QSR | Track 3: Emerging Brands and Entrepreneurship

As we all know, launching a restaurant isn’t just about great food—it’s about resilience, resourcefulness, and learning to thrive in the unknown. And that might be making the largest understatement possible.

Raising capital can be the most daunting part of getting started or looking to expand. As we do each year, we’ll bring together experts who make it happen and tap their insights for what it takes, what you need to know, and what you might be missing.

A great business must be endearing to be enduring. To create loyal customers who become raving fans, you need an emotional connection. Leaders often lead with logic, but customers and employees make decisions with emotions. In this keynote, Kevin Paul Scott will unpack the four core emotions of your customers, and how to balance emotions and logic in sales and marketing. He will share why emotional connections lead to greater ROI and how to achieve this in an authentic way.

Not every restaurant brand has major marketing budgets. So let’s figure out how to make every dollar count, how to find influencers, grow your awareness, connect with the brand, and turn you growing restaurant operation into one impossible to miss.

Even as digital channels explode, customers are coming back in-store. What they find can make all the difference (just ask Starbucks). We’ll gather design, agency, and operator experts to explain how to build and model interiors that bring guests in and keep them coming back.

The service lines continue to blur. Yet prices aren’t coming down. Are you getting credit for better sourcing, more expensive labor, and some of the other fast casual hallmarks, from customers? Here’s a look at how to stay a level above in consumers’ eyes, and where the future is taking a category that defined growth in the sector for years.