This candid, fast-paced session reveals the five habits of non-obvious thinkers and will show you how to apply them to understanding and preparing for the future of restaurants and technology. In this signature keynote from award winning and "non-boring" trend expert Rohit Bhargava, you will understand how the fundamental forces of disruption are shifting consumer behavior and beliefs, and what this means for the future of the restaurant industry. Through engaging stories from inside and outside the restaurant and foodservices space, this keynote will help you see the world differently and use trends to prepare for a future by seeing what others miss.

Restaurant ordering and payment is becoming something of a one-way street these days. The rise of things like QR codes, self-service kiosks and even artificial intelligence means guests are handling more of the process themselves, which has implications for restaurant labor, operations, and marketing. In this session, you’ll hear from leading operator experts about the benefits and challenges of this technology as well as what’s next for ordering and payment.

This exciting quick-fire lighting round will put some of the industry’s most innovative restaurant leaders in the hot seat! You’ll hear from CEOs of emerging brands to some of the clever concepts who are making waves and poised to become the next big chain!

Is your job as a restaurant leader easier or harder than it was 5 years ago? Today’s operators are overwhelmed with a multitude of systems and applications that lack the intelligence to solve for the needs of the brand as a whole. You’re combatting staffing shortages, supply chain issues, increased competition in the market, and a host of other challenges. There is simply no time to fight with systems that don’t work together to tell you what you need to know to serve your guests. Unified commerce is changing the way brands operate--from ordering to fulfillment and beyond--creating a better experience for guests and easing operational pain. Join this session to hear from a panel of restaurant innovators as they share firsthand how they are taking back their tech stacks.

Charting a course to the “Final Frontier” of foodservice technology considers the possible, envisions the future, and revisits past ideas that emerged before their time. As the Founder of FSTEC and the IFBTA, Rob Grimes is the leading industry TechNovator, influencing the innovative technologies supporting foodservice operations. A restaurant manager who happens to be in technology, Rob has spent his career serving the foodservice industry, navigating the constantly changing technology landscape and serving as the GPS to put it all together. Technology is now the Center of the Plate, and you can fall behind in the blink of an eye. Rob will share examples that will get you thinking, while supporting the vision of the future and the technology roadmap to Destination Foodservice.

The Experience Economy is upon us, and customer expectations are rising exponentially.  While hyper-personalization may be the current buzz, Brands primarily need to be consistent and reliable in the experiences they deliver.  However, customers are anything but consistent; their needs and wants change with their hectic lifestyles.  As such, Brands must know their customer at a deeper level than simply as a segment or a persona.  They need to understand the customer’s mindset along every step of the journey.

Join us for a conversation focused on getting the most out of restaurant automation to improve operational efficiencies and manage labor challenges.

Join an informative and interactive panel with leading restaurant brand leaders on a panel to discuss challenges, innovations, and best practices in drive-thru, curbside and off-premises services to enhance the guest experience, secure employees, and decrease operational complexity. 

Restaurateurs like Michael Mina and Matthew Kenney are turning to a consolidated labor management system to easily manage their teams, save time and money, and improve the employee experience. Working with SpotOn, restaurant groups are streamlining employee scheduling, communication, and payout, while ensuring compliance. 

Whether you’re a general manager of a growing restaurant brand or the Head of People Operations for an established, multi-location group, find out how you can cut hours of admin out of your day and better retain staff with simple scheduling, automated tip distribution,and payroll preparation.

Join us for a lively discussion among senior food service technology and information executives to hear about what some of the most progressive brands in food service are working toward – and working against – in order to meet the challenges of the post-pandemic marketplace.

This real-world conversation is designed to give you a behind-the-scenes view of what modern food service CIOs are up to and why. The panel will be discussing topics such as:

• Legacy management and smashing silos
• Optimizing resources and changing cultures
• Building better customer UX (without blowing the budget)
• Protecting data and reputation

Improving the guest experience is a broadly-held goal for restaurants today, but actually achieving it can prove to be a challenge. Join these industry leaders in a lively panel discussion around customer data, CDP’s, loyalty, and other solutions that are driving results for their brands.

Running your restaurant business on dedicated devices is not always easy - especially managing your devices across multiple locations. There are so many moving targets - and delaying or failing to implement digital transformation projects can be costly. With so many options and an extremely complex vendor landscape, Esper works with many hardware manufacturers and ISV’s to offer you a full stack solution. Whether this is to deploy an out-of-box experience, manage applications, our custom operating system, Esper offers you an end-to-end solution with full support.

With Esper, you can create purpose-built solutions across your operations that are optimized for creating an enhanced restaurant experience for your customer. Join Esper to learn more and hear from restaurant leaders as they share how they are taking full control of their dedicated devices.

The global mobile payment market is estimated to be worth $4.23 trillion in 2022 and is expected to reach $15.75 trillion by 2027. Is your business equipped to meet demand?

In this forum, we’ll discuss new research findings on consumer preferences for mobile payments at quick-serve/fast casual restaurants. Will explore factors that influence the choice of how to pay, which platforms are used most, and how to provide mobile payment services to meet consumer expectations.

For most restaurant operators, collecting enough data isn’t a problem. The real headache stems from knowing how to integrate all of the information from the POS, inventory, supply, payroll, and accounting platforms to provide a 360-degree view of operations. Join Marcus Wasdin, General Manager of PAR Data Central (formerly Restaurant Magic) for a candid discussion with Joe Tenczar, EVP & CIO Sonny’s BBQ and Co-Founder Restaurant CIO’s. You’ll walk away with views on back office and operational trends and areas to make your operations more efficient and cost effective so you can spend more time engaging with your guests.

Be a part of our “live audience” for a special interactive panel in the spirit of family feud! We’ll be surveying 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 guess the top answer on the board? You’ll have to join us to find out! You won’t want to miss this fun, yet informative panel. 

Most restaurants face challenges capturing and leveraging their guest data. We will discuss the data infrastructure needed to make guest data actionable and how to leverage AI effectively to help restaurants take back control of their guest journey with no manual intervention. This is a panel discussion with three of our active customers.

As labor shortages and rising costs continue to burden restaurant chains, operators are challenged more than ever to uncover new ways to maximize efficiency. While many brands have implemented technology into their front-of-house operations for this very reason, savvy operators are recognizing the benefits of streamlining back-of-house processes. Join A&W's, Owen Miller-White, and BOHA!'s Gaurav Bahri for a discussion on A&W's journey of digitizing and automating their back-of-house to improve labeling, safety, temping, consistency, employee training, and more.

How do you engineer a menu using industry proven data that excites and engages your customers while decreasing waste and increasing top line revenue? A successful dining experience starts with a well-planned menu designed to engage with the customer, increase conversions, all while decreasing pressure on the back of house staff. Studies show that a well-engineered menu can increase profitability for a restaurant up to 20% while providing valuable insights to leadership teams. However, in a recent survey 60% of all restaurants said they had not invested, time or money, in menu engineering and were unaware of the effect that it could have on their establishment. The primary reason for not tackling this challenge was simple intimidation of the task at hand. We will discuss how to drive customer engagement, increase check size without adding SKUs, and how to action order data to drive user growth and increase user data. Join us as we share some of the best kept secrets used by global brands to drive digital and sustainable on-premise order growth.

The impact and lingering effects of the pandemic have prompted professionals in our industry to take a fresh look at their operations. Focus Brands has risen to the recent challenges by leveraging tech solutions to change the way they address operational excellence. They have introduced a new approach to their operational assessments and restaurant partnerships. This innovation has benefited their brands in a variety of ways, from creating stronger partnerships with their franchises, while building cultures of collaboration, to reducing costs while increasing quality, and consistency. Join Focus Brands as we explore their exciting new approach to operational excellence.

The work that your teams do (or don’t do) in each of your restaurants every day is what makes or breaks success. In the midst of ongoing labor shortages, rising wages, supply chain disruptions and higher food costs, operations leaders today see ‘team execution’ as a key lever for both driving operational efficiency and ultimately meeting customer expectations. Join this discussion which will take a deep dive into the specific initiatives and technologies that operators are prioritizing to give them an edge in making store, field and HQ employees more productive and improving the quality of execution across every one of their locations.

Serving more than 50,000 restaurants, bars, wineries, and other venues, OpenTable will share its unique perspective on the latest national dining trends, guest behavior and spending patterns. More importantly, we will dive into different approaches, best practices and case studies to help you strategize how to handle the ever changing dining landscape.

Unification of operations through a seamlessly integrated solution across Front-of-House (FOH), Back-of-House (BOH) and Out-of-House (OOH)/ Integrations will now underpin every great organization focused on driving experience & efficiency to deliver profitable growth. An Agile Solution with an open API architecture is key to solving technology snarls and future-proofing enterprises.

Jim Vitek, VP,  Restaurant Technology Architecture for Yum! Brands, Dan Gertsacov, Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company and Ashish Tulsian, Founder of Restroworks, come together to discuss why the cloud must be part of every growth-oriented enterprise's strategic template and how frameworks could be evolved to secure a blueprint for the path forward.

The transition to Electric Vehicles is happening a lot faster than expected.  Rising gas prices have accelerated the demand for EVs, but where are all those EVs going to charge?  Over 1/3 of all EVs will have to charge publicly.  We’ll talk about why your parking lot is essential right now for the future of EVs.

In the coming years and even now, a restaurant’s success depends on the last leg of the order journey, i.e. getting the food from the restaurant to the customer in a fast, convenient, and affordable manner. The online food delivery market is projected to exceed $32 billion in 2024, and restaurant operators are now responding with an increased focus on omni-channel selling and online ordering. 

Deliverect’s General Manager for North America, Noah Hayes, takes over the stage at FSTEC to talk about the evolution of the delivery experience for operators, and how technology has, is and will play an important role in optimizing this integral leg of the order journey. A talk that will empower restaurants to control their delivery experience.

This session will be packed with some great intel, so make sure you do not miss out!

Kickfin will moderate a panel of executives from top-tier franchises, as well as the Senior Director of Global Visa Direct. Panelists will share the "hidden" costs of a traditional tip program — and how revamping their approach to tipping has improved recruiting and retention, cut labor costs, streamlined accounting, and reduced theft, human error, and compliance issues. Expect to walk away with best practices and actionable insights that you can immediately put to work within your own organizations!

Bonchon, the global restaurant brand known for its signature Korean Fried Chicken, has been experiencing stellar success. The brand is now operating 130 restaurants in the US, with a year-over-year sales increase of 12 percent, outperforming the industry average. To further this, Bonchon plans to grow by 20+ percent before the end of the year. So, what’s its recipe for success? Short answer — incorporating technology strategies to empower frontline workers as the company grows.

In this session, Estee Woods, Head of Product Marketing at YOOBIC, will sit down with Carrie Goff, VP of HR & Training, and Ashley Wright Helkenn, Director of Training at Bonchon, to discuss how they gain buy-in for technology to empower their team members as they scale. They will also talk about solving the challenges they are experiencing during rapid growth, including how to improve employee training, streamline communications, and standardized operational processes.  

Today’s rapidly changing guest expectations for convenience, service, and experience have fundamentally changed how restaurants operate. Subway wanted to reimagine its traditional approach to guest services, grow its digital presence, and examine what it takes to consistently deliver amazing, end-to-end guest experiences.

Join this session to learn how Subway successfully leveraged the latest digital technology to create simpler and more intuitive digital ordering experience with the same made-to-order experience as in-restaurant, and provide convenient delivery, curbside, and catering options. As one of the world’s largest restaurant brands, Subway® is on a continuous journey to improve all aspects of the brand, evolving from a development-focused to an experience-focused organization.    

Billy Beane strikes the parallels between baseball and business with his “Moneyball” philosophy. He is considered one of the most progressive and talented baseball executives in the game today, molding the Oakland Athletics into consistent winners since taking over as General Manager following the 1997 season. Beane shattered traditional MLB beliefs that big payrolls equated wins by implementing a statistical methodology that led the Oakland A’s, one of the worst teams in baseball with equally low payrolls, to six American League West Division Titles. In this session he will share his innovative, winning style of management and leadership to sustain an advantage in today’s competitive market.

In the last few years, technology has redefined restaurant experiences - from customer ease, frictionless experiences and back of house operations.  Hear from Brinker’s new CEO and his thoughts of what is here to stay, where things are going, and some important lessons learned!

The restaurant industry has historically been years, even decades, behind many other industries when it comes to technology. Robots? They’ve been doing jobs in manufacturing for decades. Loyalty programs? Airlines have had them forever. Customer data? Talk to hotels. But with demands for technology growing, restaurants have tapped these other industries for top executives to help them play catch-up. This session features three such executives, who offer their insights on what the future restaurant could look like.