FAQs

Toast currently offers three inventory products:

• xtraChef
• International Inventory
• Retail Inventory

Customers on all three products will eventually migrate to Toast Inventory. The transition will be least disruptive for retail customers — Toast Inventory is a real-time perpetual inventory solution with a user experience that closely mirrors what retail customers use today. The underlying engine is being overhauled to support an AI-first inventory future with the flexibility to handle a wide range of inventory use cases, but day-to-day workflows will feel familiar.

Migration timelines are not available yet. During the current testing phase, customers who want to try Toast Inventory will need to recreate their data manually — there are no migration tools in place today. We will build migration tooling in the future, and you'll have access to those when they're ready.

To get early access, follow these steps:

• Sign up for Test Kitchen — you must be an active member and agree to the beta terms.
• Watch the Test Kitchen Onboarding video — this walks you through what's available and how to get started.
• Complete the access acknowledgement form — this registers your request and lets the team know which environment you'd like access to.

Once those are done, you'll receive a confirmation email when access has been granted — either to the shared sandbox or directly on your own production account, depending on what you request.

Yes. We're working toward a system where invoice ingestion updates inventory with minimal manual intervention, though mapping between purchases and products will still be necessary at the beginning.

The system is quite flexible. You'll be able to manually enter a plate cost that gets applied to sales to determine margin, even without recipes existing against those sellable items. This manual plate cost can be updated up to 30 days in the past.

Recipes are also flexible:

• You can adjust recipes over time.
• Changes are tracked so historical reporting remains intact — no need to create new menu items just because a recipe changes.
• Retroactive recipe changes will be allowed, with restrictions: generally no more than 30 days back, and for complex historical edits (like recipe changes) you may be limited to 7 days.

Yes — this is a core use case (e.g., different pours from the same keg). The system is designed to support shared inventory across multiple sellable items. This capability already exists in the Toast retail product. We're improving the usability of how it works today; if you want to test it now, the Sandbox account is a great starting point.

Yes. Batch production will exist, but it will be manual at the start. We're figuring out what level of automation makes sense to keep batch production maintainable without a lot of human intervention.

Not fully in the first release, but this is a high-priority area of feedback and something we're actively investigating.

Eventually, yes — with alerts first, then recommendations, then optional automation. We expect this to evolve over time, not all at once.

Yes — par-based workflows are already part of the system.

Yes — especially based on ingredient stock. More advanced logic (e.g., time-based replenishment) is being explored. We'll also offer capabilities for setting manual availability that is independent of stock levels.

This is an active area of research. Barcode scanning is included, as well as barcode label generation and printing. We're exploring additional hardware integrations over time.

Yes. Payroll integration with QuickBooks (outside of xtraCHEF) is already generally available. Sales integration with QuickBooks is in beta. Invoice automation with QuickBooks is coming soon. Support for additional accounting systems is also planned.

We're rolling out in phases: retail first, recipes next, modifiers after that. We'll reach out based on your use case and readiness.

Yes — sandbox / early testing environments are planned. We'll follow up with those who expressed interest. You can also complete the access acknowledgement form to get started.

Yes — when this product rolls out, it will roll out to all countries where Toast is sold today.

Yes, this will cost extra. Pricing is still being finalized. We'll share details before broader rollout.

We haven't fully considered catering-specific operations yet, but a lot of great suggestions came up in the webinar. If a significant portion of your orders are catering-based, please reach out — we'd love to learn more about your use case.