Beth C. 

VP of Global Real Estate and Workplace Experience

This is part one of a series that highlights the different ways we work and can collaborate together. As we continue to think about the Future of Work and what that looks like at Toast, we’re exploring new ways to deliver an extraordinary experience to all Toasters, no matter who you are and where you work. In this blog, we will focus on our physical offices. Stay tuned for more posts highlighting the Toasters in our various work designations.

Much has changed about how companies and employees approach productivity since so many of us began working remotely in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Individually and as a company, we reimagined how we work together and how we stay connected as one team. 

Connecting all employees and facilitating a seamless experience is one of our biggest goals this year. We recognize that each Toaster may work differently, depending on what’s best for them, what’s best for their team, or  what’s best for the company. Globally, our ingredients are in-office, remote, hybrid, and field Toasters, choosing where and how they help us deliver on our mission. We all show up to  work from a different perspective, and we’re trying to figure out how to weave that together into a consistent, inclusive experience for all Toasters.

Two years later, after almost settling into a new normal working aesthetic, Toasters are returning to our offices to do their jobs and I love how our offices can remain a through line to bring people together physically and further facilitate community, connection, and a shared sense of belonging.

And to further my thought on how we all bring different perspectives, I believe now is one of the most exciting times to be in real estate and workplace experience. 

As VP of Global Real Estate and Workplace Experience, I lead a team whose goal is to create Toast spaces that encourage the exchange of ideas, promote our culture, foster learning development, and support our customers. Earlier this year we opened a San Francisco office and last month, a Nashville Configuration Center. We moved to a new location in Dublin and will be moving to a new location in Omaha (opening August 2022). We’re also doing a lot of experiments in the Boston space, expounded upon below. 

At Toast we are driven by mission and purpose. We want those shared values to be represented in how we engage in our workplaces.  everything we do in our workplaces. In every Toast office – whether in the U.S., Ireland, or India – we celebrate customers, we celebrate our values, we celebrate each other.

When our offices were initially designed and scoped, things were a lot different than they are now.  Everyone was working in person but now we are imagining a new office model that won’t be a sea of desks filling the space. 

Since our offices have reopened, we’ve noticed, Toasters don’t come in to sit at a desk. They come to attend off sites, or a team sprint, or to socialize with their teams and connect with a Toast community. 

Below is more information about the in office experiments we are conducting to test what works best for the future of work and the future of Toast.

IN-OFFICE EXPERIMENTS:

Reservable offices: a lamp, side chair, sit to stand desk.
Ideation kits: we've got brainstorming kits that we have distributed throughout the office so brainstorming sprints, jam sessions, and getting their design thinking and their creative juices going.
Customer spaces: we have heard from our sales and our marketing team that it would be really great if we could come in and DEMO our products together so that we can activate them and have customers come in and learn about our products and help in the sales and marketing process.

We want our offices to be experience centers, a destination, where people don’t say, “I have to go there,” they say, “I get to go there.”