Dutch Bros has significant opportunities with food and expansion.
Toast is becoming an invaluable parter to the restaurant industry.
10 stocks we like better than Amazon ›
While the market is near all-time highs, that doesn’t mean you should just sit still. There are still some great growth stocks out there to buy for the long term.
Let’s look at three to buy right now.
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Amazon(NASDAQ: AMZN) built its dominance in e-commerce by making heavy investments in logistics and fulfillment that others simply weren’t willing to make, and while it wasn’t cheap to do at the time, it allowed the company to deliver products to people’s doors faster than anyone else and turn that into customer loyalty.
Today, the company is looking to push its advantage even further with artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, which are helping it drive operating leverage in its e-commerce operations.
Amazon already has more than a million robots working inside its fulfillment centers, which are now all coordinated by its DeepFleet AI model. This helps create a unified robotics workforce that can outperform humans in many respects. Some can also handle advanced tasks, such as identifying damaged goods, sorting and picking, and even repairing themselves.
Amazon is also using AI to help determine which warehouses are best to hold certain products and how routes are planned, which is translating into faster deliveries and lower costs. You can already see the payoff, with North American operating income climbing 47% last quarter on just 11% revenue growth.
At the same time, Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to be a strong growth engine for the company. AWS holds close to 30% of the cloud computing market share, and customers are using its services like Bedrock and SageMaker to build and deploy their own AI models on its infrastructure. Meanwhile, Amazon’s custom chips Trainium and Inferentia help them run workloads more cost-effectively.
Amazon also saw one of its under-the-radar investments get a big win recently when airline JetBlue(NASDAQ: JBLU) chose Amazon’s Kuiper satellite network to provide in-flight Wi-Fi services in 2027. Amazon has more than 100 low-Earth-orbit satellites in its network, and this venture could become another growth driver.
Amazon has always gone through heavy spending cycles, but it consistently comes out stronger, and with AWS growth paired with rising e-commerce efficiency, this is still one of the best long-term stocks to own.
Dutch Bros(NYSE: BROS) has become one of the best growth stories in the restaurant space, continuing to put up strong same-store sales while many competitors have been struggling to drive traffic. Transactions were up nicely last quarter, but the company’s biggest potential comparable-store driver is still ahead: food.
For years, Dutch Bros had almost no food offerings, which meant it missed out on breakfast sales entirely, but that’s about to change as it tests hot food items. This is a big deal because rival Starbucks gets nearly 20% of its revenue from food, while Dutch Bros is below 2%. As such, even moderate success with food could unlock a meaningful new growth lever.
That said, expansion is set to be the company’s main growth driver. The coffeehouse operator recently crossed 1,000 stores and has its eyes on 2,000 locations by 2029 and a long-term goal of 7,000. Its small, drive-thru-focused units are capital-light, but the stores are productive, averaging more than $2 million in annual sales.
Taken altogether, the combination of food and expansion make Dutch Bros a top restaurant growth stock to own.
Sticking in the restaurant sector, Toast(NYSE: TOST) has evolved into one of the most important technology partners for the restaurant industry, moving far beyond just payment processing to become the central hub for how restaurants operate.
The company now serves about 148,000 locations, and its platform runs varied tasks from staffing to menu planning to marketing, with new tools being rolled out regularly.
Restaurants are consistently under pressure to do more with less, and that is exactly where Toast fits. Its newer AI-driven tools like ToastIQ and Sous Chef give operators insights in real time to help improve sales and efficiency, and because Toast also benefits when its customers process more payments, the company is able to grow along with them.
Toast’s growth has been impressive. It added a record 8,500 net new locations last quarter, up 24% year over year. Subscription revenue is also rising quickly, with its annual recurring revenue (ARR) now about $1.9 billion, showing just how much scale the company has built.
The company is also starting to break into enterprise chains, food retailers, and international markets, which are all large opportunities still ahead. That combined with its product innovation and market share gains, Toast has a long runway of growth still in front of it.
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Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Toast. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Starbucks, and Toast. The Motley Fool recommends Dutch Bros. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
3 Growth Stocks That Could Skyrocket in 2025 and Beyond was originally published by The Motley Fool
