How Snowy Owl Coffee Uses Toast IQ Grow to Stay Connected to Its Community & Grow Marketing-Driven Sales 90% YoY

Building a marketing and operations strategy to support this required a system built for the way seasonal, multi-location businesses actually work. Since 2022 Snowy Owl has used Toast to run more efficiently, and has most recently used Toast IQ Grow to nearly double marketing-attributed revenue from email and SMS year over year*.

Challenge

A POS That Works For Every Season

Owners Shayna Ferullo** and Manuel Ainzuain started Snowy Owl with a mission to deliver exceptional coffee that is sourced sustainably, educationally, and fairly through partner communities.

After opening a second cafe in 2018, they quickly ran into limitations managing multiple locations on their original POS system, Shopkeep, and made the switch to Lightspeed. “I know people that own retail stores who really like Lightspeed, but it couldn’t do what we needed for food and beverage and the customer support model was not a good fit for us,” says Shayna.

Facing a host of unique challenges – from strained infrastructure during peak season to varied offerings at each storefront – Snowy Owl needed a POS that was reliable and flexible.

Since rolling out Toast’s POS, Snowy Owl has been able to:

• Operate reliably no matter the season, with offline mode available as winter storms or summer power shortages take hold.

• Easily train seasonal staff with a user-friendly interface and familiarity of Toast in the community. 

• Access multi-location reporting and insights, giving Shayna a holistic view of her inventory, staffing, forecasting, and sales across the entire business.

**Shayna Ferullo is  a member of Toast’s Independent Customer Advisory Board which provides hardware discounts and certain covered travel costs. No testimonial was required.

Solution

Personalized Marketing that Drives Sales

Before selling her marketing business in late 2023, Shayna ran it alongside Snowy Owl, giving her a deep understanding of the effort required to build a brand that can effectively reach multiple audiences at once

Snowy Owl caters to four very different audiences: seasonal café visitors, year-round regulars, wholesale customers, and online customers who purchase coffee through its Shopify website – including subscribers who receive recurring auto-ship deliveries.

Because of this, Shayna jumped at the opportunity to try Toast IQ Grow – Toast’s AI marketing agent backed by a dedicated marketing expert.

Since starting with Toast IQ Grow in May 2026, Shayna has been able to:

• Save time by delegating marketing to cafe visitors to Toast, allowing her to focus on other audiences.

• Re-engage year-round customers with authentic and consistent updates.

• Drive visits by sending timely and targeted SMS messages promoting live music nights and other events.

• Unlock new opportunities for personalization, no longer sending the same blanket emails to everyone.

• Get expert guidance alongside AI-powered marketing from a dedicated Marketing Success Manager who is already a Toast expert.

“Our marketing success manager has really nailed the storytelling on our channels, using our mission and values to speak to our cafe audience. She also knows Toast really well, so I don’t need to spend any extra time training or managing permissions,” says Shayna.

That storytelling was seen in one email campaign to customers about slowing down and enjoying the season. “I had several people who had never replied to my marketing emails reply and say ‘Oh my god, I love this,’” says Shayna.

Even during the peak-summer rush, when regulars can feel scarce and out-of-towners fill the cafes, a well-timed, well-written email gave Snowy Owl a way to stay connected to the community that keeps it running the rest of the year.

The belief in Toast IQ Grow isn’t just a feeling – Snowy Owl has seen measurable sales growth as a result. Across all three locations, marketing-attributed sales from email and SMS are up 90% year over year, with an impressive 147% growth in Brewster alone*.

Keeping the Human Edge in Hospitality with Toast IQ

Shayna also leans on Toast IQ – Toast’s native AI assistant – to make fast, confident calls across three cafes that each behave differently. A few recent examples include:

• Deciding how to split newly arrived fall apparel across locations based on where merchandise actually sells best.

• Using sales patterns between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. to choose the right time of day to launch beer and wine service after earning a license, which also determined staff training and certification needs.

• Comparing this year's pastry sales to last year's to help a new baker plan production numbers for each cafe without over- or under-baking.

For Shayna, Toast’s AI features are not a replacement for people – they’re a tool to help make more time for human connection.

“One way I use Toast IQ is just to see who is working today at a particular location. It reminds me who is there so that I can come in and have a more personal conversation with our team and remember their names – especially when we’re in the thick of our busiest season and have a lot of new people,” says Shayna.

Results

The Future with Toast

Even with the results so far, Shayna sees plenty of runway left. “There's always more to explore from Toast,” she says.

Her team is experimenting with Toast’s new agentic scheduling tool as a way to be more efficient during the unpredictable rush of peak season. She's also planning a Roundup campaign to support coffee growers in Colombia affected by a recent earthquake.

In their time with Toast, Snowy Owl has seen the benefits of:

• Toast POS: Keeping day-to-day operations smooth, even through power outages, staff turnover, and seasonal swings.

• Toast IQ Grow: Driving more value from under-utilized marketing channels with a dedicated marketing expert, resulting in a 90% marketing-attributed sales lift from email and SMS year over year.*

• Toast IQ: Turning manual, location-by-location comparisons into fast, confident calls on merchandise, staffing, and new menu launches.