Toast arrived in Australia in 2026 with an American Express partnership behind it, and anyone in this market who tells you that is not a serious event is bluffing. By its own count Toast runs about 180,000 restaurants worldwide. The product is built specifically for restaurants, the hardware is made for a kitchen line, and the module list is long: point of sale, online ordering, bookings, rostering, marketing, a website. We will start by conceding the part most vendors would bury.
Toast ticks more boxes than Allvio does
Measured as a list of capabilities, Toast covers slightly more of hospitality than we do today. That is simply true and we are not going to argue with it. If your decision comes down to which product has the longest feature list, buy Toast. What a list cannot tell you is where the product was designed, who its next release is written for, and who answers the phone at twenty to nine on a Saturday. That is what the rest of this is about.
Designed in Boston, for American dining rooms
Toast was built in Boston for the way Americans eat out, and it is very good at that. The consequence for you is not a missing feature, it is a queue. Every product has a roadmap, and the requests that reach the front of it are the ones a big American restaurant chain has asked for. The things that are simply normal here, a Sunday rate, a public holiday rate, the local delivery apps your suburb actually uses, the way a long weekend reshapes an entire trading week, are not what the room in Boston argues about on a Monday morning. Allvio is built in Melbourne for Australian venues, and that is the whole of our roadmap.
8.40pm, the lamb is gone
Saturday, second sitting, and the last lamb shoulder just went out to table twelve. It comes off. On the till that is quick, and Toast will carry it to its own ordering page. The trouble is what an Australian venue actually runs alongside. Toast is new here, so the local integrations catalogue is young, which means most venues keep the delivery apps and the local ordering partner they already had. Every one of those channels is another menu holding your lamb, and every one has to be told separately. Miss one for eleven minutes and a stranger pays for a dish that does not exist, gets a phone call from a staff member who is already behind, and remembers you as the place that took his money for nothing.
Then the mirror image on Monday. The lamb is back, at a higher price because the supplier moved, and the new number goes into the till, the ordering page, the printed menu and the website, plus anything you kept locally. On Allvio those all read one item, so the change is one edit and there is nothing left holding an old price.
Who picks up at 8.42pm
The other half of local fit is the part you only care about once. A terminal drops out mid service and you need a human who understands your venue, in your timezone, tonight. Toast is in its first year of building that network here, so the honest position is that nobody knows yet how thin it is on a Saturday in a suburb. Allvio is a Melbourne company and support is local by default, which is not a boast, just where we are. And because it is one subscription, there is only ever one number to ring, whichever part is misbehaving.
The bill you cannot work out on your own
Before you serve a single cover there is hardware, an install, training and a first month to pay for, and Toast does not publish Australian pricing. To learn what your venue would pay, you book a demo and ask, which means the number you get is the number they decide to give you, and you cannot compare it to anything at 11pm when you are actually making the decision. Allvio publishes in Australian dollars: Complete is $399 per month ex GST for one location with every app switched on, plus $299 per month for each extra location, with no per app charge and no per user charge. Build your own starts at $20 per month per app if you only want a few. Hardware is bought outright and stays yours: $1,499 ex GST for the single station, $1,869 for the retail station, $2,499 for the restaurant station. The trial is 30 days with no card, and the subscription also takes in invoicing, payroll, GST and BAS work, which is the one line we will spend on the back office.
Toast | Allvio | |
|---|---|---|
What you are actually buying | A restaurant platform with the widest module list in hospitality, designed in the United States and in its first year of selling here | One AUD subscription built in Melbourne for Australian venues, with every app on |
How wide it goes | Wider than Allvio today across hospitality, and that is worth saying plainly | Slightly narrower in hospitality, and it also runs retail, barber, beauty and services |
Changing a price or a menu item | One edit inside Toast, then again in whichever local ordering or delivery channels you kept because its Australian catalogue is new | One edit that the till, ordering page and website all read |
Changing your trading hours | Set inside Toast, then in the local channels and diary you kept alongside it | Set once for the till, ordering, bookings and site |
Keeping a customer's details right | Good within Toast; a regular who books or orders through a local partner is a second record | One customer record shared by the till, the diary and your campaigns |
Whose requests come first | A roadmap set by what large American restaurant groups need | A roadmap set by Australian owner-operators, Sunday rates and long weekends included |
Working out what it will cost you | Australian pricing is not published, so you book a demo to find out your own number | Published AUD pricing you can add up tonight |
When it breaks mid service | A support network in its first year of being built in this country | One Melbourne company to ring, whatever broke |
Best fit | A restaurant or QSR group that wants the longest feature list and has an operations manager to run it | An Australian owner-operator who wants local fit, one bill and one number to ring |
The restaurant that should call Toast
If you are a growing restaurant group, hospitality only, with an operations manager whose job includes software, and you want the deepest kitchen and menu tooling on the market, call Toast. They are not a fashionable pick that will be gone in two years, and the breadth is real. We would rather you heard that from us than found it out later.
But if you are one owner with one venue, what decides your week is not the length of the list. It is whether Sunday's surcharge behaves, whether the lamb comes off everywhere at once, and whether the person who answers at 8.42pm knows what a bistro in Australia is doing on a Saturday night.
This comparison reflects each product's general positioning as published by each vendor in August 2026. Features and pricing change: always check directly with each vendor before deciding.