Nicholas Upton
Last year at this point, inflation was the top topic and restaurant operators at the annual Restaurant Finance & Development Conference were bracing for a volatile economic future. Sound familiar?
Much has changed since the last RFDC, but much remains the same and operators are looking for new technology tools and improved operations to solve annoyingly familiar challenges.
Top of mind in 2024: preserving margin and matching shifting omnichannel value expectations from shaky consumers. This was explored in depth at last year’s RFDC by Bank of America’s Sara Senatore, Craveworthy Brands CEO Gregg Majewski and Ashwin Kamlani, CEO of the data-focused insights firm Juicer.
Senatore said there were some tough decisions between revenue and traffic; better value means better traffic, even if it’s tricky.
“Right now, we’re seeing a hard pivot to much more reserved pricing—very low single-digit inflation in restaurant pricing—to reflect both lower input costs and consumers’ clear desire for value, whether it’s a $5 bundle or other sharp price points,” said Senatore. “Operators who were willing to take it on the chin and reduce prices have been taking traffic share.”
That meant less wiggle room for operators when it came to margins, but Majewski said it was worth the pain. “Lunch will always be a $10 to $12 sweet spot. It’s our job to engineer food cost and menu mix to deliver value at that price without calling it ‘value,’” he said.
To do that, he gets competitor pricing every day at 3 p.m. from a technology provider and use it to make agile pricing decisions to hit that sweet spot.
Of course, consumers still wanted the margin-squeezing delivery as much as ever, but smart operators were finding ways to stand out with their marketing.
“If you’re not advertising on DoorDash or Uber Eats, you’re invisible. But you need to score those third-party campaigns weekly—just like food and labor—because set-and-forget doesn’t work. A good promotion should return seven to 10 times your spend,” said Majewski.
Kalmani echoed the sentiment, and said brands needed to be smart about tracking all costs, from cloud to the sandwich at hand.
“Restaurants need to calculate the ROI on third-party sales including mandatory marketing and merchandising spend. Don’t separate those costs; factor them directly into unit economics,” said Kalmani.
Across the industry, there was a sustained push for more technology to fill the gaps. Craveworthy leaned on artificial intelligence manage chargebacks in third-party delivery, and Senatore said more brands turned to kiosks and other consumer-facing technology.
Deja vu all over again
If this all sounds like what you’re hearing today, you’re not going crazy. We see a lot of similar economic patterns going into 2026.
Consumer sentiment is fragile. The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers in August said its Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to 58.6, a 13.7 percent drop from last year, with inflation expectations rising back toward 5 percent.
Traffic is soft. Second quarter 2025 earnings showed familiar patterns: McDonald’s comps were up 3.8 percent on value offers; Domino’s up 3.4 percent with deeper aggregator integration, but both missed expectations. The National Restaurant Association said more operators reported lower traffic and sales through June. The NRA showed year-over-year sales were up 5.6 percent, but went on to show monthly sales were down 0.4 percent, eerily similar to weakness last summer after a decent expansion.
What’s brewing?
Watch for more digital-first outlets. Several brands are rolling out digital-forward prototypes with a lot of automation. KFC opened its “digital twin,” Saucy. Taco Bell and Chick-fil-A have their futuristic formats, including second floors for food production and multiple pickup lanes where orders are sent via conveyor systems to cars.
Watch for new automation tactics, ones poised to meet the demands of delivery while shedding standard costs. Chipotle just leaned further into automation. Nobody needs to cut and mash avocados in the back. Once a point of differentiation for the brand has been handed off to the robots.
“You’re going to see more brands use automation in the back of house to produce products for consumers who are getting their food to consume off-premise—someone who orders ahead on your app, through a website or even through a third party and isn’t there for the experience,” said Jim Balis, a partner at CapitalSpring, a private equity firm that’s invested nearly $3 billion into restaurant and foodservice brands. “You can create something that’s perfectly consistent and perfectly portioned.”
There are even a new batch of delivery-only concepts aiming at this intersection of insatiable demand for both delivery and value. Orbital Kitchens brags that it can deliver 7.5 orders per hour, double what third-party platforms can do with some simplified operations and automation.
Smart franchise operators are going deeper with the technology already at hand. And that continues to be a smart play.
Blaze Pizza, for one, just removed the guest checkout function in the company’s loyalty program. That means anyone ordering digitally is now a marketing target. “This has allowed us to put more money into outreach,” Casey Terrell, chief marketing officer at Blaze, told FT sibling publication Food On Demand.
This year at RFDC, here are the three things I would seriously look for:
1) AI with real value. I think we’re all sick of big promises, but there are some real AI solutions. Anything that replaces a close look at a spreadsheet is likely to work and provide value. Replacing people, we’re still not there.
2) Modular automation. There are a lot of gizmos out there and overly engineered pipe dreams. But little things like portioning, measuring and monitoring continue to improve and are cost-effective ways to save minutes and margins here and there.
3) The next step for your loyalty. This segment keeps evolving at a rapid pace because it can provide real value. Find what might keep your people closer.
Nicholas Upton has reported on retail and restaurant technology for more than a decade. His Tech Stack column aims to distill complex ideas into actionable insights. Send interesting tech topics to [email protected].