Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Great! Now add the event to your calendar:
Google Calendar
Apple / ICS
Outlook.com
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft 365
Yahoo
MIDYEAR RECAP

Halftime

5 events, 78 days, 353 executives. Not everything went perfectly, but we got sharper and stayed focused on creating value for both attendees and clients. Here’s what the first half of 2026 taught us. (8 min read)

To our community,

‍

The first half of 2026 reinforced a clear theme from operators and partners: their time is best spent in forthright, practical discussions grounded in real challenges.

‍

Since March, we’ve hosted five executive gatherings in Phoenix, Dallas and Chicago with leaders in restaurant operations, finance, technology and executive leadership. We also introduced regional forums, leadership workshops and operator-led working sessions.

‍

The formats varied, but the purpose stayed the same: make the time more useful, more candid and more focused on real operating challenges.

‍

The strongest feedback was also the simplest: less presentation, more discussion. Operators wanted to hear from peers facing similar challenges, and they wanted technology partners to be active contributors to the conversation, not spectators to it.

‍

That approach is resonating. More than 90% of our 2025 partners returned this year, and operator participation continues to grow.

‍

Across the sessions, AI remained the most discussed topic. But the deeper theme was simplification. Leaders want AI, loyalty and data to improve guest experience and operations without creating more complexity. They are also taking a closer look at their tech stacks, with an emphasis on integration, flexibility and getting more value from what they already have.

‍

We didn’t come from the events industry. We started 858 because operators and technology partners needed a better way to interact, one that is more direct, more useful and more grounded in real operating challenges.

‍

Thank you for being part of 858. We’re grateful for your trust and hope to see you at one of our five events later this year.

‍

  • 858 x CREATE: Register Now (July 20-22) ->
  • NEST CIO Summit: Pre-register Now (September 23) ->
  • NEST Atlanta Chapter Gathering: Pre-register Now (October 15) ->
  • 858 CFO Summit: Pre-register Now (November 8) ->
  • 858 SoCal Field Trip & Holiday Party: Pre-register Now (December 3) ->
Marty Hahnfeld's signature

Marty Hahnfeld

Juan George's signature

Juan George

858 Market Insights: Shifting Demand & AI Interest

858 led activations at five events in the first half of 2026: Olo Beyond4, Dallas NEST Chapter Gathering, Restaurant Leadership Conference, Food On Demand, and the All-NEST Conference at NRA.

‍

Across those five events, 858 brought together 353 senior executives from 172 restaurant brands representing more than 72,000 U.S. locations. More than half were C-suite leaders. The audience was anchored by technology and digital leaders at 31% and chief executives at another 31%, with the remainder spanning marketing, finance, and operations.

‍

We put one question to restaurant brand executives: What technology are you prioritizing or evaluating in 2026?

Chart of executive priorities shows Loyalty CRM first at 37.7%, with shifts in focus from Feb to May 2026.

Four things the data makes clear:

  • The guest relationship is the center of gravity. Loyalty, CRM, and guest data were the most-named priorities overall at 37.7% and the number-one theme at every event, peaking at 54% with the senior-executive crowd at the All-NEST Conference in May. Before operators invest anywhere else, they want to own the guest relationship and the data behind it.
  • Consolidation is the other constant. Tech strategy and stack rationalization held roughly 20 to 29% of executives at every event. Operators want fewer, better-integrated systems, and partners who shrink overall spending rather than adding to it.
  • Off-premise economics and AI are converging. At the off-premise focused Food On Demand event, first-party ordering led at 35% with third-party delivery right behind at 30%. Paired with at-capacity demand for the 858 AI Summit at RLC, the signal is unambiguous.
  • The 2026 AI conversation is about business impact. Few have figured it out, and that’s OK. What operators are wrestling with is organizational: leaders going first, teams given permission to fail, and a shift from making operations incrementally better to rethinking what the business is built to do.

‍

Roles differ in a way worth noting: Marketing lives almost entirely in the guest stack (65% loyalty/CRM/data, 40% first-party ordering & web); Technology focuses on the POS/payments rails and overall architecture rationalization; Finance owns the back office and the ROI lens, and is the function most likely to decide whether a technology investment survives the budget.

858 Workshops

How to Win the Next 3 Years with AI

We hosted 75 of the most senior operators at the Restaurant Leadership Conference in small groups. They did not stay on software for long. One table named the leadership trait nobody had said out loud: adopting a beginner’s mindset means setting aside the self-worth tied to years of knowing how things work. The obstacle was never the tools. High-performing restaurant teams are not built for public failure the way software teams are, and closing that gap starts with leaders going first.

‍

The session flattened the usual divide too. Operators studied where technology partners were further along, partners learned the problem from the operator’s side of the counter, and the line between buyer and builder thinned. The reframe on jobs was just as direct: not adopting may be the greater risk, and the leaders who carry their organizations through the next three years are building the habit now.

‍

The line that traveled furthest: “We want AI to happen with us, not to us.” Every attendee left with a personalized AI synthesis from their own table, concrete enough to forward to their team before they got home.

‍

‍

Are You Building a Guest-Facing Stack?

We put one blunt question to 75 C-level executives from the NEST community: on a scale of one to four, where does your guest data actually stand? The average self-assessed score landed around two. The brands pulling ahead are not the ones with the most data, but the ones who made theirs usable. As one technology chief at a data-mature brand put it, “We’re data drunk right now.” The charge was simple: your data is yours, keep ownership of it, and make it usable now, because agentic ordering is coming and will reward only the brands that are ready.

‍

‍

Off-Premise Executive Leadership Workshop

100 of the industry’s top off-premise executives, a group running 41,500 locations, sorted their own priorities before the talking started, placing stickers on the topics they most wanted to discuss. First-party growth led at 31%, third-party economics followed at 25%, together 56% of all placements.

‍

The takeaway they gave themselves was more nuanced than “go direct.” We’ve moved past the channel debate to the math underneath it. Consumer preference will always dictate where brands put their resources, and the operators pulling ahead are the ones who can read that preference order by order, then decide which demand is worth owning and which is worth paying for.

‍

Nobody left empty-handed. Every operator and partner walked out with at least one usable insight, drawn not from a stage but from the peer beside them.

First Half Event Recaps

Beyond4

March 2–4 | Arizona Biltmore, Phoenix | We went back to where it all started. 858 partnered with Olo to thoughtfully fold technology partners into its annual customer conference. Olo’s platform relies on a strong ecosystem, where partners help drive the next wave of innovation. From more than 400 partners, 858 and Olo brought ten of the most strategic to Beyond4, and all ten said they would return next year. "Not once did it feel like a sales pitch," one attendee wrote afterward, "a big shift from many other industry events."

‍

NEST Dallas Chapter Gathering

March 26 | CEC Entertainment HQ, Dallas | 858 and NEST launched the inaugural Chapter Gathering with fifty brand executives from emerging to enterprise, grouped by scale and complexity. The conversation went where conferences rarely do: loyalty discounts training guests to wait, data abundant but unusable, AI working only where hospitality came first. Candid, commercially grounded, and overdue. Attendees called it business therapy. "Iron sharpens iron," one executive wrote afterward.
Read the Dallas recap ->

‍

858 House, AI Summit + C-Suite Luncheon at RLC

April 20–22 | JW Marriott Desert Ridge, Phoenix | 858 returned to Phoenix for the 25th Restaurant Leadership Conference with three activations. At the 858 AI Summit, superforecaster Brian Solis pushed 75 C-suite executives past AI hype toward reinvention. Steps from registration, 858 House debuted as a private lounge where clients and brand executives connected away from the show floor. And the second annual NEST C-Suite Luncheon seated 125 executives by shared challenge. "The best use of my time at RLC," one CEO said.
Read the RLC recap ->

‍

Food On Demand Off-Premise Executive Leadership Luncheon

May 5 | Renaissance Dallas Addison, Dallas | 858 headed back to Dallas for the inaugural Off-Premise Executive Leadership Luncheon at Food on Demand. One hundred senior off-premise operators, ninety minutes, no panels, no presentations, just an intentional seating plan and a guided workshop on where off-premise attention actually sits: first-party growth and third-party economics. Competitors traded notes by the end. As one operator put it, "I didn't want our conversation to end."
Read the Food On Demand recap ->

‍

All NEST Conference

May 15 | VenueSix10, Chicago | On the eve of the NRA Show, 858 and NEST brought the Chapter Gathering to Chicago for seventy five restaurant brand executives. An operator-only kickoff, Bird Circle peer sessions on guest data, and a Technomic consumer read led into a fireside with Lettuce Entertain You CEO, RJ Melman, moderated by Jonathan Maze. As one operator put it: "The most useful and informative conference I have been to in 10 years."
Read the Chicago recap ->