Share your tips for a chance to win a $1,000 gift card!*

[jenni]

Hi everyone!

It's officially the first day of ☀️Summer☀️, and we have some great news! As a new community member, from June 21 - July 31, share tips on how you are navigating the busy season, and you will be entered for the chance to win a $1000 Visa gift card.* Terms Apply

We'd love to get to know you and hear how you and your restaurant team have prepared for the busy season. Tell us more about you below in the comments ⬇️ 

• Your name
• Restaurant name & location
• How long have you been a Toast customer?
• What are your best practices for navigating the busy season?

*Terms and conditions apply. See Official Rules for details

[BNRM]

• Myles Cox
• The Gyro Spot- 3 Locations in Boston Area
• 5+ years
• Reiterating a bunch of the comments about hiring ahead but a new one is having a "in case of emergencies" box. Anything that will hold you over for the next few hours while someone runs to a store or a delivery come in. Keep it hidden and only use for absolute emergencies. Itll save you running to a million stores looking for something.

[gavro40]

Hi folks, my name is Gavin Roberts and I'm over at Zeeks Pizza/Fountain Brewing in Bellingham, WA!

I've been a toast customer for just over a year now, and I love it.

One of my top tips for navigating the busy season is good problem-solving documentation, in my experience the some of the best fixes and improvements to procedures happen on the fly. Being able to capture clearly in writing the best ways the team is able to make efficiency, communication, and quality of life improvements is key to creating great protocols that hold up when hitting increased traffic during busy times. 

Another tip for busy season is building a cross-training model for raising employee awareness and ability to adapty. It is a goal of mine to understand each step of the process in our restaurant, in order to have the greatest possible awareness of how we operate. I try and work with each employee to shadow  (or just outright work) in each other position in the establishment, making sure all employees are able to work with the POS system at a basic level, work (or at least have worked) the line, know our system for table service, etc. helps us remain flexible, dynamic, and empathetic with all members of the team during rushes. 

[Szitani]

• Your name
• Subculture coffee west palm beach fl 
• 5 years 
• Keep your team engaged by having meetings and daily check ins.  Staff to needs of business using scheduling toast integration.  Have events and promote opportunities to connect with new customers. 

[RonD]

• Your name  Ron D
• Restaurant name & location   Mookies NY Deli, Cary, North Carolina
• How long have you been a Toast customer?  2 years
• What are your best practices for navigating the busy season?   Treat your staff like family.  You will be paid back two fold.

[GK39V]

Hi I'm Grace, owner of Gracie's Kitchen in Voorheesville NY. Using TOAST for 2.5 of the 4.5 years we've been in business has streamlined and eased our operations significantly.

Heading into the "back to school and work" season, we are hiring and training a number of new part-timers to allow for flexible scheduling. We're certainly finding that the new generation of workers don't hold work as their first priority! So having them well prepared, especially training on customer contact and relationship building is critical - it isn't all about devices in a small town like this.

We also plan some unique specials and keep them posted well ahead, as well as adding spontaneous specials to keep people coming back to see what they will find new and interesting. 

Challenging times demand constant adaptation and improvisation! Look forward to reading other ideas. Thanks!