National Restaurant Association

Part 1: Cool technologies at the NRA Show 2026

Editor Mandy Wolf Detwiler spent time in the tech pavilion at the National Restaurant Association Show.

Photo: National Restaurant Association

May 22, 2026 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Connect Media

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Editor Note: This is part one of a two-part series.

I attended the first two days of this year's National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago this week. In truth, I could have spent a month and not seen everything. The show floors are massive and ripe with foods, drinks, tableware, equipment, aprons and coats, dinnerware, competitions, education and so much more.

I walked the aisles, paying close attention to the technology pavilion to check out what vendor tech is available to restaurants today.

Agentic scheduling for multi-unit operators

Sona, a scheduling software for multi-site restaurant operators, allows restaurateurs to plug the labor leak, according to Ellie Lister, growth lead for the company.

Lister said labor is the biggest concern for restaurants and can comprise 25-40% of revenue. Multi-site operators, with different restaurants and different general managers, are typically managing each location in different ways.

"How we do that is we get a really accurate picture of their forecast to a granular level of their site," Lister said. "So, how many pizzas are they going to sell (at) 2 p.m. on a Tuesday in their Texas site? We get a really accurate picture of that, and then we auto-schedule their staff to match that demand. The value is that you're not overstaffing, which obviously overstaffing is a massive cost."

AI-powered auto-scheduling helps give operators an accurate labor forecast taking into account labor rules and can reduce errors.

While Sona is relatively new in the market, other competitors are layering on AI to their proprietary software, "and that's clunky," Lister said. "It's not genuinely from first principles thinking about how you're going to leverage that then it's not going to really work. Whereas we pioneered that, and our entire system is AI, genuinely agentic."

Review management platforms

Momos Guest AI is an AI-powered customer engagement platform. The company brings in all digital channels for the unified voice of the customer platform. That includes reviews from Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, third-party delivery services, internal surveys, "Contact Us" forms and social media.

"Really every single way that a customer's going to be engaging with the brand, we're going to bring all into our unified inbox. So rather than everything being so siloed and segmented, we're actually able to engage with our customers, understand what's going on, their entire lifecycle and really allow us as the business to really put effort into those customers," said Jed Rutsein, a spokesperson for the brand.

Momos can escalate a one-star review on Google to the appropriate party and make sure that one poor experience isn't shaping the entire identity of a brand. And once that data goes through POS systems and review sites, "we're able to show total spend history, that customer's favorite item, how many times they're in a week, really everything about this customer through a customer data profile and really be like, hey, who is this customer? What do they love? When's the last time they've been in? And really give the brand a holistic view straight from that unified inbox."

An order pickup system from Apex Order Pickup Solutions. Photo: Mandy Wolf Detwiler

Sound for the modern restaurant

Kurt Oleson, COO and co-owner of Custom Channels, explained restaurants need to consider the music they play in their dining rooms and have to determine if they have the rights to the music. Simply playing Pandora or Spotify over the loudspeakers may not be a great idea — or even legal, said Oleson.

Custom Channels offers playlist curation, management and centralized control. The company has built its music service and has access to every song in the world.

"We cover blanket licensing for every major pro in the U.S. and Canada and other countries abroad," Oleson said. "And we give customers the tools to do music curation themselves, as well as consult and help provide a music concierge support services. So, really developing a brand sound and giving centralized control and deployment access to multi-location operators."

The company has been in the music industry for more than 30 years. It began offering music to brands 25 years ago and started in high-end online sonic branding. It evolved into the in-store model as one of the first to bring music streaming to the commercial space, now covering brands like Whole Foods, Mod Pizza and Cava.

"The most compelling thing that our current customers are using today is our messaging and promotional features because we've developed a messaging platform to play between songs that can tie in with loyalty services, POS data, all through an open API to help you target when you should play certain messages and increase sales, increase loyalty signups," Oleson said.

He recommends music rights compliance, as "licensing is no joke." He also recommends that restaurant operators don't think of music as a vanity vendor when it's an important part of the IT decision in house.

Order up!

Apex Order Pickup Solutions provide pickup boxes for guests and third-party delivery drivers.

The result is faster handoff, higher throughput, a consistent guest experience and labor savings.

"So, you think about the way the way restaurants have changed over the last couple of years," said Ashley McNamara, vice president of marketing. "There's lots of mobile ordering, lots of off-premise. So it's a lot of, 'I'm going to order on my mobile app, I'm going to order for delivery,' and all those orders on top of the stuff they're getting in the restaurant. So it's automating that process of getting those out as quickly as possible and being able to give your, um, your digital guest a really good experience."

The pickup solution is a good option for QSRs and fast casuals, as well as colleges and universities, airports, casinos and cinemas as it can be built directly into a restaurant.

Check out Part 2 next week in QSRweb and Pizza Marketplace.

About Mandy Wolf Detwiler

Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the Pizzamarketplace.com and QSRweb.com editor for Connect Media. An award-winning journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and, yes, she can tell you where to find the best pizza slices in the country.

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