The Marketing Executives Group, aka MEG, just wrapped in Chicago. It’s the unofficial kickoff to the National Restaurant Association Show, but this one is marketers only.
MEG describes itself as:
“The Marketing Executives Group (MEG) is a year-round community of restaurant marketing professionals who gather each May in Chicago ahead of the National Restaurant Association Show. Build your network with professionals from the C-Suite to Directors and Managers, focusing on key areas like brand, digital, consumer, and field marketing.
MEG's goal is to raise the level of industry excellence by connecting, inspiring, teaching and challenging each other through the exchange of ideas, thought leadership and best practices.”
If you're a restaurant marketer, or work in restaurant marketing, this is a great event to learn what’s on the forefront of the industry, network with others, and discover helpful solutions.
Here are my top takeaways from MEG 2026:
UNREASONABLE SYSTEMS
Will Guidara was the opening speaker. He told some fun stories, shared inspiration, and made suggestions on how to provide better service. If you want to go deep on that, get his book. Here was my biggest takeaway:
We can’t expect our stores, team members, or employees to win, or be inspired to win, if we don’t give them the tools and systems to execute.
Incredible hospitality can be scaled. It just requires intentionality and systems.
WHAT THESE TRENDS ARE TELLING YOU
People have less money to spend
Consumers are eating less. Calorie consumption is down 2% versus a year ago
60% of c-store operators report increased foodservice sales
Prepared foods at grocery and c-stores have surpassed restaurants as a discovery channel
Eating out remains the #1 choice for consumers to splurge on, above travel, apparel, and home entertainment like gaming or streaming
3 areas of focus that are working: Moments of Micro Joy, Hands-On Hospitality, and Personalization
Personalization is the leading driver of restaurant reorders
Heat-and-eat meals are up 30%
42% of QSR sales are now digital
The Culinary Edge gave a great presentation sharing all this data, and more, that should get you thinking about what you can do to better meet consumers where they are.
Here’s where I would invest:
Quality
Experience
Personalization
What can you do to make sure your food tastes good, makes people feel good, and that your guests know about it?
What can you do to make sure every guest feels taken care of, satisfied, and happy after every experience with your brand?
How can you make your menu, service, and especially your marketing feel like it was built specifically for that guest?
WHO HAS INFLUENCE
On a great panel about influencer marketing, the best point made was this: People with influence are not always “influencers.”
It’s important to work with people who already have trust and awareness with the audience you’re trying to reach.
That could include:
High school principals
Local sports teams and players
Other local businesses
Community leaders
Influence is trust, not follower count.
HOW RESTAURANT BRANDS ARE USING AI
The short answer? Literally everything.
I sat at the AI roundtable for an entire afternoon. At each session, we went around the table and shared one way we were using AI. In a room full of marketers, there wasn’t one or two dominant use cases. Everyone is using AI in some way.
The most common buckets:
Sentiment analysis on reviews to understand trends, especially negative ones
Marketing copy for social, email, replying to reviews, etc.
Thought partnership to help think through ideas
Site selection for new stores
Various reporting functions
The most common AI platform people mentioned using: Claude.
I’ll share one of my favorite use cases: Understanding the patterns and habits of high-frequency guests juxtaposed against guests who are not yet as frequent.
Example: What do guests who’ve had 10 visits do that guests who’ve only had 5 visits haven’t done yet?
In almost every restaurant I’ve tried this with, you’d be surprised how small the differences actually are.
THE AI TRUTH
This was probably the biggest unlock from some AI training we did courtesy of Thanx:
AI is very good at pattern spotting and synthesis. It is not inherently good at truth. It can hallucinate causality. It may confidently overstate weak signals. It still needs your judgment.
What does that mean? If you treat AI like a friend, it will respond like a friend. Friends are often wrong, even when we love them.
Computers are smart when you ask smart questions and aren’t lazy about how you use them. Especially AI.
Want to go down that path?
Set aside 30 minutes and try this from Aaron Newton from Thanx : https://tinyurl.com/meg-ai
Need some more AI Guidance? Download the free AI Playbook for Restaurants:
Were you at MEG? What stood out to you? Drop a comment. I’d love to hear it.
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Need help building or speeding up your restaurant marketing system?
Send me an email at [email protected]
WHAT DOES REV DO?
✓ I help restaurants build guest marketing programs
✓ I help hospitality tech companies with lead generation and content marketing
