Toast has launched a second category of AI agents for restaurants, headlined by a Scheduling Agent that beta users say produced 41% fewer overtime hours per employee than restaurants not running the tool.

What did Toast actually announce?

The Boston-based point-of-sale provider debuted Toast IQ Team, a labor-focused suite that joins Toast IQ Grow, the marketing suite Toast introduced in May. Together, the two lines represent Toast's push to position itself as an "agentic platform that absorbs the hardest work of running a business," a Toast spokesperson said.

The new release also adds three agents to Grow and opens early access to three more, bringing Toast's agent catalog to roughly eight purpose-built tools. Toast said IQ Grow was its fastest-growing new product ever on its most recent earnings call.

What does the Scheduling Agent actually do?

The Scheduling Agent builds a labor schedule in seconds by layering employee availability, forecasted sales and overtime exposure. Toast IQ Team also includes AI-powered sales forecasts to inform staffing plans, plus a Team Performance feature that lets operators run menu-item contests with a live leaderboard inside the MyToast employee app.

For operators, labor is the second-largest line item after cost of goods, typically running 28% to 32% of sales at full-service concepts. A 41% reduction in overtime hours per employee translates directly to controllable labor dollars and is the kind of number that justifies a technology subscription on its own.

How does Toast price the new tools?

Toast IQ Team starts at $60 per month, plus $9 per employee per month. Grow starts at $699 per month. Both sit on top of a Toast POS contract, the per-location software fees for which Toast reports as a recurring revenue line to investors.

Grow's new line-up includes three agents:

• SEO Agent — Monitors a restaurant's online presence and flags opportunities to surface trending menu items or improve rankings in Google and AI-driven search.
• Reviews Agent — Prompts customers to leave reviews at moments such as online order confirmation, routes negative feedback through a direct channel for operator response, and surfaces review trends.
• Offers Agent — Builds promotions tied to specific goals, from welcoming first-time guests to reactivating lapsed customers, using the restaurant's own historical data.

The Marketing Agent, the flagship from the May debut, finds opportunities from past sales and runs campaigns with operator sign-off. Grow also assigns a human marketing manager to refine the AI's output.

What's coming next?

Toast opened early access to three additional agents on Tuesday. They are Menu Agent, which updates online menu descriptions, fills content gaps and recommends prices; Answering Agent, which handles inbound phone calls; and Configurable Agents, which let operators build custom agents from templates covering tasks such as catching missed clock-outs, flagging unusual voids and forecasting prep volumes.

The release lands in a crowded field. Square, PAR and other POS vendors are shipping comparable agent-style automation for operators, while consumer-side tools such as Meta's Muse and OpenTable-affiliated Lola are pushing agentic booking and ordering from the demand side.

Why does this matter for operators?

For an industry running on 5% to 9% net margins, the bet is that agents can reclaim hours of manager time and shift labor from administrative tasks to guest-facing service. Whether the 41% overtime figure holds outside of beta, and how Toast's Configurable Agents perform against off-the-shelf scripts, will determine how quickly chains standardize on the platform through 2026.