下一步的滋味：餐厅未来展望

Perspectives on the future Automated kitchens, AI-powered hyperpersonalization, and “unbundled”formats are accelerating restaurant reinvention. In the years ahead,diners may start to experience their favorite restaurants in entirely newways. Restaurant recommendations may start to come from consumers’ preferred gen AIplatforms, human servers might get a helping hand from robotic food runners, and AI-poweredrecipe testing could catapult culinary innovation to greater heights. In these five videos, An edited transcript of the conversations follows. It’s the future. What’s on the menu? John Moran:We’re going to see more culinary innovation in the next ten years than we have in Alex Rodriguez:We’re already moving to a space where it’s not about chicken, per se; it’sprotein. Right now, it’s protein everything. As people continue to lean into science and healthmetrics, and into what they’re looking to get out of their diet, I could see it becoming less abouta specific type of protein. It will be aboutprotein in general, including a focus on the source and Katharine Mattox:What will change is how people takingGLP-1 [glucagon-like peptide-1]medicationseat. So much of dining at restaurants is about this indulgent, away-from-homemoment and shared experiences. Simply saying that goes away becausethe quantity of foodconsumed decreasesis too simplistic an assertion. Still, some chains out there are playing John Moran:If you think about the trade-off we’ve always seen, where people want healthy foodthat tastes good, we’ve tended to prioritize the good-tasting part over the healthy part. There’s an enormous opportunity for authentic ethnic cuisines. A lot of people areexperimenting with what they call “better for you” concepts now, and we’re seeing a lot ofprogress there. I think about Indian food a lot; there aren’t many successful chain Indian Personalization, curation, and automation Katharine Mattox:You’ll see the industry moving at almost two speeds, with some brandsleaning into a more tech-forward, enabled experience and others not. And that will be part of thevalue proposition. There will be some restaurants that lean into automation and digital, and that whether it’s served at the right temperature, is well prepared, and looks good. Well beyond that,you’ll have more environmental things: What’s the lighting that adapts to my mood? What’s thesmell or the music that I have in the entire environment? When are people approaching me, and Luis Salcedo:In 15 years, I don’t think you’ll have to tell a server your mood explicitly. Withintelligence and image recognition, the technology may not be 100 percent accurate, but it willget close to understanding your mood. Whether you’re happy or worried about something, if Katharine Mattox:There will be morepersonalized and tailored interactions. Other restaurantswill lean into what makes them different and stand out from a sea of players that are likely usingmore digital tools in the restaurant: “This actually is handmade; here’s the story behind theingredients, which are traceable,” or “We’ve curated this based on your health goals and the John Moran:A lot of where the restaurant industry has taken us is standardization. But,increasingly, you can enable people to tailor exactly what they want. With a gen AI feature, itmight suggest things you like. We always find consumers like to have curation or suggestions,such as “you might like this,” as opposed to a literal menu of “here’s every possible option and Alex Rodriguez:We’re quickly reaching a point where there may beagentic-to-agenticinteraction. I could have my own agentic AI solution that represents me and interacts directlywith a restaurant or a group of restaurants to curate my experience. It could book therestaurant, the table I like, and do it all independently. It knows what I want, what I’ve done in the Katharine Mattox:There are also going to be parts of the restaurant ecosystem that arerelatively data-poor. Right now, one of the biggest challenges is that many chains still havecustomers who pay cash, so they are not identifiable. That will start to change. For restaurants,how do you create the right pulls to get customers to share more information, such as through a Food-prep robots and 3D-printed burgers Luis Salcedo:This is not a linear progression; we are in an exponential curve. In the future,everything will be done digitally. On the execution side,you’ll have robotization, which willmanufacture the product. Once you have the convergence of those two things—digitalization Xin Huang:At chain restaurants, you might walk in and find robots right now. They are startingto have robots cook—they premix everything and then start cooking. They’re still working on thequality [of the output]. The taste [of the meals they make] isn’t the same as what a real cook cando yet. But for certain restaurants, people really enjoy the technology experience. It can be a Some chain hot pot restaurants in China have