Press Release

What the 2026 National Restaurant Association Show Told Us About the Future of Restaurants

The 2026 National Restaurant Association Show made one thing clear: operators are no longer asking whether kitchen automation works. They are asking how fast they can deploy it. With QSR turnover at 144% annually, the operators building technology-enabled kitchens today are pulling ahead. The gap is already visible and widening.

Photo: Miso Robotics

May 27, 2026

Something felt different on the floor at McCormick Place this year. The National Restaurant Association Show has always been a bellwether for where the restaurant industry is heading, but 2026 stood out. Operators were not stopping at automation booths to ask whether the technology is real. They were asking how fast they could get it in their kitchens. That is a meaningful shift, and the industry should pay attention to what it signals.

"The conversations at the National Restaurant Association Show were the most operationally specific we have ever had at a trade show," said Bruce Friedman, Chief Revenue Officer at Miso Robotics. "Operators are not evaluating the concept anymore. They are evaluating the partner and the timeline."

That urgency makes sense. QSR labor turnover has hit 144% annually, and fry stations now cost operators $86,000 in annual losses when left to the same broken hiring cycle. The operators who stood out in Chicago were the ones who had stopped treating this as a staffing problem and started building around it operationally. The newest generation of Flippy fry station technology can deliver over $75,000 in annual new profits per location through reduced labor costs, increased throughput, and elimination of fry station injuries. Those are the numbers operators were doing the math on in real time on the show floor. The gap between operators who are building technology-enabled kitchens and those who are not is already visible. Every quarter it widens.

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Miso

Restaurant AI

Miso Robotics delivers AI automation for restaurants and hospitality. Flippy automates the fry station, reducing labor dependency with consistent execution at twice the throughput of manual operations. Zippy is your employee revenue engine, turning frontline performance into measurable business outcomes in real time.

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