Restaurants are buying more customer tech even as visits stay 7% below 2019
U.S. restaurant operators are budgeting more customer-facing technology for 2026, with 60% prioritizing customer experience investments, according to the National Restaurant Association data reported by Restaurant Business. The push comes while average chain restaurant occasions remain 7% below 2019 levels, a gap Restaurant Business says has persisted even as kiosks, digital menu boards, loyalty programs, and AI tools proliferated. Bar & Restaurant’s reporting on high-volume staffing shows why the timing matters operationally: with labor still tight and peak periods exposing process friction, operators are trying to shift guest decisions earlier, improve scheduling discipline, and free managers to coach instead of firefight. The near coin-flip in consumer sentiment, 41% saying tech improves hospitality versus 38% saying it hurts, indicates deployments that reduce staff burden without making the guest feel “sent to a screen” will be the ones that hold up in 2026 traffic conditions.
- 01A useful benchmark for 2026 tech budgeting: 60% of operators plan to invest in customer-experience tech, but that category only outpaces front-of-house tech (54%) by six points, so many programs will compete for the same dollars and implementation bandwidth, according to the National Restaurant Association data reported by Restaurant Business.
- 02The metric mismatch is becoming a planning risk: Restaurant Business says kiosks can lift sales per transaction, but operators still lack a clean way to measure whether customer-facing automation quietly suppresses visits, especially when chain occasions are already 7% below 2019.
- 03For high-volume concepts, the highest-ROI “tech” may be workflow discipline: Bar & Restaurant reports operators leaning on forecasting, clear labor rules, and centralized reservation and add-on decisions to reduce peak-hour conflict, which can make customer tech feel like convenience rather than a substitute for hospitality.
Sep 1, 2026
