ShelfCount for Toast: built, waiting on partner approval

Who it is for

Restaurants that run Toast. You can use the rest of ShelfCount today without a connection: counts, recipes, purchase orders and invoice scanning do not need a POS.

If you are choosing a POS and food cost matters to you, know that Toast is not available to connect yet, while Square and Clover are.

One ShelfCount account is one business, at $50 a month. Once Toast opens, it can watch several Toast restaurants of that business, and there is no combined report across separate businesses.

Connecting

You cannot connect Toast yet. Toast does not hand out API access per restaurant. Restaurants connect to approved partners through Toast Partner Connect, and we match that connection to your account by restaurant GUID, a unique ID Toast assigns to your restaurant. You will enter it once, during onboarding or later, and the sync starts once Toast confirms the connection on their end.

Pick Toast during onboarding and your choice is saved with your account. To hear the day it opens, email hello@getshelfcount.com.

What we read, and what we never touch

That list is the whole of it. A test fails if the code that talks to Toast starts making a call that is not on it.

How a Toast option group will become an ingredient

In Toast, a menu item has modifier groups with options (Milk: whole, oat). Once connected, each Toast menu item will point at a recipe, or straight at an inventory item for simple retail products. Unmapped items will still sync, with a running to-do of what is left.

Example: a Latte with the oat option. The Latte item points at a recipe with whole milk and two shots, and the oat option replaces the whole milk with oat milk. The sale will be costed as that drink.

Each modifier gets one or more of five effects, applied in order. You set them once, and every sale after that is costed with them.

• NONE: Changes nothing about what is used. Hot or iced, "not tossed", "for here".
• ADD: Adds an ingredient on top of the recipe. Extra shot adds espresso.
• REPLACE: Takes one ingredient out and puts another in. Oat milk replaces whole milk.
• CHANGE_QUANTITY: Sets an ingredient to a different amount. Zero removes it. Half sweet, light ice, "no syrup".
• CHANGE_PACKAGING: Sets how many of a cup, lid or sleeve a sale uses. To-go cup instead of a mug.

How often it syncs

Once it opens, orders and published menus will be pulled about every 15 minutes, and Toast webhooks will nudge a sync sooner. A webhook is only a signal; ShelfCount pulls the real data from Toast's API.

What you get

• Usage variance. What your sales say you should have used, next to what your counts say you did use, item by item.
• Menu profitability. Cost and margin per menu item, with the modifiers that were actually sold counted in.
• Purchase orders. Orders drafted from your counts and par levels. Nothing goes to a vendor until you send it, unless you have switched on auto-send for that vendor.

Limits you should know about

• A modifier with no effect set changes nothing in the cost.
• Toast is not available to connect today. It is built and waiting on Toast's partner approval, and we do not control when that comes.
• Everything above describes how it will work, not how it works for you now.

Questions we get

Keep reading

• Toast integration in the help center: the setup walkthrough.
• ShelfCount for coffee shops: counts, recipes and sales in a cafe.
• All integrations
• Pricing: $50 a month, flat, every feature included.