How Toast Helps Cambria Hotels Offer a Best-in-Class F&B Experience for Busy Travelers

Convenient food service for busy travelers

What does it take to serve hungry business travelers at hotels near two of the busiest airports in the country? 

Ask Eddie Andre, Area General Manager of the Cambria Hotel LAX and Cambria Hotel Burbank Airport, and his team and they’ll tell you that the key is fast service and a convenient experience every time a guest orders food or a beverage. 

That’s where Toast for Hotel Restaurants comes in. As the brand standard food service POS, Toast integrates with Choice Hotels brand, Cambria, and their property management system (PMS) to power modern dining experiences for guests and help staff work more efficiently. 

Using Toast GoⓇ 2 handhelds, for example, servers in full-service restaurants at both properties can fire orders from anywhere, receive alerts from the kitchen when food is ready to serve, and process guest payments at the table without walking back to a POS terminal. 

From guest experience to effectively running hotel operations, the results speak for themselves - since adopting Toast, both Cambria Burbank and Cambria LAX  are now in the top five performers across all Choice Hotel properties based on internal benchmarking scores. As Eddie explains, "Because our waitstaff uses the Toast GoⓇ 2 handhelds, they are notified as soon as a guest's order is ready, food isn't waiting in the kitchen, and our guests are reporting great service."

Driving speed of service (and revenue) across multiple service models

Hotel properties are complex environments where guests often expect to order and be served everywhere, from late-night bars to pool decks to all-day in-room dining. Because of their proximity to major airports, Cambria Burbank and Cambria LAX tend to attract seasoned travelers seeking convenience and speed across all aspects of their stay, including dining and grab-and-go food and beverage options. 

Eddie and his team have added Toast’s Self-Ordering Kiosk in the grab-and-go marketplace at each property to help meet guests’ ever-changing needs and have seen quick success. “If there's a line, people won’t wait, but I think that the self-ordering kiosk gives guests more flexibility to actually pay for the items themselves,” says Eddie Andre, Area General Manager. “We saw an increase of $13,000 in market sales alone since implementing the kiosk, just because of the ability to ring up their items by themselves.”

Toast’s ability to support cutting-edge service models doesn’t stop inside. “Next, I’m putting [Toast Mobile Order & PayⓇ] QR codes at our pool cabanas so guests can order right from there,” says Cambria LAX Food & Beverage Supervisor, Araceli Sanchez. Araceli also notes that this makes it easier for staff to serve more guests, both indoors and outdoors. 

While Toast products like Self-Ordering Kiosk, Toast Mobile Order & PayⓇ, and Toast GoⓇ 2 handhelds have equipped Cambria staff with the tools to operate across different service models, Toast’s integration with ChoiceADVANTAGE, Choice Hotels’ Property Management System, elevates the F&B experience at Choice Properties. Whether guests are headed to their room or on their way to a meeting, the direct integration between Toast and ChoiceADVANTAGE allows them to quickly order and charge to their room.

Giving managers the tools they need to drive better results

Behind fast service and convenient guest experiences are the tools and features that Eddie and his managers use to streamline operations and help drive revenue behind the scenes. 

When compared to his previous POS, for example, Eddie says that “programming menu items has become infinitely easier.” Updating menu items and taking them live quickly and across all devices automatically is just the beginning of the positive impact switching to Toast has made.

Leveraging Toast’s robust reporting tools, Eddie now better understands the peak busy hours — when the properties are receiving the most in-room orders, drink orders at the bar, or food orders at the restaurant — and can staff his front-of-house and back-of-house employees accordingly. Reviewing daily order summaries gives Eddie the information needed to make inventory and buying decisions, especially when it comes to stocking grab-and-go marketplaces with the right snacks and beverages. 

Making the switch to Toast

As with any change, Eddie initially worried that switching to Toast would be challenging: from training staff members and updating menu items to accessing the right onboarding support and customer care. From Toast installation and initial staff training, Eddie and his team quickly noticed the power of Toast’s intuitive design and support resources that helped them make a seamless transition. 

“I thought training would be a lot more complicated and difficult for the team to grasp,” Eddie shared. “It wasn’t.” 

Frontline managers and staff at both Cambria locations agree, specifically focusing on how seamless it’s been to make the transition on a day-to-day level. “Toast makes life easier,” says Araceli. 

As she trains new employees and helps to drive the adoption of Toast at Cambria LAX, she says all she needs to do is get employees to give Toast a try. “Servers see how others are using things like [Toast GoⓇ 2] handhelds, and they want to try it for themselves,” Araceli says. Once the waitstaff starts using the Toast GoⓇ 2 handhelds, they see that taking orders and collecting payments without a pen and paper or running back and forth to a standalone point of sale (POS) terminal is much smoother.

As early adopters of Toast within the Choice Hotels family of brands, Eddie and Araceli have seen the power of leveraging technology to bring fast, modern dining experiences to today’s travelers. From front-of-house to back-of-house, grab-and-go markets to poolside cabanas, Cambria and Toast work together to equip staff with the tools they need to give guests the F&B experiences they crave. 

Learn more about how Toast helps hotels grow at www.toasttab.com/restaurant-pos/hotel-restaurant.