Restaurant technology now connects ordering, payments, loyalty, labor, and kitchen operations at enormous scale. Company reports show Toast processed $159.1 billion in 2024 gross payment volume, while PAR’s quick-service dataset covered 4.5 billion transactions. Consumer research also points to practical demand: 39% of consumers want more restaurant self-service kiosks, and 58% prefer ordering delivery or carry-out directly from restaurants.
Contents
- Restaurant technology platforms at scale
- Digital ordering and payment adoption
- Loyalty and identified customer sales
- What diners want from restaurant technology
- Technology and restaurant operating performance
- Labor, costs, and control points
Restaurant technology platforms at scale
The largest restaurant technology providers already operate across tens of thousands of locations. Toast served approximately 134,000 locations as of December 31, 2024, up 26% year over year. Its 2024 revenue was $4.960 billion, compared with $3.865 billion in 2023, a 28% increase. Toast’s total annualized recurring run-rate reached $1.626 billion at the end of 2024, up from $1.218 billion a year earlier, a 34% increase. These figures are reported in the Toast 2024 Annual Report.
Toast’s payment volume also expanded. Gross payment volume was approximately $159.1 billion in 2024, compared with $126.1 billion in 2023, a 26% increase (Toast 2024 Annual Report). Its reported cost structure included $3.175 billion in financial technology solutions cost of revenue, up 27% from $2.503 billion; $219 million in subscription services cost of revenue, up 32% from $166 million; and $371 million in hardware and professional services cost of revenue, up 4% from $357 million (Toast 2024 Annual Report).
Olo reported a different but similarly broad footprint. As of December 31, 2024, it served more than 750 restaurant brands and represented approximately 86,000 active restaurant locations. Olo’s gross merchandise volume was approximately $29 billion in 2024, while gross payment volume was approximately $2.8 billion (Olo 2024 Annual Report).
Olo’s 2024 expense figures show how restaurant software businesses allocate resources as they scale. Gross profit rose to $156.4 million from $139.0 million in 2023, while gross margin was 54.9%, down from 60.9%. Research and development expense fell 7.3%, to $68.5 million from $73.9 million, and represented 24.0% of revenue versus 32.4% in 2023. General and administrative expense fell 39.4%, to $51.5 million from $85.1 million, or 18.1% of revenue versus 37.3%. Sales and marketing expense rose 10.3%, to $53.1 million from $48.2 million, while its share of revenue declined to 18.7% from 21.1% (Olo 2024 Annual Report).
Digital ordering and payment adoption
Digital channels are material parts of restaurant revenue, although the reported mix varies by brand and business model.
| Brand or platform | Reported technology metric | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Toast | $159.1 billion gross payment volume | 2024 |
| Olo | $2.8 billion gross payment volume | 2024 |
| Chipotle | 34.4% of food and beverage revenue from digital sales | Full-year 2024 |
| Yum! Brands | Digital mix above 50%; digital sales up about 15% | 2024 |
| Noodles & Company | Approximately 56% of sales from digital ordering | 2024 |
| El Pollo Loco | 12.2% of sales from digital and delivery orders | Fiscal 2024 |
Chipotle reported that digital sales represented 34.4% of total food and beverage revenue in full-year 2024. Its comparable sales increased 7.4%, with transaction growth of 5.3% (Chipotle Q4 and FY2024 Results). Yum! Brands said digital sales increased approximately 15% in 2024 and that digital mix surpassed 50% (Yum! Brands 2024 Full-Year Results).
The reported digital mix was approximately 56% at Noodles & Company in 2024 (Noodles & Company 2024 10-K). El Pollo Loco reported a lower 12.2% digital and delivery share of total sales in fiscal 2024. It also said all company-operated and franchise restaurants offered integrated delivery through a third-party service as of December 25, 2024 (El Pollo Loco 2024 10-K). These percentages are not directly interchangeable: they use different definitions, restaurant footprints, and measurement periods.
Arcos Dorados reported more than 20 million average monthly active users for its mobile app in 2024. Identified sales represented almost 24% of total sales in December 2024, and its modernized restaurant portfolio reached 67% of the total footprint at year-end 2024 (Arcos Dorados 2024 10-K; Arcos Dorados 2024 Q3 2025 6-K).
Loyalty and identified customer sales
Loyalty technology is closely tied to measurable sales and transaction behavior. PAR’s 2025 QSR Operational Index analyzed more than 30,000 restaurants, 4.5 billion transactions, and $67 billion in sales from 2024. In that dataset, loyalty transactions rose 30.8% and loyalty sales rose 33.8%. At the same time, non-loyalty transactions fell 5.3% and non-loyalty sales fell 0.9% (PAR 2025 QSR Operational Index).
The average loyalty check was $14.57, compared with $14.39 for non-loyalty checks in PAR’s 2024 dataset. The difference was small in absolute dollars, while the larger distinction was the change in activity across the two groups (PAR 2025 QSR Operational Index).
Large chains reported substantial loyalty reach as well. McDonald’s reported more than 175 million 90-day active loyalty users across 60 loyalty markets at year-end 2024, up about 15% year over year. Those loyalty members generated approximately $30 billion in full-year systemwide sales across the same 60 markets. McDonald’s reported more than $130 billion in global systemwide sales in 2024 (McDonald’s Q4 and Full-Year 2024 Results).
Starbucks reported 33.8 million active U.S. Starbucks Rewards members in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, up 4% year over year (Starbucks Q4 and Full-Year Fiscal 2024 Results). KFC loyalty program members exceeded 490 million at year-end 2024 and contributed approximately 65% of KFC system sales, according to Yum China’s 2024 10-K.
What diners want from restaurant technology
The NCR Voyix 2025 Commerce Experience Report measured specific consumer preferences. Thirty-nine percent of consumers wanted more self-service kiosks in restaurants, 37% wanted more tabletop ordering, and 32% wanted more digital payments. Smaller shares wanted more personalized recommendations, at 28%, or more foodservice robots, at 17% (NCR Voyix 2025 Commerce Experience Report).
Direct ordering was also a notable preference. Fifty-eight percent of consumers preferred to contact the restaurant directly for delivery or carry-out orders rather than use a third-party app. Among reasons cited for direct ordering, 65% selected convenience, 50% selected order customization, and 36% selected loyalty points (NCR Voyix 2025 Commerce Experience Report).
Self-service behavior provides additional context for kiosk and payment decisions. NCR Voyix found that 83% of shoppers regularly used self-checkout in the preceding six months, and 77% chose self-checkout because it was faster than staffed checkout. Forty-two percent regularly encountered newer features such as cameras, produce recognition, or age verification (NCR Voyix 2025 Commerce Experience Report). These figures describe shoppers broadly, so they should not be treated as restaurant-only adoption rates.
Consumer spending pressure affects the payment experience too. Fifty-two percent of consumers said they tip less or only at sit-down restaurants as food prices rise (NCR Voyix 2025 Commerce Experience Report). For restaurant operators, payment technology therefore sits alongside pricing, tipping, loyalty, and ordering choices rather than operating as an isolated system.
Technology and restaurant operating performance
PAR’s 2025 QSR Operational Index connects transaction systems with operating outcomes. Average QSR transactions rose 5% in 2024, while average QSR profits rose 8%. PAR reported that only 4% of the profit increase was caused by price hikes (PAR 2025 QSR Operational Index).
The same index reported average food costs of 26.69% of sales in 2024, down 5.8% year over year, and average labor costs of 23.94% of sales, up 6.3%. These figures show why restaurant technology is often evaluated through operational controls: ordering, payment, loyalty, labor, and inventory data can be reviewed together when margins change.
PAR also reported 210 average refunded POS transactions in the 2024 average cohort, compared with 329 in the top 10% cohort. Average refunded POS dollars were $5,093 in the average cohort and $14,453 in the top 10% cohort. Average cancelled POS transactions were 3,005 and 3,543, respectively (PAR 2025 QSR Operational Index). Cohort comparisons should be read as reported benchmarks, not as evidence that a higher value is automatically better.
Discounts represented 2.78% of sales for the 2024 average cohort and 1.08% for the top 10% cohort in PAR’s index. This is a useful technology-related control point because POS and loyalty systems are commonly where discounts are configured, recorded, and evaluated (PAR 2025 QSR Operational Index).
Labor, costs, and control points
Labor remains one of the clearest operating metrics affected by restaurant systems. PAR reported that the average turnover rate fell from 139% in 2023 to 122% in 2024. Average overtime hours per store fell from 1,148 in 2023 to 1,065 in 2024, according to the index; the report presents the overtime comparison as a 2023-to-2024 measure (PAR 2025 QSR Operational Index).
Restaurant technology also supports different operating models at scale. Starbucks operated 40,199 stores globally at September 29, 2024, including 21,018 company-operated stores and 19,181 licensed stores. Company-operated stores generated 82% of total net revenues in fiscal 2024 (Starbucks Fiscal 2024 Annual Report). The figures illustrate why technology reporting needs clear scope: store counts, revenue mix, digital sales, and loyalty activity may cover different parts of a brand’s system.
NCR Voyix’s consumer figures and the company reports point to a consistent operating pattern: customers value speed, direct ordering, customization, and rewards, while operators are measuring payments, digital mix, refunds, cancellations, discounts, labor, and turnover. The most useful restaurant technology statistics are therefore the ones tied to a defined period, geography or footprint, and metric definition.