The National Restaurant Show returned to Chicago's McCormick Place this year with its largest exhibitor footprint in recent memory. Restaurant Business Magazine sent editors to walk the floor and surfaced five food and drink trends worth tracking. Here's what the coverage means for operators planning the next menu cycle.

By Olivia Hart

What's the show, and why should operators care?

Branded formally as the National Restaurant Association Show, the gathering runs every May and draws more than 60,000 operator attendees and roughly 2,000 exhibitors. The show functions as a buying signal for the industry.

When five or ten major vendors converge on a single category, that's where category captain dollars typically land next quarter. Multi-unit operators use the floor to vet equipment refreshes, distributor SKUs, and back-of-house automation against their own capex plans.

How do trade-show trends hit a real P&L?

Trend coverage from show floors over-indexes on novelty and under-indexes on margin math. Operators reading the five flagged trends should run each through a tight filter: does it lift check, drop labor percentage, or improve food cost?

A trend that clears two of three filters is worth a limited-time offer test. Trends that clear none stay off the menu. That's the practical homework most trade-show reporting skips.

The cost-of-goods pressure that's kept margins tight since 2022 hasn't eased. Most operators report food cost up 200–400 basis points versus pre-pandemic baselines. That math pushes menu-engineering decisions toward higher-margin build-outs, and it explains why trend coverage that ignores margin just doesn't earn shelf space on the line.

What categories usually surface at NRA?

Restaurant Business's flagged trends track the categories operators already see weighting their P&Ls: high-margin beverage builds, automation-ready equipment, and ingredient stories that justify a small menu-price lift. Beverage typically runs 60–80% gross margin versus 25–35% for center-of-plate proteins.

The five flagged trends lean beverage- and automation-heavy, which is the segments where vendors and operators share the same math. Functional ingredients, low- and no-alcohol builds, RTD extensions, and fryer or dispense automation all clear the margin or labor filter directly. Flavor pockets like global sauces and pickle-forward profiles work as LTOs without forcing permanent menu churn.

Who pays for the trend adoption?

Capex rarely lands on the operator's check directly. Vendor financing, distributor rebates, and category captain deals absorb most equipment investment. The unit-level hit operators absorb is ingredient cost and the temporary sales dip during menu changeover.

That's the gap between retiring one SKU and ramping the next. Multi-unit operators who run that math honestly usually find the winning LTO by the end of quarter one.

What does the reporting change for operators?

For chains, the gap between a successful trend build and an orphaned menu item comes down to operator homework before the LTO launches. Restaurant Business's full breakdown runs in their May issue and online. Read the five trends, run each through the check, labor, and food-cost filter, then sign off the build. The next menu cycle starts now.