Boston & San Francisco, Feb 11 — Toast (NYSE: TOST), the all-in-one digital technology platform built for hospitality, and Instacart (NASDAQ: CART), the leading grocery technology company in North America, today announced a strategic partnership designed to streamline operations for businesses across the United States. The collaboration will enable retailers to easily onboard and sync their brick-and-mortar inventory to the Instacart Marketplace, and will provide restaurants a “just-in-time” solution for essential supplies.
“Whether helping a local grocery shop reach new customers online or enabling a restaurant to ensure the kitchen never runs out of key ingredients during a Friday night rush, this partnership with Instacart aims to help our customers never miss a beat as they run—and grow—their businesses,” said Steve Fredette, Co-Founder and President of Toast. “We’re enabling our retail and restaurant customers to tap into North America’s largest grocery delivery marketplaces—right from the Toast platform—giving our customers a powerful way to help grow their revenue streams and manage their businesses more efficiently.”
“This partnership brings together two platforms that play complementary roles in how retailers and restaurants operate and grow,” said Ryan Hamburger, Vice President of Commercial Partnerships at Instacart. “We’re looking forward to expanding our breadth of retailers by welcoming Toast’s retail partners to the Instacart Marketplace and giving Toast restaurants access to our marketplace via Instacart Business for a fast and flexible way to source produce and other essentials to meet last-minute needs.”
Expanding online marketplace availability for retailers
Through the partnership, Toast retail customers will have streamlined onboarding access to the Instacart Marketplace and seamless ongoing management, creating a high-performance omnichannel engine for food and beverage retailers. The Instacart Marketplace will give Toast customers the potential to expand their digital storefront to additional local consumers on the Instacart Marketplace, unlocking new revenue opportunities, while Toast’s sophisticated platform helps simplify operations.
By leveraging SKU data from Toast’s platform, the collaboration will provide catalog and inventory alignment, supporting frequent inventory updates to help merchants keep online item availability more closely aligned with in-store stock. Additionally, Toast’s SmartScan for barcode optimization, together with Instacart’s enhanced catalog attribution workflows, will help Toast retailers become e-commerce ready by simplifying the process of adding new items to their Instacart storefront.
Enabling “just-in-time” inventory management for restaurants
Instacart Business, the B2B service provider for same-day deliveries, will be a procurement partner for Toast restaurant locations, offering essentials like fresh produce and pantry staples for same-day delivery and helping quickly address last-minute needs, often within an hour, without disrupting operations.
Restaurant operators and their teams will also be able to take advantage of Instacart Business offers, like Instacart+ subscription, which allows businesses to share their subscription across team members and earn cash back on orders.
Toast and Instacart plan to pilot these initiatives early this year, with a full rollout to all U.S. customers expected later this year.