Toast has introduced a suite of updates designed to deliver precision insights, actionable recommendations and operational efficiency for retailers using its commerce technology, including enhanced capabilities within the Toast IQ AI assistant.
The latest platform enhancements, showcased for retail operators ahead of the 2026 National Retail Federation (NRF) Show, add new AI-driven features enabling retailers to gain instant visibility into inventory, margins and catalog health, while simplifying common management tasks across store operations.
“Retailers need new ways to unlock greater efficiency and growth – without adding time spent or operational complexity,” said Omri Traub, COO of retail at Toast.
“With Toast IQ, operators have an AI-powered ‘right hand’ partner that understands the flow of inventory and pricing as naturally as a store manager does, surfacing helpful, actionable insights at the right time. And features like Advertising make it easy to reach new customers.”
The updated Toast IQ capabilities allow brands to prompt the system in natural language to identify inventory needs, restocking priorities and merchandising opportunities. In addition to insight delivery, Toast IQ enables users to take immediate action – such as creating or editing items, marking SKUs out of stock or identifying margin opportunities – directly from within the platform’s conversational interface.
Toast’s platform updates also include new retail-focused features such as AI invoice scanning, which automates the ingestion of invoice data into receiving workflows, and cloud-enabled scales and labeling integrations designed to streamline weighted item pricing and shelf labeling. These improvements aim to reduce manual labor while increasing accuracy and responsiveness for busy store teams.
Another enhancement – Toast Advertising – gives retailers integrated tools to launch digital ad campaigns across major channels with AI-driven recommendations and built-in performance insights tied to both online and in-store outcomes. According to the release, early beta users have reported strong returns on ad spend using this feature.
To complement these updates, Toast also has rolled out the Toast Go 3 handheld with built-in barcode scanning, which enables retail staff to perform sales and stock-take tasks directly on the sales floor without the need for standalone scanning hardware.
According to Toast’s internal research, a majority of food and beverage retail operators – more than 83 percent – plan to increase their use of AI tools in 2026, underscoring growing demand for solutions that integrate insight and execution within a single platform.
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