Local by Toast Reviews

by BKBKBK11215

Despite ordering from a restaurant routinely (and allowing Toast to use my location) Toast picked another branch of the restaurant 45 minutes away to place my order. Most location apps will warn you that your service location is distant, but not Toast. I didn’t notice the mistake until I was at my this app branch. So my choice was to drive to the other location (or wait 75 minutes on a busy Friday evening.) Ugh.

Earlier that week, I had thought I ordered breakfast on Toast and then gone to pick it up. Local could not show me my order, instead displaying “unable to complete this operation” or similar message. I had no idea whether my order had gone thru or not until I got to the restaurant and they told me they did have the order.

by Juliaaaatee

I really wanted to like Local, in order to better support restaurants while we’re under lockdown. But Local is janky & there is NO SUPPORT for customers. They outsource delivery with DoorDash, at least in my area, so if you have any issues with your delivery.... you’re stuck. (Since you don’t get DoorDash support.) And even worse, they put the onus on the restaurant for all issues. You can’t even contact Toast – like, I haven’t even been able to find social accounts. When my order didn’t show up tonight, I had to call the restaurant and the poor staff had to grab their manager to figure out a solution (on Valentine’s Day of all days, suuuper busy). They were kind enough to place the order again, but no idea whether the restaurant will get reimbursed or have to eat the cost of the 1st order. In which case, we both would’ve been better off using another food delivery service, even if they take a bigger cut....

by Tyria

I only got Local because the one restaurant I order takeout from uses this service. I had been going to the restaurant’s Instagram page and using the link in their bio every time I ordered but then thought Local might make it easier and faster. Nope. When I search for the restaurant by name, Local tells me it doesn’t exist. Even after I logged in and it shows me my previous orders it still can’t find that restaurant. And since I live more than a few miles from it, and it defaults to just showing me restaurants near me, it won’t show up there either. I can put in the restaurant’s address and Local finally deigns to acknowledge it exists, but that’s a pain to do every time I want to order something, since there’s no way to favorite a restaurant or anything to make it quick to get to. Really, really clumsy design. I won’t be using Local. My circuitous route of going through Instagram is actually easier.

by Christine From Boston

I will never be using Local again for delivery. I placed an order through Local for delivery. After waiting 2 hours I called the restaurant for a status update, they told me that it was sitting on their counter and that no one picked it up. I then called Door Dash because that is who Toast partners with for deliveries. I was on hold for an hour with Door Dash and they finally told me that Toast never sent the order through for delivery, so I would need to call them.
I then called Toast directly and was told they couldn’t help me because I didn’t work for the restaurant and that I would need the restaurant manager to call Toast directly for my issue. In the meantime Toast has marked this order as “complete” and I am still out my money and have not received any food. They are unable to cancel the order or refund me or anything.
Local is garbage and the customer service is useless.

by Xoxo79

Local is such a mess. Two restaurants right nextdoor to each other—one available for delivery, the other only take-out. Why? They are the same distance from our home. Other CONSTANT issues is that restaurants think they have delivery through Local, advertise it on their sites, yelp, google, but when you look it on toast it only offers them on take-out. And this isn’t about distance—one of the restaurants is about 1 mile from my home and walkable. I don’t even understand what the purpose of Local is or how it can compete when there are currently 4 restaurants they deliver (we live in the city, surrounded by restaurants) and we can get just about anything from other apps. I had to write this for restaurant owners because I think those are who toast is really hurting by making them believe they’ve got their delivery covered when they don’t. It’s bad for this app businesses.

by Mjharris5

Local will automatically “correct” your address when ordering to be wherever your phone GPS says you are. My orders regularly get delivered to the wrong address, causing frustration for me and the small businesses I’m trying to support. Most recently my $68 order needed to be remade and sent since it went down the street from me. The restaurant owner was understandably frustrated because they are out that money, and said when they contacted Toast, they were told they needed to have their customers turn off their location. Seems like a terrible solution. Anyhow, I’ll probably still use Local because my fave restaurants offer discount codes. But I’ll have to call the restaurants to verify my address after I order. Wish they’d fix that as it’s inconvenient for users and super unfair to restaurants who have to absorb those extra costs for Toasts mistakes!

by The Hacklist

Ordered 3 drinks got none late delivery can only contact the store directly which will eventually pose a problem and can only receive refunds on incorrect orders from the store. Was still completed by doordash on the receipt and cost nearly 15$ for just those 3 drinks its far too much headache for not enough efficiency I believe stores are not accurately updating their accounts as well. My overall is a zero for lack of completion and most platforms such as these lack competency so I can go by the fact this was still technically a doordash delivery on a toast app I can’t see myself breaking the chains of Ubereats/postmates or grubhub and doordash. Unfortunately the bulk of my order was not delivered and took an hour to complete though it’s under two mile distance. In concept a food delivery app is nice but they all fail to complete what they promise with lack of efficiency or awareness.

by Champion.#2

A restaurant I was considering uses “ToastTab”. So I click the link to place an order.

There’s no FAQ or any information about “ToastTab”, or how it works prior to placing an order. You’re expected to blindly create an account and then (somehow?) set up payment. But I don’t really know because I can’t learn about this product before using.
So I set up an account using a throwaway email address. (I had little choice). There’s still almost nothing listed to learn about this service. They have a section called “Payment Options” and it says “No saved cards”. That makes sense because I have yet to place an order. So I click that section and …nothing happens. A little arrow turns as if a drop down box was meant to appear or something but that’s it.
Sorry, not using “ToastTab”. I have no idea what they’re about and they offer almost zero educational on boarding assistance or FAQ. Feels clunky. While DoorDash and others are controversial for taking a large cut of the restaurants’ revenue, at least those apps are flexible, modern and allow the consumer (me) to feel like I have some control over the situation.

by Cqgriffith

Do not use Local. When a restaurant was closed due to a power outage - Toast refused to cancel the transaction. When I made the $50 order through Toast the restaurant was already closed up due to lack of power. I didn’t find out until I got there - which is fine, life goes on - went home and cooked dinner. But I had to HUNT to find the Toast customer service (because they really don’t want to be bothered), and after several conversations, they have said they are not responsible for any transactions and they have no control over cancellations. Well I can see the “TOAST” on my credit card statement so they better find some control or get out of the payment gateway business. Lesson learned to call the restaurant directly so you don’t give into this racket.

by Forest10W

When setting up a new account and entering credit card information none of the forms allow for auto fill on iOS. This means that users have to manually enter values in each field and adds friction to the ordering process. You should be properly tagging your form fields so that iOS can auto populate them for users. You shouldn’t make it so hard for your users to complete an order.

Also please add Apple Pay to the payment types! It’s easier to use, requires the user to enter less data, and is more secure.

Finally, how about an iPad app? It’s 2020...maybe it’s time to learn autolayout or at least let your web views scale to the full screen.

by Jackseriouslythey’realltaken?

There’s just way too much friction in the account creation and checkout process. Local somehow breaks iOS’s autofill capabilities, so I have to manually type in my name and contact info. Can’t you just use the native frameworks? Then, plenty of other e-commerce apps are fine with just using email address verification for authentication, but not this one, so I had to create a password. A password? What year is this?? Then, at checkout, there’s no Apple Pay support, and again, it breaks autofill so I can’t have iOS fill in my credit card details. And there’s not even an option to use the camera to scan in my credit card info. So, I have to type that, too. All of this means there’s a serious amount of friction involved in placing an order. Surely Toast Tab wants to reduce this friction? They must have a high rate of abandoned carts. It’s a super hard time for restaurants right now—fixing these simple issues would make things better for everyone involved!

by Cailin!!!

I would’ve given Local a much better rating if I were basing my review solely on the pick-up aspect of it. It’s pretty straightforward, and the menu options available tend to be more comprehensive than what some of its competitors offer for the same restaurants.

Nonetheless, as I personally tend to order delivery more often than pickup, the inexplicably limited delivery radius prevents me from enjoying said benefit in most cases. As a result, I find myself left with far fewer restaurant choices in general on ToastTab if I want to have my order delivered.

It is frustrating to me, because I cannot understand the reasoning behind said strict delivery distances. Even though ToastTab is merely serving as an intermediary for DoorDash: facilitating the placement, payment, and contracted delivery of orders for various restaurants, they still apparently dictate the overarching limitations, on delivery distance, as I’ve l found that DoorDash DOES offer delivery for many of the places listed as “too far” on Toast, for a $0 fee, and at roughly 1/3 the delivery minimum!

So, not only do I lose out on the food, but Local and restaurant lose as well, because I walk away with the $30+ I was willing to spend to meet their minimum ($18 more than I would’ve had to w/ DoorDash directly), and neither of them profits either. It seems silly, when they stood to successfully execute such an obscene upsell without lifting a finger!

by Wheaton Ron

Toast is a great tool for restaurants, probably on the expensive side for them, but a-nice tool. I am a customer of the various restaurants that use Toast. If you have a problem ordering good luck getting your issue resolved. The Toast support crew supports the restaurants, not the end customer like me. If you have a problem, contacting Toast is of no help—they only seem to help restaurants—their paying customers. You need to contact the restaurant directly, which when they are busy, it is next to impossible. What Toast should do, is have a person(s) that supports ordering customers and another crew that supports the restaurants directly.

by SiWFty

Decent App. Use it every day, but I have two problems with it:

1) Setting up Payment- there seems to be no way to set up a new payment option (new credit card) without first trying to purchase something. If you go to your personal profile, you can see your payment options, but there’s no way to edit them! What the...? You can delete them, just can’t add or edit. Sooo...you order something, then click payment options, THEN you can add a different card if you want. Not easy in a hands free world when I’m driving to work, approaching my garage and want to quickly place my order before I park and head to the coffee shop. What am I missing???

2) someone recently gave me a gift certificate to that favorite coffee shop mentioned in 1) above. On the back of the gift card, it’s says “powered by Toast”, and there’s even a scannable barcode. But guess what? there’s no way to load the gift card into toast. Soooo....while I have this cool app, and I have this gift card to my favorite coffee shop, all powered by TOAST, I still pay for coffee at my favorite coffee shop with my old credit card, and I’ve got 50 bucks sitting on a gift card I don’t use because my coffee is all paid for (on my old card) when I get there. Uggh!

by Cocosthebest

Overall Local is good but recommend 2 areas of improvement: 1) if load a previous order into shopping cart to save time you can only delete items and not add any additional items. For instance 5 items from last order added but want to change one item—can’t do it—if you delete item and go back to order the new one the other 4 items are no longer in your cart so you are essentially putting in the whole order anyway. 2). Can’t seem to change my email address in the Edit Profile!

by Cheetohead

Works great for your basic orders. But please give us:
—Ability to edit/add to a saved order. I have my usual favorite order, but today someone else is joining me. I have to start from scratch, as no way to edit the reorder cart, and trying to add my reorder to other items in a new cart wipes out that cart. So I have to manually reenter the entire combined order. That’s kludgy and silly.
—Let us heart or otherwise save our favorite restaurants, then view them as a separate list. Pretty basic functionality in most apps with a huge list of options.

by Hayahay87

I have received a notification about a leaked in regards to our information that we have saved on Local. Can you please verify? I am did saved my credit card on file for a fast check-out and now, I am concerned about this leak.

I have frozen my credit card, also.. I can’t login to my Toast account. I get a wrong password notice. I have tried contacting your department on this matter and other, but I can never get a hold of anyone. I asked a question and was answered with a question...

by Jared010101010

It’s way too easy to hit “order” without adding a tip, and there’s no way to add a tip to an already placed order. The confirmation screen has a giant order now button fixed to the bottom of the screen, NOT the bottom of the content. It would be helpful if you could either move the order button to the bottom of the content, or allow people to add tip after hitting order.

by Cmwasmund

Some of my favorite this app restaurants use Toast for their curbside offerings, and it works great! Once I find my restaurants that I want to order from, it’s super easy to use.

I wish it were possible to pin or flag my favorite restaurants so it were easier to find them on Local . Local is location dependent, and I have to enter an old address since these stops are in a different neighborhood than where I live now. Maybe in a future version of Local we will be able to save certain restaurants so they always show up at the top of Local when we log on.

by Jung Mun

This is the absolute best to-go experience we’ve had since SIP started. Chef’s ability to translate her dishes into takeaway form obviously was a tremendous work of love and skill. Quality is spot on, flavors are amazing and bright, and don’t get me started on the cocktails. We order from Top Hatters at least once a week and I even did a large group order for our social bubble one special evening. Favorites are the entire cocktail menu, spring salad, vermicelli bowls, the mochi sesame balls (which are exactly like my grandmother’s “lek doi”!), and the pepita little gem salad. 💜

by Hungry 10000000

Local makes me frustrated. I have been trying to order lunch for a half hour now and every time I go to place order, it tells me to update my personal information. After trying 10 times to update my info, it keeps telling me at the end to up date my info. It’s a never ending cycle. Just waisted my whole lunch break.
I’m very sad because 5$ off my first experience sounded great until I wasted 5$ of my time to trying to figure out Local. 👎🏼

by EASY EASY TO USE

Bad idea, tantamount to a scam. Note Local is simply for ordering food on-line so *you* can pick it up. I went to a this app pizza place’s website, which was using this platform to place both delivery and pick-up orders. I was bait and switched with a $5 coupon into downloading and using their app for the order - which fools you into thinking delivery is provided by asking for your address. When the order didn’t come, I investigated. Silly me for not paying attention - I had to pay the pizza place $2 to deliver and tip the driver! They got paid via surcharging the this app pizza place and the “tip” they didn’t pass on.

by Butchie4ever

I downloaded Local so I could order from a this app restaurant that’s not immediately in my area. I set up Local and it only offered about 5 this app restaurants that I could order from. When I put the name of the place I wanted to order from it wasn’t available. There is no option to expand my order area or pick a location other than another address. I live in the suburbs and wanted to order from a restaurant in the city. I’ll just delete and order on their website

by DamnableNook

I live three blocks from a restaurant I know uses Toast for takeout orders. I know this because I’ve used the web app before, and I see their point-of-sale system with the Toast logo. Yet when I put in my address, it says there are no restaurants that use Toast near me. I then change my address to be the city itself, and still no results. Then I change my address to the city of San Francisco and *still* no results. So if you don’t want to order food, do have the food ordering app for you.

by Jenninca

I like Local. It’s easy to reorder from your favorite places and it’ll carry over all your special instructions which is great. I wish you could add additional new items to your reorder though. Overall thumbs up!

by Haleyrae95

Less than 10 options in my city and most of them were closed but I had no idea until I checked on Google, even though Local was still about to let me order, so not sure how that would have turned out. Otherwise I like it!

by Xytosis

I’ve used other online ordering apps and this has a really good selection of restaurants in the Boston area. Local also looks much cleaner than others

by BostonReviewer66

I use Toast Takeout all the time! It’s easy and doesn’t glitch, and lets me pick up food on my own schedule. Love that it makes ordering from this app restaurants so easily!

by Knousuk

Toast makes ordering our lunches an ease. We can schedule a time we want it to be prepared and it is always done. It has also made me try places I didn’t know where even around. I found one of my new favorite places on Local. Happy so far.

by Rich In Danville

Local is fabulous—easy to use, efficient, and when I get to the restaurant my food is prepared, paid for with tip included, and in a convenient bag for me to take it home with. Wonderful!!

by Quiet_man

Used TOAST Take Out at Bella Monte. Local gets your order as you submitted directly to the kitchen bypassing the hostess or whoever takes take out orders in most restaurants. No more mistakes. Once your food is ready, Local sends you a message. No more guessing. Use Local. It’s a no brainer.

by Leduffy

My new favorite app for mobile ordering. What a fantastic experience. They've managed to incorporate detailed configurations while maintaining a sleek user experience. Truly appreciate the allergy alerts! Ordered from my Uber, wait time said 30 min but when I showed up and checked in, it was ready in like a minute. And $5 off!!

by Pianose

Sometimes, I don’t have time to sit down in a restaurant and need to eat during a meeting, at my desk, during a catch up call with a girlfriend who lives on the other side of the country, or on the move. I love how I can pick up a delicious pastry and coffee, a sandwich for lunch, or Italian for dinner no matter what I’m running to next.

by Stingrayray84

I was looking for an app for ordering pick up lunch in the Fenway and Backbay area without having to wait in line but there wasn’t anything that had my favorite places like Mei Mei and Tatte Bakery. Then my friend told me about this amazing Toast Takeout app that’s not even searchable in the AppStore yet. Wish there could be more Asian restaurants in here. Now I use it every day and skip the line. Every. Time.

by SoozCR

Love that I can order takeout and walk over to a restaurant and bypass the line at the counter. I don't have to wait or pull out money. It's all set. Also love the new easy reorder feature!