2025 Outlook: Experts Weigh In on Restaurant Trends and Challenges, Part Three

Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine asked restaurant industry experts for their views on what trends and challenges owners and operators can expect to see in 2025. For the first part, click here and for the second part, click here. Data, Data, Data. It is atop the list for restaurants looking to modernize, differentiate, and elevate experiences. So much data is generated at every point within a restaurant, whether fast casual or fine dining. And the digitization of operations over the past few years means that the industry is getting better at capturing that data.

Foot traffic or heat mapping, menu item engagement, or consumer demographics by time of day. The question now becomes – how to make sense of that data and use it to elevate the dining experience. The quicker businesses can feed that information back into operations, the better, whether for personalized dining, staffing optimization, or advertising and marketing. This is where we are heading, and I expect to hear…