After Last Toast Article, Restaurant Industry Rallies to Highlight Toast’s Moral Void, Begs Question of Class Action Inducement

Nothing like getting a myriad of inbounds from numerous sources to confirm what you suspected.

That’s the best part about writing this periodical, honestly.

In case you missed it, we found an example of Toast promising/quoting a merchant price A, then somehow that A turning into 4A on the signature page at the 11th hour.

Which the merchant signed, cuz restaurants.

We wanted to give Toast the benefit of doubt and chalked it up to either 1) a clerical error, or 2) a rogue salesperson.

Then a deluge of texts and emails came in, with various parties in the restaurant ecosystem unanimously reinforcing that no, this wasn’t happenstance, and no, it wasn’t a rouge employee either.

Based upon the synthesis of the collective feedback, we believe Toast operates a well orchestrated sales machine that engages in what many attorneys would call inducement.

We know: hard to believe the company that,

1. Triples margins on their customers while they’re literally trying to survive
2. Rams through rate increases
3. Foists surcharging while publicly saying they don’t support surcharging
4. Secretly bilks third parties for gratuitous fees and increases the total cost of ownership of their product

could possibly be screwing their own customers on the first contract they sign.

Shocker.

Here’s some of the inbound we received.

We see this all the time. The Toast reps send a contract and talk about interchange plus during the sales cycle. Then, at the last possible minute, they remove the empty fields in the contract and replace them with blended rates. By then, the staff is pregnant on Toast so it is too late for the owner to negotiate and get matching rates that were insinuated during the sales cycle.

Oh yea, this is an everyday occurrence. Merchants don’t even realize it because, like you point out, they don’t read the paperwork. If a deal is at all competitive, Toast will beat the rates to push all competitors out, then increase the rates at the last second when there’s no competition left standing.

I’ve lost several deals to the pricing tactics you describe. We will revisit with the merchant a few months after they signed with Toast and offer a free audit. Sure enough, the merchant is paying 4-5x more than the rate we offered, which is the rate Toast “beat” during the sales process.

If it looks like a turd, it smells like a turd, and it shoots out someone’s rectum, maybe, just maybe, it’s feces.

Lawyers, sharpen your pencils.