Sources
Every number anywhere on this site comes from one file in the codebase, and each entry carries its own provenance. If a figure has no source, it does not ship. This page is generated from that file, so it cannot drift out of step with the marketing copy.
Sourced
We opened the primary source and confirmed the wording. These carry the most weight.
- 8m 24sfaster table turns when guests pay at the table
“guests who paid with the tabletop device had a table-turn time of 45 minutes and 21 seconds […] compared to 53 minutes and 45 seconds for those who did not pay with the device. This 8-minute, 24-second difference, or 15.5-percent reduction in table-turn time, is statistically significant (p<.05)”
What to know: Measured across 243,301 transactions at 45 restaurants in a single franchise group, January 2016. A tabletop device, not a phone, the mechanism is the same, the hardware is not.
- 15.5%reduction in table-turn time
“a 15.5-percent reduction in table-turn time”
- 12m 25sshorter meals when guests paid at the table
“significant differences for guests who used the tabletop device for payment only (difference = 12 minutes and 25 seconds, p<.05) which represented a 17-percent reduction in meal duration”
What to know: Direct observation of 103 post-adoption table turns at one casual-dining restaurant. Small sample, carefully measured.
- 36%less server time spent per check
“total labor 10:16 for non-device users versus 6:30 for guests who used the device for payment”
What to know: Time spent on the check itself, ordering, the POS, and table check-ins. It is time given back to the floor, not payroll to cut.
- $375,000potential additional annual sales at a $2.5M restaurant
“using a conservative estimate of a restaurant achieving $2.5 million in sales, and achieving a 15-percent reduction in table-turn time, there is the potential for an additional $375,000 in sales from unmet demand”
What to know: Note the last two words. This figure only exists if there is unmet demand to absorb the freed capacity.
- assuming a demand for the additional seatsthe condition attached to every claim in this category
“Because restaurants essentially have a fixed capacity, reducing table turnover time increases the number of guests served each day, assuming a demand for the additional seats.”
- 2.83average guests per table
What to know: One restaurant, 2016. Use your own numbers if you have them.
- $39.56average check where the server processed payment
What to know: N=206,389, January 2016, one casual-dining franchise group. We could not find non-paywalled 2025–26 segment check data, so the calculator asks for your number instead of assuming one.
- 19.3%average tip at US full-service restaurants, Q1 2026
What to know: Toast's own platform data, card and digital transactions only, cash tips are not in the dataset.
Toast platform data (2026)
- 264,208full-service restaurants in the US
BLS QCEW, NAICS 722511 (2024)
- 72%of diners will wait no more than 30 minutes for a table
“72% of respondents told us they'll wait no more than 30 minutes for a table”
What to know: This is why turn time matters: the queue you can't seat fast enough is a queue that leaves.
Toast (2024)
- 31%of consumers viewed QR-code menus positively
What to know: About QR *menus*, browsing and deciding on a phone. The same study noted one group seeing a 10% drop in check averages after switching to QR menus.
- 60–80%of Gen Z, millennial and Gen X diners are willing to pay tableside by phone
What to know: Boomers are the laggards at roughly 25–33%. Paying by phone tests far better than ordering by phone.
National Restaurant Association, Restaurant Technology Landscape Report (2024)
- $100M → $21Mthe best-funded competitor's Series A, then its Series B four years later
What to know: sunday raised ~$146M total, cut headcount from ~400 to just over 100, exited four of seven markets in 2022, and as of late 2025 described itself as only 'very near' profitability.
- negativegross margin at a public pay-at-table company on $14.2M of revenue
“Since the Touch Business is in the process of being wound down… We currently face severe liquidity challenges.”
What to know: Presto shipped 277,000+ pay-at-table tablets to Applebee's, Chili's and Red Lobster, accumulated a $266M deficit, and wound the pay-at-table business down entirely.
- read-onlywhat Toast's self-serve API access actually grants
“Toast receives a high volume of applications for partnership and is not able to integrate with all interested integration partners.”
What to know: Writing to checks and payments requires approved Partner status, compliance, privacy, security and legal review, a negotiated agreement, certification, a single-restaurant alpha, then a beta.
- DoorDashalready ships a Toast-integrated tableside order-and-pay product
What to know: Acquired as Bbot in 2022 and still actively sold. Not a hypothetical competitor, a live one with DoorDash's distribution.
Vendor claim
A competitor's or platform's self-reported marketing claim. Unaudited, and we treat it as such.
- 7, 10, 12, 13, 15different “minutes saved per table” figures published by one competitor across its own site
What to know: Not a knock on the product, a knock on the number. When a headline metric moves by a factor of two across a single website, it is marketing, not measurement.
- 10–12%increase in processing volume reported by Toast for Order & Pay
“Toast restaurants who add Order & Pay typically see an average increase between 10% and 12% in Toast processing volume.”
What to know: Toast's own figure, though it is the only vendor claim in this category that ships with a methodology footnote. Toast makes no claim about turn times or tips.
Toast (2026)
Unsourced
Widely repeated in this industry with no primary source we could find. Listed here precisely because we refuse to use them.
- no primary sourcethe widely-repeated claim that guests wait "10 to 12 minutes" for the check
What to know: Everyone in this category quotes a version of it. We went looking for the study behind it and could not find one. So we don't use it.
How the calculator works
Turns per table are service minutes divided by turn time. We compute that before and after the minutes billy saves, take the difference, multiply by your table count, then scale by the share of freed tables you tell us you can actually fill. Weekly figures multiply by nights open. Monthly uses 52 ÷ 12 weeks rather than a flat four, because a flat four understates a year by roughly 8%.
Seating capacity is reported separately and is deliberately not scaled by that share. It is pure geometry of the turn: a 90-minute turn becoming an 85-minute turn is a 5.88% capacity increase whether or not a queue exists to use it. Revenue is the figure that depends on demand, so revenue is the figure we govern.
Two guards keep the model honest. Minutes saved is capped so a post-billy turn can never fall below 15 minutes, and turns per table are left fractional rather than rounded down, because thirty tables across seven nights genuinely do realise the fraction even though a single table cannot.
The defaults are set against ourselves on purpose. We default to five minutes saved when the measured figure is 8m 24s, and to a 90-minute turn when the study observed 54. Both choices make the output smaller.