Join NCR & Clients as we explore how to go beyond loyalty programs and harness the power of data and AI to create relevant experiences for all customers. Discover strategies to leverage customer data effectively, enabling you to deliver personalized messaging, offers, and experiences that resonate with each individual. Don't miss this opportunity to learn how to enhance customer engagement and drive meaningful connections that lead to brand relevance beyond your current loyalty sphere. 

In the fast-paced world of restaurants, success hinges on more than just culinary delights and impeccable service. It’s about making informed decisions that drive growth, ensure operational efficiency, and create unforgettable experiences for customers. The secret ingredient? Data. Dive deep into why restaurant data is indispensable to your restaurant business. Learn the power of data-driven insights and how they directly impact your restaurant’s bottom line through hidden opportunities, identifying emerging trends, and accurately anticipating customer needs. From providing a personalized digital ordering experience to driving customer loyalty with automated marketing campaigns and leveraging customer analytics, data holds the key to turning your restaurant into a revenue-generating and guest-retaining business.

Please join us as we discuss innovation, investment, long and short-term value, and the factors making merchants hesitant to upgrade their legacy POS and PMS systems in 2023.

With the speed of change in the industry, restaurants face a range of new challenges that make managing day-to-day profitability, brand standards, and the overall customer experience across locations more difficult than ever before. Join us to hear how top restaurant chains navigate these challenges and put themselves into a position to grow and succeed in today’s complex environment. Our prestigious panel of technology leaders will share the best practices their organizations are using right now to compete consistently and profitably, from ensuring quality team execution and training to managing the two most impactful costs to the business–food and labor–all while managing the proliferation of technology in their organizations.

Your restaurant’s tip management policy has major implications — from employee satisfaction to compliance issues to your bottom line. In this session, our panelists will share best practices for developing an efficient, legal, and scalable tip distribution policy that sets you up for success in 2024 — and makes for happier employees, too. The discussion will cover:

- Common tip distribution methods 
- The benefits of tip pooling and sharing (and the risks of getting it "wrong")
- What your employees really think about your tip distribution policy
- Considerations around “going cashless" 
- Leveraging technology to optimize your processes

Why is it essential and crucial for these two leaders to have a symbiotic relationship in today’s market? With technology innovation leading the charge in the front and back of the house, the CIO/CTO has come a long way from behind the scenes to a permeant seat at the table. Hear from different operators and their leadership team on how they fluidly work together toward the success of their business and navigate new advances that are captivating the industry's attention! 

In this focus group style session, a mixed group of Generations from Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and more share the stage and their candid thoughts on new menu items, LTOs, Drive-Thru automation, and everything in between! Don't miss the opportunity to get inside the minds of these customers! 

Delivering a great guest experience takes products and solutions that are tightly integrated to work better together. It is time to revolutionize your approach by leveraging solutions that are designed to work together.

Join us as we share how our “Better-Together” Solutions deliver an unparalleled guest experience. From our One Tap Loyalty solution for the Apple Wallet to our Menu + Punchh integration, you’ll learn how we can give a boost to entire operation by driving an increase in active users, maximizing customer engagement, and driving an overall seamless experience across all channels.

Join SpotOn for an engaging discussion that uncovers the evolving landscape of the restaurant employee experience. Discover the strategies and best practices to keep your team motivated, engaged, and satisfied while effectively managing costs and ensuring compliance. During this session, you’ll gain invaluable insights into the latest industry trends, innovative tools, and proven techniques Trey Dyer of Mesero Group and Jonathan Gillespie of Adalina are using to enhance employee retention, productivity, and overall satisfaction. Don't miss out on this opportunity to create a culture that fosters success, reduces turnover, and maximizes your restaurant's potential.

Poor internet or cloud outages hinder a restaurant's ability to sync orders across devices such as Point of Sale, Kitchen Display System, and mobile devices, stalling all sales and upsetting customers and employees alike. Our presentation takes an in-depth look into how we built a completely cloud-optional point-of-sale system that requires no network hardware and operates independently of an internet connection. This provides more resilience to outages and enhanced speed ensuring workers can always provide the highest quality service regardless of in-store connectivity. By moving key operational data between team members and devices quickly, seamlessly, and with no round trips to central services, your business can bring true computational power to the edge.

Soaring labor costs coupled with staffing shortages. Supply chain issues on top of inflation. This is the new normal restaurants must overcome to achieve sustained profitability. With the right strategies in place, these challenges are the perfect opportunity to automate hiring, scheduling, and inventory decisions to drastically reduce labor and inventory costs. 

Join Fourth and its customers for an active discussion on how these brands improved forecasting accuracy, utilized real-time labor target attainment, and gained above store visibility into operational KPIs to drive down food waste and reduce labor budgets. 

With all of the economic pressures facing consumers today, successful brands are winning by driving additional visits from both new and existing guests. Join this lively panel discussion and hear brand leaders share how they are using customer data, CDPs, and other marketing technologies to drive frequency, grow brand loyalty, acquire new guests faster, and increase customer lifetime value. 

This FSTEC panel discussion, "Scaling Voice AI in Quick-Service Restaurants," will delve into the unexplored potential of scalable AI and voice recognition technology. With a focus on enhancing drive-thru ordering across multiple location. Industry experts will explore why scalability is the hidden secret of voice AI for QSRs. They will discuss how to build ROI, the importance of customization, the current challenges in accuracy, and why many existing market solutions fall short. Join the conversation and discover the future of QSR technology.

Hear industry veterans speak to the experiences, techniques, and tools used to drive value and business outcomes by reimagining the guest experience and loyalty leading to increased same store sales. This panel will explore how to improve speed to market and deliver desired value to guests across the dimensions of convenience, service, and experience by working in collaboration with IT and brand operations. The panel will also explore the importance of defining the new team member journeys in conjunction with new guest journey and delivery channels for seamless delivery to delight guests.

Be a part of our “live audience” for a special interactive panel in the spirit of the price is right! We’ll be engaging the audience in real time, as attendees guess operators’ most pressing challenges and dive into the solutions that are solving these common pain points. Will you be able to “Pick a Pair”, “Pass the Buck” or guess the “Price Tag” without going over? You’ll have to join us to find out! You won’t want to miss this fun, yet informative panel. 

Meeting the needs of Millennial and Gen Z digital natives is increasing the complexity of restaurant operations. They want convenience and seamlessness in every dining experience. In addition, labor challenges are driving the need to improve operational efficiency. This discussion will show how Carlisle Restaurant Group's (Wendy's) deploys innovative technologies to improve their operations. Join us to learn creative ways to infuse innovation into your business.

With 122 US locations, Bonchon, the global restaurant brand known for its signature Korean Fried Chicken, boasts a record of consecutive years of sales growth and they plan to open 30 new restaurants in the US in 2023. So, what’s the recipe for success? The short answer — using technology to empower their frontline leaders and franchisees.
In this session, Ashley Helkenn, Director of Training at Bonchon, will share how they leverage technology to better support franchisees and their leaders to focus on restaurant profitability. She will also talk about the challenges Bonchon experienced while scaling and how technology has helped them streamline communications, standardize processes and improve operational results.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have transformed enterprises globally, and the restaurant industry is no exception. Join us as we delve into the possibilities of cloud-based AI/ML solutions, reshaping restaurant operations, elevating customer experiences, and driving sustainable growth.

Through compelling real-life case studies, we’ll showcase how restaurants leverage cloud-powered AI/ML to optimize supply chain management, demand forecasting, and customer service. Stay ahead in the ever-evolving industry by harnessing the transformative power of data and AI-driven decision-making.

Explore the latest tools in next generation online food ordering and delivery that can help create more visibility for your business and boost sales. Learn how you can transform your restaurant’s delivery ecosystem by putting you in control to own your customer data, lower fees, and create a more seamless and superior customer experience.

Now that most restaurant brands are taking steps to navigate a growing percentage of digital orders, they must tackle the next challenge: creating and delivering hyper-personalized guest experiences that convert. Unlocking your data is key to a deeper understanding of your guests, and connecting in ways that increase loyalty.

In this panel discussion, you’ll learn more about: 

- How personalization fosters guest satisfaction, loyalty, and brand growth
- The business and guest benefits surrounding personalization 
- Tips to help identify the next right step in your brand’s digital journey toward creating guest experiences that convert

This lightning round hot seat style session will feature top restaurant leaders who will address some engaging questions about how they are changing the food service game (for the better) by using technology to their advantage breaking industry norms to create innovative solutions to combat issues- from supply chain challenges, staffing shortages, 3rd party delivery and more. Each mini one-on-one interview will provide insightful business practices, leadership advice, and unique stories about their innovative path to success.

With a difficult economy still perpetuating labor shortages, supply-chain challenges, rising costs and a shrinking profit margin, brands need to retain customers with an unparalleled guest experience while maintaining the ability to scale and grow their business. Hear from a panel of top operators about why building a modern integrated tech stack is a key driver to cultivating engaged employees and loyal superfans.  Learn how to tailor your focus toward delivering personalized customer interactions and transforming operational efficiencies when unified commerce is done right!   

Reinvention is at the core of Apolo Anton Ohno, the eight-time Olympic medalist and the most decorated U.S. Winter Olympian in history. He acquired and honed this skill over a decade of Olympic speed skating competition and continually adapts that performance mindset to support his ongoing personal and professional growth. He has drawn on this acumen to become a global cross-industry entrepreneur, a successful sports broadcaster, a television personality, New York Times best-selling author, and a lifelong scholar inside and outside the university setting. Apolo harnesses these experiences to educate and inspire global organizations on fostering a sustained leadership mindset needed to overcome current business challenges for success!

Apolo Ohno joins us in the FSTEC Marketplace for a meet and greet from 1:00pm - 1:45pm.  

Explore technology adoption from the perspective of franchisors and franchisees! This session delves into the concept of Friction vs. Focus and will examine the best practices that can be employed to negate negative responses to tech pushbacks such as fees, charges, or change. We'll dive deep into the challenges of introducing new technologies and how they can be overcome to maximize the benefits of technology adoption.

Rich Shank from Technomic takes us on a data-driven session exploring the current and evolving landscape of restaurant technology trends. This session is packed with up-to-date data and research from recent studies

Is Texas an incubator for Restaurant Tech Innovation?  Hear from some of the hottest Texas-based operators who are using new technologies to their operational advantage to gain national recognition! In this two-part session, we will lean into audience participation to help kick things off.    

(Part 1) Game Show- Texas Trivia- with Host Rev Ciancio
Get ready to have some fun!  A Panel of Operator Leaders will be put to the test, and our audience will help vote who knows the Lone Star State the best!  

(Part 2) Industry Innovation Discussion- Moderated by Emily Knight, CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association
From labor efficiencies to growth strategies, these Texas-based operators are putting technology at the forefront of their business.  Learn what new developments might be coming down the pipeline.