More guests are asking AI assistants for a restaurant instead of searching for one.

An assistant can only recommend a place it can describe with confidence, so the job is to be easy to describe.

Pam walks through a five minute test and three steps: Ask, Match, Feed. She also covers Order with Google, a free feature included with Toast Online Ordering that may already be on for your restaurant.

In this episode:

- Ask: the five minute ChatGPT and Gemini test, and why a gap is a to-do list, not a verdict

- Match: one sentence about your restaurant, used in five places, with matching hours and details

- Feed: plain menu descriptions, review replies and real photos

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/

Everyone plans December, but your quarter is decided by the weeks around it.

In this episode, Pam Monteith walks independent restaurant owners through three campaigns to send before Thanksgiving: a holiday party invitation by email, a midweek booking invitation for regulars, and a gift card plan that fills January and February.

Then she names the three numbers to judge them by: covers, average check and prime cost. Not opens.

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 did not open a restaurant to become a marketer. Marketing is the one job that never rings, so it waits while every louder job gets done first.⁣
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In this episode, Pam Monteith explains why handing marketing to a specialist protects the hours that matter most, and shares four ideas for doing it well: decide what stays yours, hand over a number instead of a task, give access and one short weekly rhythm, and judge the work by your books. Then she turns to why the person running your campaigns needs to read your numbers.⁣
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Tonight's one task: draw a line down a page. On the left, what only you can do. On the right, what someone else could.⁣
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Book your Free 30-minute Toast Marketing Audit: tidycal.com/pam-pormentilla-monteith/restaurant-growth-session⁣
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Grab your Free Toast Marketing Activation Checklist: greatworkonline.com/toast-activation-checklist⁣
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Website: greatworkonline.com⁣
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Blog: greatworkonline.com/blog⁣
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Connect with Pam on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pampormentilla/⁣
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Follow Pam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_monteith/⁣

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/