Beverages driving revenue, the rising importance of the post-ability of menu items and consumers’ shifting approach to value meals — these were a few of the trends shaping discussion at the 2026 National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago last weekend.
The National Restaurant Association Show ran May 16–19 at McCormick Place in Chicago.
Three experts from various nooks of the restaurant industry — David Henkes, senior principal at food-and-beverage-focused research firm Technomic; Khara Mangiduyos, co-founder of single location Hawaiian eatery Kalei’s Kitchenette; and Marcus Viscidi, vice president of enterprise sales at Informa Connect Food Service Group — gathered for a panel at the onset of the NRA Show, May 16, to break down those trends and share insight into their broader impact on the way consumers seek food.
Betting on beverages
Caitlin Rodgers, session moderator and senior director of marketing at Informa, highlighted the importance of beverages as a revenue driver for restaurants, noting that drinks are the leading margin engine for many operators today.
“It’s becoming not just a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have now with a lot of people,” Rodgers said.
Henkes, who leads Technomic’s beverage insight program, echoed that sentiment, calling beverages the “innovation battleground of the foodservice industry.”
“It’s not really all beverages, it’s cold beverages,” Henkes said. “Hot beverages — coffee, cocoa, things like that — (are) pretty flat. All the excitement is in cold beverages, not just all cold beverages, it’s refreshers, it’s dirty sodas, it’s energy lemonades, things like that — things that are colorful (and) Instagrammable, that appeal to the younger consumers.”
Henkes noted that the value of beverages for operators is evident in many of the fastest-growing restaurant chains —Dutch Bros, 7 Brew Coffee, Swig, etc. — all of which have a distinct beverage focus. As traditional meal occasions decline, he said, many consumers have filled that gap with beverage occasions.
Nonalcoholic beverage sales are up globally and set to continue skyrocketing, according to stats included in the presentation. The refresher market alone is expected to see 130 percent growth over the next four years.
While the push for beverages is enticing for many operators, Viscidi noted that such menu items aren’t typically seamless additions to menus.
“Implementing a beverage program is difficult; it’s not just something you can just turn on,” Viscidi said. “So, from a supplier perspective, they’ve got to make it easy on the front end, so that the employees that are implementing this program can serve it.”
The growing taste for social media-worthiness
Today’s consumer not only eats with their eyes; the social media-ability of menu items has been shown to influence their ordering decisions.
For the Gen Z and Millennials crowd, 78 percent of consumers consider a restaurant’s suitability for Instagram or TikTok when deciding where to eat.
Mangiduyos said social media certainly impacts the success of restaurants, but, on the other side of that relationship, she speculated that consumers’ inherent desire to appreciate food visually played into the overall success of today’s popular platforms.
“I feel like that’s why Instagram got so popular, because we wanted to see and experience when we’re about to make a purchase,” Mangiduyos said. … “We wanted to make sure that when we make a decision, when I give that dollar to the business, (that) I really made a full round decision, and that part of it is doing the research: looking at reviews, looking at videos, looking at pictures. For Kalei’s Kitchenette, I think our followers, viewers and customers really like to see her behind the scenes, making the food, and of course, just like literally zooming in.”
Reevaluating value
Gone are the days when value simply meant dollar menus and meal combos. The definition of value for diners is now a much more complex formula consisting of price, of course, but also quality, experience and convenience.
“When we run surveys, for all the talk about value, still the number one driver for restaurant visits is craveable tastes good,” Henkes said. “That is 100 percent what consumers want, and obviously they want it in a value-oriented equation where they feel they’re getting their money’s worth.”
Henkes said 80 percent of consumers report “overall value for money” as their top priority for limited-service restaurants, and 79 percent express the same sentiment for full-service operations. Similarly, 58 percent of American diners say that buy-one-get-one promotions and limited-time offers incentivize them to eat out more often, which provides particular benefits for such promotions at a time when 37 percent of Americans are eating out less frequently than a year ago.
“Consumers have a lot of options,” Viscidi said. “What operators really need to lean into is making it as frictionless as possible. We have operators and suppliers that are trying to reward and incentivize guests, but also make it easy, so you don’t have to find your credit card and look for your loyalty numbers.”
Global trends to keep an eye on
“Global flavors” have expanded beyond the niche, according to the panelists. Now, they are expected by today’s consumers, especially younger guests with larger appetites for bold, adventurous dishes influenced, among other things, by social media trends.
“It’s not just found in specialty restaurants, but you find it in menus, and so a lot of these things that 10 or 15 years ago we saw sort of at the very beginning of a menu life cycle are now sort of in the mainstream,” Henkes said, referencing offerings like boba tea and Thai dishes. “So, the next thing we’re watching are sort of these hyper regional, primarily Asian and Latin American (specialties) … I think Indian food is probably the next big one to pop as well.”
Research shared during the presentation covered food trends taking shape around the globe, including ostrich meat in Japan, corn mile and avocado coffee in Vietnam, frog legs in China, Pambazo sandwiches and mole in Mexico, Macarona almonds in Spain, and Chimichurri in Latin America.
