National Restaurant Association show 2025: highlights

Last month, we attended the annual National Restaurant Association show in Chicago. The NRA show is one of the largest international foodservice events, with over 2,200 exhibitors showcasing the innovations they hope will shape the future of the industry.

Here are some of the key trends from the show (both emerging and already established) shaping the future of away from home.

Robotics and automation: from theatre to functionality

A challenging economic environment is making investment into tech more considered. Protecting profits means companies are taking fewer financial risks if they can’t be sure they’ll pay off.

A few years ago, robot waiters were all the rage – bringing orders directly to tables in hopes of reducing, or at least freeing up, staff. Now, the focus has shifted. Where robotics were more about the theatre a few years ago, the focus now is more on functionality and making a tangible difference to operations.

Theatre can still play a role – burger-flipping, hot-dog making, latte art-creating robots can still be used to drive customers through the door, but they still must speed up operations, drive efficiencies and ensure consistency.

AI – more than just a buzzword?

AI was the word of the year at the show. It was hard to escape stands boasting their ‘AI-powered’ solutions – from customer-facing tech like drive-thru voice ordering to back of house systems.

There’s no doubt that AI has a role to play in the creative aspects of foodservice, like identifying trends or menu development. However, a session with Connections – a foodservice agency for marketing and culinary development – highlighted the importance of human intervention in AI use. With AI learning from what already exists, take caution in asking for recipes or names as it may give results that have already been created by others.

Companies with the capabilities to invest in AI should be exploring their own closed AI, feeding in their own data and learning materials to make it work for them specifically.

Customisation is still core to the guest experience

Giving consumers more choice isn’t a new trend, but we’re seeing new ways of delivering this. Micro-adaptations to menus can make a big impact on how the consumer views the experience – being able to adapt their choices to exactly what they want.

One of the best examples we saw of this was Kraft Heinz’s new ReMix machines, which allow consumers to mix sauces together to create their own signature blends. As well as the personalisation element, the unit doesn’t take up huge amounts of space and is self-serve meaning it doesn’t require lots of staff time. One of the key elements of this is the development of the mixer, which keeps all the sauce in the pot, reducing clean up time needed from staff.

There is, however, a balance to strike between providing more choices while keeping ingredients and stock at a manageable level and without adding too much complexity into the kitchens and for staff.

Functional drinks is a fast-growing category – and foodservice is next

We’d already noticed how much bigger functional drinks ranges were in grocery retail in the US compared to the UK. Foodservice is the next target for existing pre-made functional soft drink brands like Olipop, and as a new category for Bloom moving over from supplements to sodas.

Brands will be focused on getting their names onto menus and into grab and go fridges to grow awareness and drive sales in foodservice too. Functional drinks brands will likely play a bigger role in cocktail and mocktail menus as operators look to upsell on drinks by including the brands in their recipes and tap into the trend of added-benefit drinks.

The next area to watch in functional drinks? THC drinks. THC is the main psychoactive ingredient in the cannabis plant, and there’s a growing trend across US states to make THC drinks available to buy, often where alcohol is sold. There was an entire section at the show dedicated to emerging THC brands, like North, Louie Louie, and Wynk.