Boston — Toast, a digital technology platform built for hospitality, has launched Toast Drive-Thru, an enterprise-grade solution designed to help modern quick-service restaurants (QSR) increase throughput and order accuracy at scale while optimizing labor efficiency through a single, unified platform.
There are just over 140,000 total drive-thru locations across the entire U.S. restaurant industry, according to 2026 data from Technomic Ignite. These operators must deliver fast, error-free guest service while facing increased pressure on labor efficiency. The growth of AI voice ordering solutions in drive-thru has left many brands struggling to integrate new technologies into old, fractured drive-thru systems burdened by a patchwork of disconnected vendors for point-of-sale (POS), menu boards and audio systems.
Toast Drive-Thru replaces these fragmented systems with a future-ready platform across trusted hardware, POS-native software, AI voice ordering integrations, and end-to-end “white-glove” support designed to help drive-thru operators succeed.
Toast Drive-Thru leverages the expertise of Delphi by Toast, and builds on Delphi’s decades of experience in developing trusted drive-thru hardware, allowing brands to run their entire drive-thru operation through one integrated, modern ecosystem.
“In the drive-thru lane, every second matters. As one of the important service models for QSR profitability, brands are constantly being pushed to balance speed and guest convenience with efficiency. At the same time, AI is giving brands new opportunities to impact this equation,” says Steve Fredette, president and co-founder of Toast. “By seamlessly integrating POS, KDS, outdoor digital menu boards and AI voice ordering partnerships, Toast Drive-Thru gives operators the tools they need to keep pace with peak demand today, and the flexible foundation required to adopt new innovations in the future.”
Customers say Toast Drive-Thru is foundational to maintaining speed and accuracy in high-volume lanes. For Gilberto Salinas, manager of information systems at Palenque Group, whose Taco Palenque brand operates high-volume drive-thru locations across Texas, Toast Drive-Thru has transformed the way his team manages the lane, turning manual double-checks into streamlined operational clarity.
“Toast has always made it easy and intuitive for our staff to enter orders, and even more so now in our drive-thrus with POS Drive-Thru Mode,” Salinas says. “It gives our staff options to easily highlight the make, model and color of the vehicle on each drive-thru order, which helps streamline the ordering process.
“Before implementing Toast’s Advanced Order Confirmation Screen, our staff had to repeat drive-thru orders back to guests before firing them, which took extra steps. Now guests can verify their orders right on the screen, helping to save time. The Order Confirmation Screen also helps to make sure the experience guests have in our drive-thrus matches Taco Palenque’s brand identity, which is a necessity for our drive-thru operations.”
Part of Toasts Enterprise Solutions’ offering for larger brands, Toast Drive-Thru will be available on a rolling basis, beginning with brands with 15 or more locations in the coming months. For more information, visit www.pos.toasttab.com/restaurant-pos/drive-thru.
Toast is a cloud-based, all-in-one digital technology platform purpose-built for the entire restaurant community. Toast provides a single platform of software as a service (SaaS) products and financial technology solutions that give restaurants everything they need to run their business across point of sale, operations, digital ordering and delivery, marketing and loyalty, and team management. Toast serves as the restaurant operating system across dine-in, takeout and delivery channels. For more information, visit www.toasttab.com.
SOURCE: Toast