THE FINE PRINT

Where the restaurants come from

Every restaurant on Lunch Toad comes from public information: business listings, review sites, and restaurants' own websites and menus. Hours, phone numbers and addresses change, and places open and close, so call ahead if it matters. We're not affiliated with any restaurant on the list.

🍽 See every restaurant on the list →

The picks are random

The Toad picks at random from whatever towns, meals and food types you've selected. Every restaurant gets the same odds. No favorites, no paid placement. (We're looking at you, Yelp >:p) It also works like a deck of cards: you'll get through every place on your list before the Toad sends you anywhere twice.

How the Toad picks (for nerds)

1. Build the pool. Your checkboxes (towns, meals, food types, chains) filter the list down to a pool. Each restaurant is in the pool at most once, even if it matches several boxes. A brewery that's lunch, dinner and drinks has the same odds as a taco stand that's only lunch.

2. Shuffle bag. Your device keeps a list of places it has already been dealt. Each spin picks uniformly among the places in your pool you haven't had yet, which works out exactly the same as shuffling the pool and dealing it one card at a time. If your list has 58 places, you'll see all 58 before any repeats.

3. Reshuffle. Once you've been dealt the whole pool, the deck reshuffles. Your last pick is excluded from the first spin of the new round, so you never get the same place twice in a row.

4. Changing filters mid-deck. Places you've already had stay marked. If you add a town, its places join the remaining deck. If you remove one, those places just sit out until you add it back.

5. The random numbers. Picks use your browser's cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues), the same source used for security keys, with rejection sampling so no position on the list is even slightly favored. Very old browsers without it fall back to Math.random().

6. The spinning names are just for show. The names flashing by while the Toad thinks have nothing to do with the final pick, which is made once at the end.

The "already dealt" list is stored in your browser's local storage (lt_seen). It never leaves your device. Clearing your browser data starts a fresh deck.

Recommendations

When a pick comes with a recommendation, the wording tells you who's recommending it:

"[Restaurant] recommends…" means the restaurant told us that's their favorite.

"The Toad recommends…" means it's our favorite. Sometimes we pull these straight from a restaurant's own menu because we like them.

Coupons

Restaurants can send us coupons to show on the site. When the Toad picks a restaurant with a coupon, it pops up and is saved under "See my coupons" in Lunch Options for 24 hours, then it expires. A coupon only counts if you show the live coupon screen (with its ticking clock) at the counter. Screenshots and telling the cashier "Lunch Toad said a dollar off" won't work.

Restaurants: want to show up more?

If you'd like to bribe us so your restaurant pops up more often, send us something through the contact form. We'll happily take your money. We won't change the odds. The Toad cannot be bought.

The Toad can, however, be persuaded to make you look good when it lands on you. Paying restaurants get perks on their pick:

🖼 Your logo on the result card when the Toad picks you.
📣 Your weekly deals shown right on the pick, so hungry people see this week's special the moment they land on you.

Paid extras are always labeled as sponsored, and they only show up after the Toad has picked you. Your odds stay exactly the same as everyone else's.

Indecisive?

Spin too many times in one visit and the Toad stops picking restaurants and hands you a recipe instead: simple dishes from around the world, so picky eaters can broaden their horizons. Recipe photos come from Wikimedia Commons and are credited under each photo per their licenses.

Sounds

The Toad's crunch is "crunch 2.wav" by theplax, licensed under CC BY 4.0. The whir, chime and gulp are made by your browser on the spot.

Your info

Your choices and the list of places you've already been dealt are saved in your own browser so they're there next time. There are also a few small cookies: one counts how many times you've visited (regulars may notice the Toad warming up to them), one remembers if you've earned the Toad's crown, and one is for a joke you may never find. Nothing is sent to us unless you use the contact form.