Anyone who’s been to a restaurant lately has a pretty good handle on how important staffing is. Being short just one waitstaff, bartender, prep cook or dishwasher can spiral a busy restaurant into chaos.
The labor shortage in tech may be mitigating slightly as one unicorn after another announces layoffs. But in the dining space, the shortage is as acute as ever. So having SaaS tools in place that manage staff scheduling, plus employee engagement and communication is critical for any restaurant with more than a few tables in the dining room.
This helps explain why the restaurant management software company Toast has scooped up Sling, a leading employee scheduling, communication, and management solution.
According to Toast, more than half of restaurant owners expect recruiting and retaining talent to remain their top challenge in 2022. Toast’s customer base has roughly 11 million total employees.
Toast will integrate Sling into its growing roster of payroll and team management solutions. Toast wants to be more than a POS platform. It aims to be an all-in-one restaurant management platform.
Toast didn’t disclose terms. However, the two companies aren’t exactly strangers. They’ve been working together under a partnership agreement since April 2021.
“Great employees are what make restaurants run,” said Aman Narang, Toast’s Co-founder and COO. “By adding Sling to the Toast platform, we can provide a more comprehensive suite of team management products purpose-built for restaurants, from new hire onboarding to payroll processing, and now the ability to schedule shifts across the team. Our customers will benefit from the ability to simplify communication across their teams, control their labor costs, and efficiently manage their teams through one integrated platform. We’re delighted to welcome the Sling team to the Toast family.”
Higher Efficiency, Lower Costs
Sling’s founder had this to say about the acquisition.
“Empowering restaurant employees was central to our founding vision. We are thrilled to join Toast and more deeply leverage our employee scheduling, communication, and management capabilities to help restaurants increase team efficiency and lower labor costs,” said Helgi Hermannsson, Sling CEO and founder.
“This is a great milestone for all the Sling employees who have helped us grow into a robust solution over the past seven years. We’re excited to continue innovating on restaurant employee experience as part of Toast.”
Toast has been one of the dominant players in the restaurant POS space. During the pandemic, restaurant-related businesses were getting hammered. Not Toast. The company grew and consolidated its market share. And last September Toast went public at 62.51 and life was looking pretty good.
Then the economic train wreck that derailed most growth stocks also clipped Toast. The company’s shares closed up today. At 14.96. A far, far cry from its IPO day close.
Still, Toast has no plans to lay low.
In June, Toast opened a new office in Dublin as part of an international expansion effort. And the company says it will add 100 jobs this year. This stands in contrast to so many tech companies that have announced hundreds, if not thousands, of job cuts.
