSTON, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Toast, the leading all-in-one restaurant point-of-sale company, announced today that it has closed $30 million in Series B funding to further accelerate the company's impressive growth and customer success. The financing round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures), and private investors. The company will use the funds to fuel further growth through hiring, product innovations, and customer success.
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"We have the opportunity to dramatically improve the restaurant experience through technology, and our customer traction to date shows the industry is ready for a new solution," said Chris Comparato, Toast CEO. "We've been growing 4X year-over-year and are excited to continue investing in great people, great products, and great customers."
Kent Bennett, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, added, "Above all, we love Toast's obsessive focus on delighting their customers. Building great software is hard, but building an organization that makes sure software users are successful is even harder, and that's the constant focus of the Toast team."
Toast experienced exponential growth this past year. The company recently announced the signing of 1,000 customers in five quarters, and its deployment to fast casual restaurant chain Costa Vida, which operates in over 75 locations. Toast's customers span every foodservice vertical, from fine dining to cafe to pizzeria to nightclub, and an increasing number of enterprise groups have chosen Toast for hundreds of locations in the past year. Beach Hut Deli, a 40-location full service chain on the West coast, was one of Toast's earliest chain customers, choosing the platform for its full software-as-a-service suite of tools and commitment to customer success.
The Android POS platform sets Toast apart from the rest of the market, and this technology choice is no accident. Android offers the flexibility, customizability, and durability for both software and hardware to stand up to the demanding restaurant environment. Toast looks forward to working with Rich Miner, co-founder of Android and general partner at GV, who led the investment for the fund.
Toast continues to displace hundreds of legacy POS systems as well as new iPad-based POS systems on a platform of deep restaurant-specific functionality, ongoing product innovation, and unmatched customer service. The company will continue expanding the product's depth in the foodservice space, alongside developing additional integrations and APIs and increasing the breadth of coverage of restaurant technology needs.
Toast was founded by three entrepreneurial MIT graduates, Steve Fredette, Aman Narang, and Jon Grimm, who met at Boston-based enterprise software company, Endeca. The founders started with a mobile payments app for restaurants but quickly learned that, for restaurants to adopt new technology and for consumers to have the best possible experience, they would need to start with point-of-sale systems themselves. From there, they turned Toast into a full restaurant technology platform that can replace half a dozen tools, from the POS to online ordering to gift cards and more. Toast's 170 employees are located across the United States, and the company plans to continue to expand aggressively.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) invests in early-stage and hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses. BVP is a global firm with offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Cambridge, New York, Bangalore and Herzliya. With $4 billion under management, BVP invests anywhere from $100,000 to $75 million in innovative companies like Pinterest, Twilio, Box, LinkedIn, Shopify, Yelp, Skype and CornerstoneOnDemand. Over 100 BVP companies have gone public – in the last three years alone, BVP has had 46 exits (IPO and M&A) and made new investments in more than 85 companies. Learn more at www.bvp.com and follow us on Twitter @BessemerVP.
About Toast
Toast is an all-in-one restaurant technology platform. Built specifically for restaurants, Toast brings together many solutions from integrated online ordering to gift card and loyalty programs to labor and sales reporting all on a mobile, cloud-based POS system. Since launching Toast in 2013, the company has grown to 170+ employees and thousands of restaurants, ranging from fine dining to fast casual to national chains. Learn more about Toast at www.toasttab.com.
SOURCE Toast
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