How Colorado Grill Increased Food Truck Revenue by 86% in Their First Full Year with Toast

The pandemic only accelerated this shift, so Wahed went looking for a platform that could get them ahead of the curve. Since adopting Toast in 2022, Colorado Grill has changed the way they connect with customers and realized over 40% annual growth in their food truck**.

*Wahed Jawad is  a member of Toast’s Independent Customer Advisory Board which provides hardware discounts and certain covered travel costs. No testimonial was required.

Choosing a Restaurant POS Partner for the Future

After joining Colorado Grill, Wahed observed several infrastructure gaps that were hindering their growth:

• A lack of customer data and no system to connect with guests after they left the restaurant.

• Disparate systems for POS and online ordering, requiring more staff and effort to coordinate front of house operations.

• Legacy processes and tools that hadn't evolved with the pace of the industry, which was further magnified in the midst of the pandemic.

Colorado Grill needed a platform that could consolidate critical business processes and evolve at the pace of the restaurant industry.

Reducing Friction in the Front of House

In reflecting on their previous setup, Wahed shared that their teams were using different POS systems across locations.

Prior to Toast, at least two or three team members were required at the register to manage guests, phone calls, and online orders. They would shuffle between multiple tablets to access the various ordering systems, and had to manage disruption if a tablet or printer was down. “It was a really big hassle, especially after the pandemic,” he shares.

Streamlining these processes in Toast has reduced the burden on the front of house staff, allowing Wahed to reallocate team resources to the back of house instead.

From Struggling Food Truck to Major Revenue Stream

The pandemic created a major boom in the food truck industry. Colorado Grill purchased a food truck in 2019 to expand their catering services. However, while the restaurant was thriving – the food truck was a different story.

"Before Toast we were not able to collect any data on our customers, so they would come and go, and that would be it. We could not reach them after they left… The truck was suffering because we had no way of converting our restaurant customers to become food truck customers,” says Wahed.

With Toast’s marketing tools, that changed. Customers could leave a phone number or email at checkout, giving Colorado Grill a direct line to its regulars — and a way to bring them back with loyalty offers and timely promotions. 

Leveraging Restaurant AI to Stay Ahead of the Curve

One of Wahed’s goals with Toast was to stay ahead as technology and customer expectations continue to evolve. More recently Toast IQ – Toast’s native AI assistant – has become a favorite feature.

“Toast IQ has made my life easier in terms of finding answers that used to be a call to customer support... All I have to do is ask Toast IQ ‘how do I do this’ or  ‘how do I find this,’ and it takes me through step by step,” he said.

Wahed sees Colorado Grill at an inflection point. Having spent nearly five years growing the business with Toast, he's now thinking about how to keep that momentum going with a more strategic, AI-informed approach.

Looking back at their journey thus far, Colorado Grill has seen Toast play a major role in:

• Building a marketable customer database and readily reaching them through loyalty, email, and SMS programs within Toast.

• Converting loyal restaurant customers to new food truck customers.

• Reducing front-of-house labor and friction with a central and integrated POS interface.

• Reducing time spent on back-end setup questions by tapping into Toast IQ.

"Toast has a very easy interface, for both the customer and the operator experience. It's put us in a place where we need less labor to operate the front of the restaurant, and it’s offered us great marketing strategies and tools to reach our customers – and to reach new customers as well,” says Wahed.