In many ways, the National Restaurant Association Show has become a technology exhibition with some food sprinkled in for good measure.
Here’s what we saw and heard at this year’s event at McCormick Place in Chicago, where there was plenty of enthusiasm about where restaurant tech is headed.
There was more tech than ever
So much so that it required extra space. For the first time in my several years of attending, the back wall of the North Hall was opened up to make rooms for hundreds of additional exhibitors, many of them tech-focused.
A lot of the newcomers were from overseas. We noticed several POS vendors we’d never heard of. And the field of voice AI companies is getting crowded quickly.
The glut of tech has its pros and cons. The heightened competition should result in better products. But the growing number of options can be overwhelming for operators to navigate. More consolidation is likely on the horizon.
More robots, but not always better ones
There seemed to be more robots at the Show this year than last, which surprised us. Trump’s tariffs have created a lot of uncertainty for companies that sell hardware, and robot adoption in restaurants has been generally slow.
But there were at least a dozen bots on the floor doing their thing. Or trying to. We saw a napkin-folding robot struggling to pick up napkins, and a pizza-topping machine having some trouble booting up.
It suggested that robots are still not quite ready for primetime, although we did speak to a burger chain that is testing automated grills. One challenge for restaurants will be adapting their operations to accommodate the bots.
High hopes for AI
There was a growing sense of excitement among both operators and vendors about AI’s potential.
“AI is inventing a new frontier for our industry, in every facet of what we do,” said Sean Feeney, co-founder of Grovehouse Hospitality in New York City.
Today, Grovehouse is using AI to generate newsletters and social media posts. But in the future, Feeney sees it doing much more. It will plot tables and create schedules. It will be smart enough to know which servers should work in which sections. Most importantly, it will allow employees and managers to spend their time serving customers rather than looking at a computer.
“It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened,” Feeney said.
And that may be just the tip of the iceberg of what AI can do, one tech executive told us. He envisioned a world in which AI manages virtually the entire restaurant, telling staff what needs to be done and when. And that scenario may not be as far off as we think.
Tech to make everyone a regular
There was also excitement about what AI can do for customers. Multiple people we spoke to mentioned how much customers value being treated like regulars when they go out to eat, but how hard it is for restaurants to actually deliver that experience. Employees come and go, and customers have a lot of dining options, so it can take a long time to really get to know them.
“That’s very difficult to do out of the box without having hours and hours and many, many visits,” said Ming-Tai Huh, head of food and beverage at Square. Data and AI can allow restaurants to shrink that time down.
“Let’s say I want to go to a very nice restaurant, but they don’t know me,” Huh said. “I can provide them with information about me to make sure that I really get that five-star experience.”
Plus, knowing the “regulars” can help restaurants operate more efficiently, too.
With the help of AI, for instance, after a customer makes an online reservation, the restaurant could pull up their ordering history and send a message asking whether they’d like the same wine in the same price range as they had last time. “And we could decant that for you 30 minutes before you walk in,” said Feeney of Grovehouse. “And so now we’re saving time in our experience as operators, and they feel even more special coming in as guests.”
Here lies the dashboard?
The trusty data dashboard, a common selling point of many a tech vendor, may end up being one of the first casualties of the AI incursion. Dashboards are certainly a step up from spreadsheets in terms of presenting information. But what restaurants really want to know is what that information means and what they should do about it. AI has the ability to put it into words and prompt operators to take action.
“Dashboards are dead,” said Kelly Macpherson, chief technology and supply chain officer at Union Square Hospitality Group. “You have to go beyond the dashboard to the narrative behind the data.”
A recipe for success: Listen to restaurants
Some of the most (seemingly) thriving tech companies we spoke to at the Show have taken a decidedly restaurant-first approach to developing their products. Many of them were founded or staffed by people who work or have worked in restaurants. So they believe they have a keen understanding of the complexities of the business and what operators actually need.
One founder of a fast-growing tech vendor told us his company does not even have a product team. It just talks to restaurants and builds tools they ask for.
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