How Toast Payroll Gave The Cookery Confidence with Every Paycheck

When Stacey Lane opened The Cookery in 2015, payroll was handled through her bookkeeper—a process that relied on spreadsheets, manual data entry, and even bank trips to pay out tips. As the restaurant grew to 36 employees, those outdated methods became time-consuming, error-prone, and unsustainable.

In January 2025, Stacey made the switch to Toast Payroll, starting 2025 with a streamlined back office, full transparency for staff, and a major boost in efficiency.

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Dramatic Time Savings

Before Toast Payroll, Stacey spent nearly three to four hours every two weeks processing payroll, manually compiling hours and tips from various sources. With integrated timesheets and tip pooling, she can now process payroll in about 15 minutes. Tasks like approving timecards, onboarding new hires, and managing tips are all handled in one system, eliminating duplicate work and freeing Stacey to focus on running her restaurant.

“One of my favorite aspects of Toast Payroll is the ability to assign different roles to different employees. I had an employee who started as a host, then a busser, moved to expo, and eventually he became a server. At one point, he had four different jobs. All I had to do was assign the job he’s doing that day, and Toast Payroll adds up the hours with the corresponding rate and figures out the tax calculation. It does all of that for me.”

Toast Payroll also makes it easier for Stacey to keep labor costs in check. What used to take hours double-checking if employees clocked in and out at the right time is now information proactively flagged to her: “A few weeks ago, I was ready to run payroll, and Toast Payroll alerted me of a few auto-clockouts. It’s just very intuitive and knows what I need to do before I do.”

Full Transparency & Empowered Staff

Using MyToast, Toast’s employee app, along with Tips Manager, Stacey has been able to build new levels of trust with her team. Employees can instantly access pay stubs, tip breakdowns, and schedules in the app, which reduces disputes and improves morale.

“The employee app has given my employees information at their fingertips, and it’s developed trust and transparency within their paychecks. They can easily see how much they've earned, and it helps me catch errors. If I tipped out someone at a lower rate or they clocked in as host when they were working as a busser, my employees now alert me, and I can go in and fix things ahead of running payroll.”

Outstanding Support

For Stacey, switching payroll providers on her own initially felt intimidating. But Toast’s onboarding process, training resources, and responsive support team made the transition seamless. “We onboarded in January and had a fantastic experience. My onboarding consultants prepared me so well to run that first payroll. They held my hand through the process. I had never run payroll before; I used to just calculate hours and submit them to my bookkeeper who was using Quickbooks. So being 100% responsible for making sure my employees’ paychecks were correct felt incredibly intimidating. I was very nervous about that first paycheck. But in hindsight, I realized I didn’t need to be, Toast had me covered.” Onboarding in January turned out to be simple for Stacey “It was my employees working year round, I’d send them an email and they would do all the onboarding digitally. It couldn’t have been easier.”

“There has not been a single time I've called where the Toast care team couldn’t solve my problem. They've seen my issues before, and so they know how to solve them. It might be new to me, but it's not new to them. And, personally, I will do anything to avoid a phone call, so I use the chat support a lot.”

Switching to Toast Payroll has transformed The Cookery’s back-office operations

What was once a clunky, error-prone process is now fast, transparent, and integrated directly with the restaurant’s operations. Stacey credits Toast Payroll with making her a more confident, informed, and less-stressed owner, while also fostering greater trust with her employees by giving them visibility into their pay.

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