Have you noticed that servers no longer take your order with a pen and paper? Have you experienced that you’re only halfway through your order, and suddenly your drink is served — a magic moment.

That shift in the dining experience didn’t happen by accident.

One of the biggest forces behind this transformation is Toast, the platform reshaping how restaurants operate around the world. And those sleek handhelds didn’t emerge overnight. They were shaped through gritty field research, rigorous engineering tests, and intuition-driven decisions made in the middle of dinner rushes — including those rare moments when you catch a spark in a customer’s eyes and know you’re building something that truly matters.

In this session, Lucy Wang, MBA 2012, Senior Director of Product,Toast and Co-Founder of MIT Sloan Design Club, pulls back the curtain on how innovation really happens — not in spotless labs or polished conference rooms, but in the noise, heat, and urgency of real restaurant environments. She’ll share:

✨ The intuition-driven product and growth strategies that fueled Toast’s evolution from startup scrappiness to IPO impact

✨ How to design hardware + software that survives real restaurant floors, and why durability and simplicity often matter more than elegance

✨ Why deep customer insight comes from immersion, not surveys, and how to build an instinct for the problems that actually matter

✨ How cross-functional teams turn fragile prototypes into industry-defining products

The conversation will be moderated by Aditi Ramakrishnan, MBA 2026, Co-President of the MIT Sloan Design Club, whose background in social-impact strategy consulting and product design brings a thoughtful lens to how meaningful products come to life. Together, they’ll explore not only what was built, but how intuition, real-world complexity, and team alignment shaped every major decision along the way.

Join us for a rare inside look at how startup scrappiness becomes IPO-level clarity — one prototype, one insight, and one restaurant at a time.

This event is co-hosted by the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association, MIT Morningside Academy for Design, MIT Sloan Design Club, MIT Sloan Product Management Club, MIT Sloan Fintech Club.