Toast Fights Restaurant Industry Waste with New Partnership and Packaging Preferences Feature

Any guest who has ordered restaurant takeout or delivery has likely been faced with the all-too-common problem of dinner being delivered with a mountain of napkins and utensils they don’t need. 

According to Upstream Solutions, nearly 1 trillion individual pieces of disposable foodware and packaging are used by U.S. restaurants and food service businesses, equating to $24 billion spent by restaurants and food-service businesses on disposables each year. And with around 44% of the plastic waste found in our oceans linked to takeout food and beverages according to a study by Nature Sustainability, it’s clear  the restaurant industry has a critical role to play in helping to reduce plastic packaging waste that is harmful to our environment.

Understanding the way plastic and packaging waste affect both a restaurant's environmental impact and their bottom line, Toast and Toast.org, the company’s social impact arm, announced new features and philanthropic initiatives earlier this summer in an effort to reduce plastic waste in restaurants. First, a new Packaging Preferences feature, designed to help save costs on unnecessary materials, enables Toast customers to help reduce unwanted disposable plastic packaging waste by enabling guest packaging preferences at digital order checkout.

Toast.org also bolstered this commitment to fight waste with a $100,000 grant to support the work of Closed Loop Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Closed Loop Partners, a firm at the forefront of building the circular economy. Toast has also joined the NextGen Consortium, an initiative managed by the Center for Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, which aims to address single-use foodservice packaging waste by advancing the design, commercialization and recovery of packaging alternatives.

Helping guests opt out of wasteful packaging

Traditionally, packaging items like utensils, napkins, and condiments are included in restaurant take-out and delivery orders, regardless of whether the guest actually needs them. Toast’s Packaging Preferences for digital orders give Toast customers a way to ask their guests how they would like their orders packaged, designed for less waste and reduced material costs for restaurant operators. With Packaging Preferences activated, guests can communicate their preferences to include or leave out certain items, which are then communicated to Toast on-premise devices (such as point-of-sale terminals, Kitchen Display Systems and paper receipts) for fulfillment by the restaurant. The packaging preferences settings are flexible enough to support digital orders for restaurants with a wide range of size and to-go operations—whether a quick-service restaurant, full-service restaurant, cafe, bar or anything in between—which can help promote a reduction in plastic waste.

“Utensils are a necessary expense in take out, but can be wasteful and expensive when guests don’t actually need them,” said Matt Parker, owner of Grillbird in Seattle. “Toast’s Packaging Preferences feature lets each guest tell us ahead of time if they need them or not. We have seen a 75% drop in utensil usage in the first month alone, saving us hundreds of dollars and unnecessary waste into the environment.”

Investing in Circular Solutions

While allowing guests to easily opt out of unwanted plastic cutlery or extra condiments is one way to reduce plastic waste, solving such a large-scale challenge as plastic waste will require multiple approaches and solutions.

According to Closed Loop Partners, reuse systems can help reduce material consumption by circulating materials in their original form for longer and more uses. Effective reuse––with adequate systems and with sufficient return rates––enables multiple uses of items, reducing the need to produce new materials and keeping valuable materials in circulation for longer.

To that end, Toast has joined the NextGen Consortium, a multi-year pre-competitive collaboration of leading foodservice brands (including Starbucks, McDonald’s, The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo) to address single-use foodservice packaging waste. 

Through its participation in the NextGen Consortium, Toast is supporting an innovative, first-of-its-kind reusable cup pilot program taking place in Petaluma, California, led by the NextGen Consortium. The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project is a bold collaborative initiative to advance reuse systems and move away from single-use cups. The project, launched in August 2024, will trial a system designed to reduce the volume of waste sent to landfills by replacing single-use cups with free, reusable cups. Dozens of local businesses and national chains in Petaluma are involved and will serve drinks in these reusable cups while the project is live.

Learn how to activate Packaging Preferences for your restaurant.

Learn more about Closed Loop Partners and the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project.