What QSR Leaders Taught Us at NextGen 2025

The quick-service and fast-casual restaurant industry is moving at a remarkable pace. At the 2025 NextGen Restaurant Summit, leaders from Taco John’s, BarTaco, Chick-fil-A, Firehouse Subs, Taco Bell, KFC, Habit Burger, Applebee’s, Mellow Mushroom, and Whataburger gathered to share their biggest challenges and boldest opportunities.

The conversations revealed an industry that is innovating quickly but also wrestling with tough questions about scale, hospitality, and technology. Stable Kernel followed the sessions closely and captured some of the key themes that stood out.

What We Heard From Industry Leaders

• AI is slow + messy: Taco John’s needed 2.5 years for AI ordering, battling data chaos and brand voice issues.

• Hospitality is non-negotiable: BarTaco and Chick-fil-A reinforced that tech must enhance, not replace, human connection.

• Growth depends on systems: Firehouse Subs scaling 20 to 200 stores/year by fixing franchisee onboarding and profitability.

• Legacy brands must balance: Applebee’s hit $1B digital sales but faces generational adoption gaps.

• Culture drives memory: Taco Bell, KFC, and Habit Burger tie relevance to shared experiences and employee training.

• Expansion is human-centered: Whataburger CEO Debbie Stroud: “Innovation must free people to connect.”

Proof in Practice

While these challenges may sound familiar, the good news is that many brands are already finding ways forward. In partnership with Stable Kernel, for example:

• A top QSR preserved $5 million in sales during a network outage by building resiliency into its systems.

• Loyalty platforms are being re-architected to cut activation timelines from 3 weeks to 3 days, allowing marketers to run real-time campaigns.

• Digital modernization has fueled 400% growth in online orders and 1000% growth in catering revenue for a Top 3 QSR brand.

• Smarter back-end engineering has unlocked $18K/month in infrastructure savings.

These examples highlight a common thread: the right technology, thoughtfully implemented, enables restaurants to move faster, reduce risk, and deliver the experiences today’s guests expect.

Looking Ahead

The restaurant leaders at NextGen made it clear: this industry isn’t waiting for change to arrive—it’s creating it. Brands that thrive in the next decade will be those that:

• Align guest and employee experiences

• Harness AI and data for speed and reliability

• Build platforms that scale profitably across franchises and enterprise networks

The opportunities are real, and so are the challenges. But as this year’s summit showed, the restaurant industry is full of leaders who are ready to tackle both.

Ready to explore how your brand can modernize without losing what makes it special? Let’s talk.