Case Study: Barkhaus opens amid COVID-19 and runs payroll in 15 minutes with Toast

How Toast Payroll & Team Management helped Barkhaus open their doors in 2020

Barkhaus is a dog‑friendly park, bar, and restaurant in Alexandria, VA founded by Alex Benbassat and Justin LeGore that opened in October 2020 during the COVID‑19 pandemic. Facing constant operational uncertainty, they needed to streamline vendors and simplify employee onboarding, payroll, payments, and day‑to‑day operations so they could open quickly and adapt to changing rules.

They adopted Toast’s all‑in‑one platform (POS, payments, online ordering, payroll & team management, KDS, reporting), going from boxes to processing payments within 24 hours and running their first payroll in about 15 minutes. Digital onboarding, synced timesheets, and automated payroll/tax handling reduced vendor complexity, sped hiring and payroll, and freed the team to focus on guests and growth.

Barkhaus

Alex Benbassat

Co-Founder