Toast has a marketing module. If you're on a standard or point of sale plus plan, you already have access to it. Most independent restaurant operators have never opened it.
What it does: it connects to your Toast POS transaction data and lets you build automated campaigns triggered by guest behavior. A customer who hasn't visited in 60 days gets a win-back email. A customer whose birthday is coming up gets an offer. A customer who just paid their check gets a follow-up asking for a Google review. All of these fire automatically, triggered by the data Toast is already collecting, without anyone at the restaurant doing anything after the initial setup.
The lapsed-guest win-back is the one with the clearest return on investment. According to the National Restaurant Association's 2025 Technology Report, it's the highest-ROI first automation for independent restaurants. Independent and multi-unit restaurants running automated guest campaigns see 20 to 35 percent higher repeat visit rates. A customer who used to come in every Tuesday lunch and stopped six weeks ago is not a lost customer. They're an uncontacted customer. One email at the right time — "we miss you, here's something for your next visit" — brings a meaningful percentage of those people back.
The birthday campaign is simpler and almost universally well-received. Customers who provided a birthday during a loyalty enrollment or reservation process get an offer in advance of their birthday month. This is one of the most opened email types in restaurant marketing because it's relevant, it's timed, and it feels personal even when it's completely automated.
The post-visit review request is the one that changes Google rankings. Send a link to your Google Business Profile 24 hours after a check closes and ask the guest to share their experience. Restaurants that do this consistently see their Google review count grow faster than competitors who are waiting for self-motivated customers to find the review page on their own. More Google reviews means better visibility for anyone searching for a restaurant in your area. The feature takes about 20 minutes to configure and then runs after every visit indefinitely.
If you're not on Toast or your plan doesn't include the marketing module, Mailchimp connects to Toast through a third-party integration and handles the same campaigns with a bit more setup work. Paytronix and Thanx are both built specifically for restaurant loyalty and have deeper guest behavior tracking than basic email platforms, though at a higher price point.
The bigger picture: every customer who has paid with a card at your restaurant is a potential email address in your guest database. The difference between restaurants that grow repeat visit rates and those that don't is usually whether they're using that database or ignoring it. Toast built the tools. The question is whether anyone has configured them.
Michelle Onizuka is co-founder and Systems Architect at Onizuka Studio. She builds automation and AI systems for small businesses — including restaurant & food service operations across Tampa Bay and beyond.