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Kelly Esten believes in customers telling their own authentic stories.
Esten is the chief marketing officer at Toast, the innovative restaurant point of sale and management system company. Since joining the team, she has played a significant role in building Toast’s customer-focused reputation.
When it comes to marketing, she knows the goal is to keep it real. “Something we always try to remember is the person on the other side of the marketing email or the ad and how we’re trying to reach them,” Esten says. “It’s much more impactful and authentic when a restaurant can say, ‘Hey, here’s how I’m using Toast, and here’s my story,’ than what we can say.”
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The Toast journey
Esten remembers her first day at Toast very well. It was 2017, and Toast’s offices were located in an incubator near Fenway Park in Boston.
“Job No. 1 was ‘do no harm,'” she remembers. “Learn what’s working, make sure that we’re building on that early success we had. Really building alongside restaurants is what made us so successful.”
As Toast took off as a company, it started to take up more space. There were desks everywhere, Esten remembers, and the makeshift decor and mismatched carpet made it evident that the company was firmly in growth mode.
“Things have changed a lot since those early days, but it’s been an amazing journey,” she says.
Her expectation from the first day was to come in and contribute to what the team had been building. It was — as with many start-ups — an “all hands on deck” scenario.
“I’ll always remember those first couple weeks,” she says. “Toast was growing really fast; it was getting a lot of traction with restaurants at that time, and we definitely had product/market fit. Restaurants were using our point of sale across the country, and things were going really well.”
She found her footing under the tutelage of Toast’s former CMO, Kevin Hamilton, and Toast CEO and co-founder Aman Narang. Esten attributes much of her professional growth to their mentorship.
“Kevin Hamilton was a huge mentor of mine, someone who taught me a lot about marketing, but also leadership and gave me opportunities to learn and grow,” she tells Shawn Walchef of Cali BBQ Media during a tour of the company’s new Boston headquarters, which opened in 2024.
Esten built on the legacy set by her mentors by enhancing Toast’s customer-focused marketing efforts. Her philosophy involves actively listening to customer feedback and allowing them to share their own stories.
When she started at Toast, the marketing department had about a dozen people; now, it has more than 200.
Its focus then, as it is now, was helping independent restaurants. “A lot of what we’re doing today dates back to those early days of Toast marketing as well,” she says.
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Launching Toast Now app
One of Esten’s most notable achievements at Toast is the successful launch of the Toast Now app.
She attributes the product’s success to its development in close collaboration with Toast partners, which resulted in a cloud-based solution that resonated strongly with the restaurant community. This deep involvement led to widespread daily use and made Toast Now one of the most significant product launches in the company’s history.
“One of the things that was really rewarding for me to see is that we actually launched a video alongside it about how it was built because it was built with our customers,” she shares.
Esten’s approach to marketing and leadership at Toast highlights the importance of customer engagement, mentorship and collaborative product development. Her commitment to understanding and addressing customer needs has driven successful product launches and fostered a culture of growth and inspiration within her team.
“When I think about my role as a leader now in Toast, that’s a lot of the job—how do you get the right people, set them up for success and help them grow their careers?” she says. “Because that’s what inspires people to do great work.”
Disclaimer: Restaurant Influencers host Shawn Walchef is a paid consultant and content creator for Toast.
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