Last updated: Mar 25, 2026, 1:53 PM
Toast Benchmarking is provided for informational purposes only, and insights are not to be construed as recommendations or professional advice of any kind. Toast does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any information, text, graphics, links, or other items contained in Toast Benchmarking.
With Toast Benchmarking, you are able to compare your restaurant location with other similar restaurants in your region based on select categories like full-service, casual dining, and others. We understand that the current set of categorizations is broad and may not capture the unique concept of your restaurant.
Toast Benchmarking uses an AI-based model to determine what other restaurants are similar to yours by taking into account factors like menu, sales, average ticket size and traffic. We are continually working to improve this model, so check back soon for updates!
Leveraging an AI-based classification model, we classified restaurant menu items into a standard set of categories so that transactional data can be aggregated and compared in a meaningful way. Transactional and menu data from your restaurant is included in the aggregated dataset, and is not exposed in isolation.
The Benchmarking Group overview report can help multi-unit restaurant groups compare key metrics across locations and benchmark against industry peers. This feature is available to users of Benchmarking Essentials, available as part of the Restaurant Management suite. To learn more, see Toast Benchmarking: Multi-Unit Group Overview.
Toast Benchmarking leverages an AI-based classification tool to categorize menu items. Please note that while we aim to continuously improve this model, insights are provided for general informational purposes only, and menu item categorizations may be incomplete or inaccurate. With Benchmarking Essentials, you can review your menu item labels and make changes if desired. Learn more in the Toast Benchmarking Overview article.
Benchmarking Lite (the free version of Toast Benchmarking) offers a subset of capabilities compared to the full version which is included in the Restaurant Management suite (learn more: Toast Suites Overview). Limitations of Benchmarking Lite include:
You can read more about the reporting functionality available in both the free and paid versions of the benchmarking reports in this Support Center article: Toast Benchmarking Overview.
Toast Benchmarking leverages an aggregated dataset, and insights do not identify any specific restaurant. Insights are only generated when there are enough restaurants in the cohort selected to protect each restaurant’s privacy. Toast Benchmarking is designed to help the Toast restaurant community by providing access to benchmarking data beyond a restaurant’s four walls.
Currently, the Toast Benchmarking dataset includes aggregated data from across Toast restaurants.
Aggregated data from across Toast restaurants helps power the Toast Benchmarking reports. Leveraging an AI-based classification model, we classified restaurant menu items into a standard set of categories so that transactional data can be aggregated and compared in meaningful ways.
We strive to continuously improve our AI classification model so that the underlying aggregated dataset becomes more accurate over time.
Toast Benchmarking uses an AI-based model to help classify restaurants in different categories, like “full-service” or “casual dining”. To select a category, the model considers factors like menu, sales, average ticket size, and traffic. This model is designed to help enable comparing your restaurant’s performance with other similar restaurants in your region. It's important to note that while the AI classification model aims to properly categorize restaurants, there may be errors, and categorizations may not fully capture the unique concept of your restaurant. Toast is continually working to improve this model to enhance the Benchmarking product.
The Toast Benchmarking dataset is aggregated across Toast restaurants. Your restaurant's data will not be shared or exposed in an identifiable format to anyone other than accounts in your organization. Toast Benchmarking is designed to help the Toast restaurant community by providing access to benchmarking data beyond a restaurant’s four walls.
You can opt out of your restaurant's data being leveraged in the Toast Benchmarking feature by emailing benchmarking@toasttab.com. Opt out requests take approximately 30 days to process. By opting out, you will lose access to Toast Benchmarking.
If you are a pilot customer in our closed beta, you will have access to benchmarking data until the end of the beta period.
If you are an active Toast customer and are subscribing to the Toast Restaurant Management suite, you will get access to features of Toast Benchmarking depending on your subscription type (learn more: Toast Suites Overview).
If you are an active Toast customer and are not subscribed to the Toast Management Suite, you may access Benchmarking Lite, which limits you to view benchmarking data for the last 30 days.
Currently, the data may lag by one week but for the most part, it should be refreshed on a near-daily basis.
If you’ve recently launched on Toast, please allow a full 30 days to see accurate benchmarking data. Thank you for your patience as we gather this information!
If you've recently added or changed menu items, it usually takes about two weeks for us to update the data. After that, both new and historical data will be automatically adjusted. Check back two weeks after introducing new menu items, and your sales numbers should align with the updated benchmarks.
If you don’t see any data on the benchmarking reports in Toast Web, it may be due to one of these reasons:
Small selected geography: To help protect the privacy of specific restaurant locations, Toast Benchmarking does not display any peer/benchmark data if there are not enough restaurants in the geographic area that match your selection. When no data is available for your selected city, Toast recommends adding several other cities to the filter in order to expand the size of the cohort so that insights can be generated.
Restaurants with the Restaurant Management suite can select their comparison group across other states, while restaurants on Benchmarking Lite are limited to comparing data within their location’s state.
Sales data in Toast Benchmarking does not take into account things like post-order adjustments. As a result, there could be discrepancies between the total sales data in benchmarking reports compared to that in the Sales Summary report (Sales Summary Report Overview). For the sales data (i.e. for financial reporting), please visit the Sales Summary report. Benchmark Insights are not to be construed as recommendations or professional advice of any kind, and the Toast Benchmarking product is for informational purposes only.
To leave feedback for Toast Benchmarking, select Leave feedback at the top of the Restaurant performance report, or email benchmarking@toasttab.com directly.