Toast Co-Founder Aman Narang to Take CEO Reins in January

Restaurant point of sale (POS) provider Toast has a new chief executive.

Aman Narang, who co-founded the firm in 2011 and has served as its chief operating officer since 2021, will become CEO at the start of 2024, the company announced in a news release Tuesday (Sept. 5).

Narang takes over from CEO Chris Comparato, who has held that position since 2015. Both he and Narang will remain on the Toast board.

“Aman is the ideal choice to lead Toast into its next era of growth,” said Comparato. “Aman knows Toast better than anyone, he knows the restaurant community, he is passionate about our customers, and he has the right ‘recipe’ of experience and a growth mindset.”

The release notes that Comparato’s time as CEO saw the company go public, exceed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, navigate the COVID pandemic, expand its customer base to 93,000 restaurants and introduce new products.

Among them is the company’s Catering & Events tool, which launched last month and is integrated with its POS to help restaurants manage catering orders and plan events.

“As restaurants look to diversify revenue streams, catering and events are top of mind as attractive growth areas,” Narang said at the time. “However, an additional service model can mean taking on managing multiple systems that often operate in silos.”

The new tool, he added, places the catering and event order management cycle into one platform, allowing restaurants to save time and transform their businesses.

Toast also recently rolled out — and then rolled back — a plan to add a $0.99 fee for consumers on online orders of $10 or more.

During an earnings call last month, company officials apologized for that controversial move, with Comparato saying that despite the best of intentions to keep costs low for customers, the company erred in how it approached monetizing the value of its digital ordering suite.

“Listening to our customers is a core ethos for how we operate, and our day-to-day efforts are guided by a relentless focus on being the restaurant community’s trusted partner. It was on this basis and after extensive constructive discussions with our customers that we decided to remove the $0.99 consumer-facing fee from Toast digital ordering channels,” Comparato told analysts on the call.

He added that Toast will be “more thoughtful” on how pricing is adjusted moving forward, and that it recognizes “the importance of considering the impact to all stakeholders as we do that.”