Toast App Store
Background
Toast is one of the fastest-growing restaurant management platforms globally, serving restaurants across North America and international markets. One of my first major projects was to design and launch its new app marketplace. This marketplace functioned as Toast’s app store, helping restaurant operators around the world discover, evaluate, and integrate third-party applications within the Toast ecosystem.
As Lead Product Designer, I guided the end-to-end design process, including stakeholder interviews, product strategy, site mapping, sketches, high-fidelity mockups, interactive prototypes, and evaluative research. I partnered closely with the Integrations and Partnerships team, which included Executives, UX leadership, Product and Technical Management, Engineering, and our Senior UI Designer.
The Challenge
Toast had an established high-touch integrations service that helped restaurants connect their data to third-party applications. As the integrations ecosystem expanded, the company needed a scalable self-service experience that empowered operators to explore and activate applications independently. The challenge was to shift from a manual, guided workflow to an intuitive, global-ready experience that still felt distinctly Toast.
The Work
1. Defining the Vision and Strategy
Stakeholder Insights: Engaged with Toast leaders to learn the history and vision of the product area.
Strategic Focus: Identified an opportunity to enhance the brand experience by making the integration portal feel more like an e-commerce platform, while addressing the needs of both small business and enterprise customers.
MVP Prioritization: Focused initially on delivering a seamless self-service experience for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), with an enterprise solution to follow.
2. Crafting a Seamless User Experience
Reimagining the Portal: Redesigned the interface to present integrations in a clearer, more shoppable layout that helped operators compare value and make informed decisions.
Separation of Concerns: Simplified the workflow by moving mapping settings to a dedicated page and creating a standalone details page for each integration. This reduced friction and improved clarity by highlighting core value and configuration separately.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration and Iteration
Collaborative Design: Worked closely with product and engineering partners to ensure the marketplace met the needs of both independent restaurants and large international groups.
Design System Enhancements: Partnered with a Senior UI Designer to test new components, introduce a marketing banner for Toast Product Connect, and bring greater consistency to the presentation of third-party partners.
Iterative Refinement: Used insights from small business testing sessions to remove confusion in key areas. For example, clarifying optional mapping identifiers significantly improved accuracy and reduced setup time.
Impact
By breaking the work into clear milestones, we completed the SMB design phase and launched the Toast App Store within a single business quarter. The new experience made integrations easier to discover and activate, reduced reliance on manual onboarding, and created a scalable foundation for future enterprise and international expansion. This work strengthened Toast’s integrations ecosystem and advanced its position as a global leader in restaurant management technology.