EVENT RECAP

RLC 2026

858 returned to Phoenix for the 25th anniversary of the Restaurant Leadership Conference (RLC) with three activations. The 858 AI Summit: How to Win AI in the Next 3 Years brought Brian Solis, named one of the world's top superforecasters by Entrepreneur, to the desert for a morning of workshops with 75 C-suite executives. Steps from the RLC registration desk, 858's conference room transformed into the debut of 858 House, a private hospitality lounge for restaurant brand executives and 858 clients. On day two, 858 and NEST co-hosted the second annual C-Suite Luncheon, hosting 125 brand executives for an afternoon built around real conversation. Here's a look back.

Event overview

The 2026 Restaurant Leadership Conference celebrated the event's 25th anniversary. 858 hosted three activations across two days at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge in partnership with 10 clients and welcomed over 250 brand executives.

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How to Win AI in the Next 3 Years. On Monday, April 20, in partnership with ICR and The Elliot Group, 858 hosted three back-to-back, invite-only workshops. No panels. No presentations. No sponsor pitches. Just Brian Solis and 25 of the industry's top operators per session, in candid, facilitated conversation across four working tables. 75 executives attended across the three sessions with 10 client companies represented.

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858 House was born. Modeled after the American Express Centurion Lounge and Paddock Club at Formula 1, 858 House made its debut at RLC. One client executive took 11 back to back meetings across two days. Operators used the room to escape the badge-hunting AI sales reps who'd been emailing them all week. The hospitality matched the format: carved meats, sushi, and crab legs in the afternoons, with an espresso station run in partnership with Dutch Bros.

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858 x NEST C-Suite Luncheon: Year Two Delivered. The 2nd Annual NEST C-Suite Luncheon delivered on its core promise: 125 of the most senior brand executives at RLC, seated by shared business challenges, in a room built for conversation. The feedback that came back was direct and consistent: "a thoughtful and well-run luncheon, and genuinely one of the highlights of RLC." The tables did what they were designed to do.
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What executives valued most was what happens after lunch ends. The connections made across the room. The new relationships formed at the table. The standing offers to help going forward. That's the room 858 and NEST set out to build, and it's the room executives told us they want to be in again next year.

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Brian Solis

Named one of the "world's top superforecasters" by Entrepreneur and Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, Brian Solis opened each session with a reframe that cut through the usual AI conference noise: the problem isn't which tool to add. It's whether the organization is built for AI to run through it.

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"This is the first technological shift where I'm humbled," he told the room. "We're all navigating this without a playbook."

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He pushed operators to navigate the tension between optimization and reinvention. "Most leaders don't know what they don't know, so they lean on what they do know. Using AI to make things more efficient, to take costs out. Those are good things. But you can't get to reinvention through optimization. AI is a reinvention mechanism."

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The trait that enables that shift is the hardest for senior leaders to adopt. "In a beginner's mind, anything is possible. In the expert's mind, very few things are new or possible." For a room whose value comes from knowing how things work, it was meant to land hard.

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He framed the choice as automate and augment, not automate or augment. Automate to do yesterday's work faster. Augment to do what you couldn't do yesterday at all. The operators who commit to both build the advantage.

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Across all three sessions, he closed on the question most leaders skip: "When you free up time and resources with efficiency, what are you going to do differently with those resources? That's a competitive advantage."

What Brand Executives Said

Across three sessions and twelve tables, the conversations kept landing in the same places. Here's what the room said.

Reinvention, not optimization.

The tables that went deepest kept coming back to a harder reframe: the opportunity isn't making existing operations incrementally better, it's rethinking what the organization is built to do. One table named it directly as the leadership trait nobody had said out loud yet: adopting a beginner's mind means setting aside the self-worth tied to years of knowing how things work. That's a personal ask, not just a strategic one.

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The real work is organizational, not technological.

Table after table moved past the tool question quickly. The harder conversation was about what has to change internally before AI can actually work. Operators named it in different ways: enrolling people before execution, creating psychological safety to experiment and fail, carving out dedicated time for learning rather than stacking AI work on top of already-full plates. One table put it plainly: high-performing restaurant teams are not used to public failure the way software teams are, and that cultural gap is the real obstacle.

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Leaders have to go first.

The leadership beat came up in every session and kept resolving to the same place. Sponsoring AI from a distance is not enough. Leaders have to use the tools themselves, model the behavior, and make adoption non-negotiable from the top. One table framed it as a "control-alt-delete moment": owning change management explicitly and deciding how to reboot, rather than assuming the organization will catch up on its own.

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Nobody is ahead of where they think they should be.

That's the point. One of the more honest moments across the sessions was operators acknowledging that nobody in the room is fully figured out. The proficiency gap within single tables was as wide as the industry itself, from just getting started to fully embedded. That candor became useful. One table landed on a phrase that resonated beyond its table: "we want AI to happen with us, not to us." The prerequisite, across every group, was the same: data quality first, governance before scale, crap in still means crap out.

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The roles of the future belong to the people who integrate the tools now.

The fear of AI replacing jobs came up across multiple sessions. The tables didn't dismiss it. They reframed it: not embracing AI may itself be what puts those roles at risk. The operators who will lead their organizations through the next three years are the ones building the habit now, before the window closes.

Feedback & Learnings

We're proud of how RLC came together and grateful for the strong turnout. Here's what we heard and what we'll do differently next time.

The AI Summit format stood out.

Operators noticed the difference between what 858 is building and what most conferences offer. "It was a nice change of pace to the large one-way break-out sessions most conferences do," one CFO wrote after the event. "The way the groups were put together with a mixture of brands, roles, and vendors was well done and made it so that we got to know people we might not have otherwise interacted with." One CEO called it "the best use of their time at RLC."

Next Time: Add more networking time at the start and end. It was hard to get 10 people at a table to stop talking after 30 minutes. Noise was also an issue, so we'll either increase the size of the room or the reduce the number of concurrent sessions.

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Operators wanted more time with Brian.

The AI Summit generated strong enthusiasm and operators were left wanting more from Brian's framing specifically. The appetite is there.

Next Time: Build in more time for Brian's keynote within each session and add "office hours" where the speaker stays to answer Q&A directly.

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The 2nd Annual NEST Luncheon delivered again.

Seating based on common business challenges and potential solutions drove purposeful conversations. There were issues with some guests believing they had RSVP'd when they had not.

Next Time: We'll be back for Year 3 with a better host management solution to avoid RSVP and waitlist confusion. We'll shorten opening remarks to give operators more networking time.

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858 House was born.

An idea in JG’s mind since his first RLC 16 years ago came to life at RLC 2026. The lounge offered amenities and a space to connect. One client executive took 11 meetings over the course of two days, back to back. Many operators used it to escape the badge-hunting AI sales reps who'd been emailing them all week. Clients loved the high-hospitality touches: carved meats, sushi, and crab legs in the afternoons, with multiple caffeine stops at the espresso station in partnership with Dutch Bros.

Next Time: We'll look for ways to expand the space in anticipation of growing use, and bring 858 House to additional conferences outside of RLC.

With Gratitude

None of this works without the support of our clients and partners. They seeded the operator conversations, staffed 858 House, and traded sales theater for real peer dialogue. The industry noticed the difference.

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A few specific thank-yous:

Dutch Bros for keeping 858 House caffeinated with an on-site barista for two days. It became the unofficial caffeine headquarters of RLC.
Jeff Priester (ICR), Sarah Lockyer (The Elliot Group), and Michael Halen (Bloomberg) for co-moderating the AI Summit and helping us assemble the operator roster that made the tables work.
Informa for an incredible 25th anniversary of RLC, and NEST for co-hosting the second annual C-Suite Luncheon and helping us place every seat with intention.

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Bite

Jeff Hong

Co-founder, VP Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives

Bite

Brandon Barton

CEO

Loop

Alex Reyes

Enterprise Account Executive

Loop

Anand Tumuluru

Co-Founder

Revenue Management Systems

Bob Donofrio

Chief Client Officer

Toast

Bob Gibson

GVP, Midmarket and Enterprise

Deepgram

Ceena Modarres

Director of ML, Retail

Momos

Davi Dubinski

Co-Founder & Head of Sales

Loop

Devyn Schwartzberg

Senior Enterprise Account Executive

Rokt

Ellie Lynch

Business Development, Strategic

Restaurant365

Emily Sutton

Growth Initiatives

Revenue Management Systems

Heather Duhig

Sales Account Executive

With Coverage

Jacob Branch

Growth

Toast

Jeff Pinc

Director, Enterprise Restaurant Sales

Olo

Jenna Land

AVP Enterprise Sales

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Jennifer McDonough

Director, Emerging Enterprise Sales

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Jennifer Tyler

AVP, Enterprise Sales

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Jo Lambert

COO

Olo

Kacie Gonzalez

Chief of Staff

Olo

Katie Cofer

SVP, Sales

Toast

Kelly Esten

CMO & COO, Enterprise

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Lea Roberts

SVP Customer Experience

Restaurant365

Louie Bogris

Strategic Sales Leader, Major Markets

With Coverage

Max Brenner

Founder & CEO

Restaurant365

Paul Timmons

Senior Account Executive, Enterprise

Restaurant365

Rachel Wagers

Account Executive, Mid-Market

Rokt

Rob Murphy

SVP Restaurant & Beverage Strategic Partnerships

With Coverage

Sage Disch

President, Hospitality & 4-Wall

Momos

Sai Alluri

Co-Founder & CEO

Restaurant365

Vinnie Cholewa

SVP of Sales

Deepgram

William Edwards

VP, GM - Deepgram for Restaurants

Event pictures

Take a look at some moments from the event, from great conversations to key highlights. These photos capture the energy of the day and the people who made it memorable.

See Event Pictures ↗