Toast

Bengaluru
Total Offices: 2
5,000 Total Employees
Year Founded: 2011

Toast Leadership & Management

Updated on June 30, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

Management Quality

Managers at Toast support employees through regular feedback, career development conversations, flexibility, coaching and a strong focus on helping teams do meaningful work for restaurants.

  • Coaching through regular feedback: Toast managers support employees with regular development check-ins and structured annual feedback conversations. External reviews reinforce this support, with employees describing managers who help them succeed, remove barriers and treat them with respect.
  • Career support beyond one role: Managers are involved in helping employees grow within their teams and across Toast. A Salesforce administrator said her manager helped her move from Customer Success to Business Systems, use the professional development stipend for Salesforce certification and prepare for her next career move. A territory account executive said his district manager and regional vice president helped him create a plan for advancement.
  • Flexibility and trust in daily work: Employees describe managers as supportive of autonomy and life outside work. A senior account executive said management empowered her to take control of her schedule to support her family, while a software engineer II said she values Toast’s day-to-day flexibility and ownership. External reviews also cite remote work, flexibility, supportive coworkers and strong work-life balance as strengths.
  • External signals:
    • Manager and Peer Support: Employees on external reviews describe supportive managers, helpful coworkers, coffee-chat culture and teams that are willing to teach and collaborate. (Glassdoor; Comparably)
    • Employee Sentiment: Employees on external review sites highlight Toast workplace culture, flexibility, benefits, growth and meaningful work; Toast also shows 79% CEO approval. (Glassdoor)
    • Top-Rated Culture: Toast has a 4.6/5 Overall Culture score, an A+ culture rating, 90% positive employee reviews and a Top 5% Overall Company Culture Score. (Comparably)

Bottom line: Toast managers lead by coaching employees, clarifying expectations, supporting career movement and giving teams flexibility to do impactful work. 

Organizational Clarity

Toast leaders communicate goals and expectations through company-wide updates, town halls, CEO notes, intranet resources, team-level planning and performance conversations that connect individual work to company priorities. 

  • Company-wide alignment: Toast shares updates through regular town halls, quarterly notes from the CEO and a robust intranet. Company goals are shared annually, and individual teams connect their goals back to broader priorities so employees understand how their work supports the business and restaurant customers. External reviews also describe Toast leaders as mission-aligned, transparent and forward-thinking. (Comparably)
  • Clear expectations through manager conversations: Goals and expectations are reinforced through quarterly performance check-ins, annual reviews, competency frameworks and manager-led development conversations. The 2025 ESG report says Toast’s competency framework defines five critical competencies for success and helps guide performance evaluations and development.
  • Feedback from many angles: Toast’s communication culture is built around listening to employees, customers and cross-functional partners. A customer care expert said Toast is bold because it takes feedback from people on the job, other departments, product engineers and customers, and sees value in that feedback. External reviews also note leaders who are willing to discuss ongoing problems and care about customers and the company’s mission. (Comparably)
  • External signals:
    • Leadership Communication: Employees on external reviews cite transparency, forward-thinking leadership, willingness to discuss problems and alignment around Toast’s mission. (Comparably)
    • Employer Strengths: Employees on external review sites highlight culture, product strength, flexibility, benefits, growth and meaningful work; Toast also shows 79% CEO approval. (Glassdoor)
    • Workplace Awards: Toast has received Glassdoor Best Places to Work 2024, Great Place to Work Certified May 2026–2027 and Built In 2026 Best Places to Work recognitions. (Glassdoor; Great Place to Work)

Bottom line: Toast leaders communicate goals through structured company updates, team alignment, performance systems and feedback loops that help employees understand what matters and why.

Strategic Vision & Direction

Toast leaders provide strategic vision by grounding the company in its restaurant-focused mission, connecting teams to customer needs and setting priorities around product innovation, global growth, culture and social impact.

  • Mission as the strategic anchor: Toast’s strategy starts with empowering the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love and thrive. In the 2024 ESG report, Toast’s CEO described the company’s opportunity and responsibility to help shape a more sustainable and inclusive hospitality industry, while the report notes Toast served approximately 140,000 global locations as of March 31, 2025.
  • Customer obsession shapes direction: Leaders reinforce customer understanding through shadowing, product feedback and close collaboration with restaurants. Toast’s customer obsession examples show teams improving onboarding chat, Publishing Center visibility and security processes based on direct customer observation. Employees also describe leaders and teams staying close to customer pain points and sharing wins to guide product direction.
  • Growth, global expansion and innovation: Toast leadership communicates a future tied to new geographies, retail, enterprise, AI, product innovation and international expansion. Leadership blogs describe Toast’s international growth as startup-like within a larger company, while product leaders highlight customer-focused innovation across hardware, payments, KDS, Toast IQ and restaurant operations.
  • External signals:
    • Mission and Product Strength: Employees on external reviews highlight Toast’s product strength, market share, meaningful work and customer impact as reasons they value the company. (Glassdoor)
    • Leadership Confidence: Toast shows 79% CEO approval, and employee reviews cite leaders who care about customers, employees and the mission. (Glassdoor; Comparably)
    • Workplace Awards: Toast has received Fortune 2026 World’s Most Admired Companies recognition, Built In 2026 Best Places to Work recognitions and RepVue 2026 Top Rated Sales Orgs at Public Companies. (Fortune; Built In; RepVue)

Bottom line: Toast leaders provide direction by tying strategy to restaurant impact, customer insight, product innovation and global growth, giving employees a clear sense of how their work supports the future of hospitality.

Toast's Candidate Tradeoffs

If you’re weighing whether Toast is the right fit, these are the core tradeoffs to consider.

  • Toast places greater emphasis on leadership accessibility and collaboration, meaning more check-ins.

Toast Employee Perspectives

Toast leaders describe the company’s values as a practical guide for how teams operate, not just a set of statements. Leadership means creating a culture of honest feedback, continuous learning, discipline, and shared accountability so everyone can raise the bar together.

“I love our Toast values; they are the compass for everything we do. I consider myself very lucky to work with a team down here that truly lives and breathes ‘raise the bar.’”

 

Noel O’Connell, Regional Vice President, Australia

As a people manager, there is no better feeling than supporting an onboarding consultant through a difficult project and watching them come out the other side as a subject-matter expert. It is a privilege to support their career trajectories.

Leona Lu
Leona Lu, Senior Onboarding Manager

Toast Employee Reviews

Toast surprised me how the interaction is so phenomenal. You can always reach out to somebody. Everyone that I’ve encountered, whether it be, upper management, or someone in my similar role, they’ve always been very responsive. 

Keith Dean, Retail Onboarding Consultant
Keith Dean, Retail Onboarding Consultant

Toast is a very bold company. I feel like other companies, they are okay with being complacent, doing the same thing, but Toast,  they're taking feedback from so many angles. They take it from people are on the job, people in other departments, like product  engineers, customers, and we actually, we see the value in that feedback.

Mars Johnson, Customer Care Expert
Mars Johnson, Customer Care Expert

What People Are Saying About Toast

  • Strategic Vision & Planning: Leadership repeatedly articulates a coherent multi‑year plan anchored in an AI/agentic platform, deeper product attach, and expansion into enterprise, international, and select retail adjacencies. Direction is codified in SEC filings and reinforced across investor materials with concrete examples and quantified progress.
  • Purposeful Goal Setting: Leaders tie strategy to measurable markers such as recurring gross profit growth, long‑term margin targets, and explicit quarterly guidance. Internal goal cascades via annual company goals and OKRs are described as aligning teams to broader priorities.
  • Open & Transparent Communication: Regular town halls, quarterly CEO notes, and a robust intranet are used to keep teams informed and aligned on objectives and priorities. Investor communications and prepared remarks provide specific product and adoption updates, clarifying pace and milestones externally.

Toast's Benefits

Defined policies promoting a professional, respectful workplace

Defined values and mission statements

Documented operating principles

Documented policies and procedures to protect employee privacy and data

Implements team-based strategic planning

Leadership encourages open, transparent debate

Leadership is transparent and communicative

Mistakes are treated as learning opportunities

Open office floor plan to encourage communication and collaboration

Policies promote a low-ego, team-driven culture

Prioritizes mission-driven work in decision-making processes

Prioritizes real-world impact of work in decision-making processes

Promotes a people-first, social culture

Promotes a strong in-person office culture

Uses an OKR operational model to clearly define goals and priorities

Utilizes an open door policy that encourages accessibility