Dive Brief:
- Toast, a restaurant and retail technology company, has added the ability for its customers to run fuel payments alongside foodservice and general retail sales on its platform, the company announced on Tuesday.
- Toast Fuel allows retailers to process fuel payments, including fleet cards, at the pump and gives cashiers a dedicated forecourt interface to handle in-store gas payments. An offline mode allows the system to continue processing payments even during internet outages.
- The company also offers guidance and support for the cloud-native system, including a dedicated onboarding consultant, live training sessions, a training library and around-the-clock help.
Dive Insight:
As retailers add more technologies to their sites, the ability to manage multiple systems from one platform is becoming increasingly important. Toast’s latest addition lets c-store operators run pump operations, point of sale, kitchen and online ordering processes through one cloud-native operating system, giving retailers another option for consolidating their tech programs.
Convenience retailers sell around 80% of the fuel purchased in the U.S., according to NACS data, and fuel-less c-stores are fading from the industry. That makes the ability to manage gas sales through the same platform as foodservice and other areas of the business increasingly relevant.
"We're bringing the same innovation powering the country's best restaurants and retailers to c-store operators, giving them the modern tools they’ve long deserved so they can focus on delivering great customer experiences rather than managing their tech," said Omri Traub, chief operating officer of retail at Toast, in the announcement.
Toast also offers Toast IQ, an AI assistant that can answer operators’ questions about inventory and margins, and Toast IQ Grow, a marketing solution offering tools like email and SMS campaigns.
The company is partnering with OWL Services, a petroleum products and electric vehicle charging distributor and service provider, to handle forecourt installation logistics.
