Great Work for Restaurants

Your menu is the most-read thing your restaurant publishes. It sits in five or six places you may have forgotten, and it works for you or against you whether you tend it or not.

In this episode, Pam Monteith walks through four small habits: say it in plain typed words, keep one source of truth, test with specials before committing, and check it with your thumb. Then she turns to the dishes that pay you, and why plate cost matters.

Tonight's one task: read your own menu on your phone as a stranger would.

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

Toast IQ is grounded in your restaurant's own data, not a generic chatbot guessing at restaurants in general. So why does it so often feel flat? Toast's own Q1 2026 Restaurant Trends Report, covering how more than 125,000 US locations used Toast IQ from January to March, shows most operators are asking it the same shallow question, in different words.

This episode breaks down what the report actually found, why the sharpest operators are already asking about labor cost and loss prevention, and what's still missing before that answer turns into a margin decision.

What We Cover

• Why Toast IQ being grounded in your own data doesn't automatically mean useful answers

• What Toast's Q1 2026 Restaurant Trends Report found across 125,000+ US locations

• The most common Toast IQ prompt in the whole report, and why it's a shallow one

• The smaller group of operators already asking margin-level questions

• The translation layer that turns a Toast IQ answer into an actual campaign or fix

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

What types of emails should a restaurant send? At least ten, and a discount is only one of them.

In this episode, Pam Monteith walks through 10 kinds of restaurant email in five families, using examples from Toast's published roundup of national chain emails, then shows which five make sense for an independent restaurant with no marketing team.

You'll also get one sentence to finish before your next send.

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

You don't need a content plan. You need to hit record.

This week, Pam walks through three places independent restaurant owners are already sitting on great social content, without realizing it: the kitchen itself, the reviews nobody's replied to, and the regulars already posting about the place. Plus one optional fourth idea if there's room in your feed for it.

In This Episode

• Why raw behind-the-scenes kitchen footage beats produced content
• The lowest-effort content on the list: replying to your own reviews
• How to repost a regular's content the right way
• An optional fourth idea: spotlighting someone on your team
• Where this connects back to what's already sitting in your Toast account

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

Every restaurant runs the same four stage guest journey, whether anyone manages it or not:

• Discovery
• Interest
• Decision
• and Loyalty

Most owners pour their effort into the first stage and let the other three quietly leak guests.

In this episode, Pam breaks down what each stage actually requires, using a pattern that came up on a recent call with a café owner, and shows where the loyalty stage tends to be sitting half built for restaurants already on Toast.

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

The print or email question at checkout isn't a printer preference, it's a marketing decision happening at every restaurant, every night. Pam breaks down the two second moment most Toast operators are letting slip by, and what to do with it instead.

In This Episode

• The real moment behind this episode's title

• Why the cheapest, highest consent data any business will ever get is the data a customer hands over themselves

• What actually happens to that email after the receipt prints, for most restaurants

• How Toast Email Marketing already captures this moment automatically

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

Most restaurant owners have more data available to them than ever, and less time than ever to turn it into a decision.

This episode breaks down why more data alone does not produce a better marketing decision, and shares the AI prompts Pam uses to turn restaurant numbers into next steps, including how to run a slow-night promotion without training guests to expect a discount.

In This Episode

• Why more data does not automatically mean a better decision

• The AI prompts that turn restaurant numbers into next steps

• How to run a slow-night promotion without training guests to expect a discount

• What Toast IQ is already built to answer inside your account

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

Most restaurant owners have more sales data than they know what to do with: reports, dashboards, end-of-day summaries that pile up unread. This episode is about what changes when you stop treating your POS like a filing cabinet and start treating it like a conversation, and what Toast IQ is already sitting there to do about it.

In This Episode

• Why restaurant owners have so much data and so few decisions

• What changes when you ask a question instead of reading a report

• What Toast IQ actually is, and what restaurant owners are asking it

• One question to ask your own account today

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

Most restaurant owners have a full strategy for finding new guests, and barely a plan for keeping the ones they already have.

In this episode, Pam draws on seventeen years of marketing experience to break down why attraction gets all the attention while retention quietly gets ignored, and what that means if your restaurant is already running on Toast.

In this episode:

• Why attraction feels like progress and retention doesn't

• What actually separates the cost and effort of attracting versus retaining a guest

• The retention data already sitting inside your Toast account, unopened

• One simple action to take this week, no big plan required

Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session

Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist

Website: greatworkonline.com

Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/

Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/

What is Toast's Guestbook, and why isn't it set up on your account? Every Toast restaurant has a guest profile for every diner, whether they know it or not, and most operators have never opened it.

In this episode, Pam breaks down Toast's Guestbook: the guest profile that gets created automatically the moment anyone orders or dines in, loyalty member or not. She covers what's actually inside it, why it's different from your loyalty program, and why 86% of email-driven orders and 83% of SMS-driven orders come from guests who've already dined with you before.

In this episode:

• What's actually inside a Toast Guestbook profile
• The 48% stat that explains why being "remembered" matters most to guests
• How Guestbook is different from your loyalty program
• Why this is a retention tool, not an acquisition tool
• What to check in your own account this week

One practical idea per episode. No fluff.

🔗 Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session 🔗 Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist 🔗 Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog

Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/great-work-for-restaurants/id1468034522 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/60dgL5Kt6vyzYy0NffWcf8