Toast To Go Hands-on with New Restaurant

Boston-based Toast Inc. is stepping back to its early efforts to develop its point-of-sale products with the Toast Lab collaboration.

Toast Lab will see the POS system maker work with a restaurant operator in the Boston area on new POS products and services. Toast says it will provide funding and full technology services and support for the selected operator.

Applications are being accepted through July 14 and will be judged on the operator’s ability to manage complex, full-service concepts generating consumer demand, someone who is an early technology adopter and views tech as a strategic advantage, and in the Boston area, Toast says. In addition to typical demographic information, the application also asks about the project’s timeline, the willingness to share operational data, and if the operator is willing to share their involvement with the public.

Applicants are also expected to provide a pitch for their project and their visions for the restaurant concept, each in 200 words or less. The recipient will be announced later in 2026.

Toast Lab is expected to create a platform for Toast to develop new products and services with restaurant operators in mind, it says. Toast Lab harkens back to 2013 when the then-two-year-old company worked with Barismo, a Boston-area coffee shop that became its first customer. Then, the Toast founders were in Barismo, learning about the business and its operation.

“Toast Lab is a formal return to that instinct, inspired by our belief that the best restaurant technology gets built when operators and product teams are working side-by-side to create something new together,” Kelly Esten, Toast chief marketing and operating officer, says in a statement. “We’re looking for an operator who wants to build their next great restaurant, and we’re excited to let that restaurant inform where our technology goes next.”

Approximately 171,000 merchant locations use Toast, according to the company’s first quarter 2026 earnings release.