Toast Inc. TOST recently partnered with Dine Brands Global, Inc. DIN, the parent company of iconic American restaurant chains like Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill + Bar, IHOP, and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, for a nationwide technology rollout of Toast at Applebee’s locations across the United States. The initiative aims to modernize one of America’s most recognizable casual dining restaurants.

The comprehensive rollout includes several industry-leading components from the Toast platform, such as Toast point-of-sale (POS) terminals, Toast Go handhelds, Toast’s Kitchen Display Systems, and Restaurant Management Suite Enterprise. These systems are specifically designed to work seamlessly, in cohort, allowing Applebee’s to increase operational agility, improve team efficiency, and provide an enhanced, tech-enabled dining experience for guests.

TOST’s Cutting-Edge Tools Reshape the Restaurant Landscape

Toast is a cloud-based platform designed for restaurants. It offers end-to-end software-as-a-service and financial tools to help manage point of sale, payments, online orders, delivery, marketing, loyalty programs, and staff. As restaurants increasingly embrace technology to enhance operations and service, the company, with its differentiated portfolio of solutions, remains at the forefront of this larger trend in the hospitality industry.

Toast currently powers hundreds of multi-unit and enterprise brands, including Caribou Coffee, Choice Hotels, Papa Gino’s, Potbelly, Craveworthy Brands, and Nothing Bundt Cakes, with the addition of Applebee’s now to this extensive roster. By offering a flexible and deeply integrated platform, it enables large restaurant groups like Applebee’s to adopt new tools quickly, monitor performance centrally, and innovate with agility.

Guests are demanding faster service, greater customization, and more seamless digital interactions, while restaurants are looking for tools that can deliver operational efficiency, improve labor utilization, and boost profitability. As Dine Brands implements Toast’s solutions nationwide, it is likely to encourage other restaurant chains to modernize their tech spaces as well. This is likely to increase the sale of TOST’s technologies, posting healthy revenue growth. Higher revenues and an improved financial statement are likely to lure prospective investors, thereby favoring its share price movement. 

TOST’s Robust Strategies Drive Prospects

At its last Investor Day event, the company outlined its primary growth strategies. It has, however, updated some of its priorities to focus on what matters most in 2025. It plans to grow the number of restaurant locations and boost market share in its main U.S. business. Secondly, show that new markets have strong potential to significantly contribute to overall growth, encourage wider use of Toast's full platform and stand out from competitors by using data and AI in smart, strategic ways and lastly, maintain high standards and focus investments on the top priorities, while steadily improving profit margins over time.

Toast added 7,000 locations in the fourth quarter of 2024, reaching 134,000 locations in total, reflecting 26% year-over-year growth.

In 2025, the company aims to invest in its research and development capabilities and strengthen its sales and marketing efforts. The goal is to improve customer satisfaction, increase success in winning new business, and grow market share in these emerging areas, eyeing strong, sustained growth starting in 2026 and beyond.

TOST’s Zacks Rank & Stock Price Performance

TOST currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Shares of the company have gained 54.3% in the past year compared with the Zacks Internet-Software industry's growth of 7.3%.

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Other Stocks to Consider

Some other top-ranked stocks from the broader technology space are InterDigital, Inc. IDCC and CommScope Holding COMM. IDCC & COMM presently sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) each. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

IDCC is a pioneer in advanced mobile technologies that enable wireless communications and capabilities. The company engages in designing and developing a wide range of advanced technology solutions, which are used in digital cellular as well as wireless 3G, 4G and IEEE 802-related products and networks. It has a long-term growth expectation of 15%.

Headquartered in Hickory, NC, CommScope is a premier provider of infrastructure solutions, including wireless and fiber optic solutions, for the core, access and edge layers of communication networks. The company currently operates in three segments — Connectivity and Cable Solutions, Networking, Intelligent Cellular and Security Solutions and Access Network Solutions. It has a long-term growth expectation of 19.37%.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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