Software built for one industry's specific workflow and lingo, trading a smaller market for tighter fit, stickier customers, and fewer competitors.
Toast started in 2011 as a point-of-sale system built only for restaurants, with restaurant-specific tipping flows, kitchen display screens, and inventory units that count by-the-pour. By 2024 it served over 120,000 locations and roughly $150 billion in gross payment volume, a number generic horizontal POS competitors could not approach because they were not built around the menu-and-table model.