Many glimpses of the future can be had at the National Restaurant Association Show, which concluded earlier this week at McCormick Place in Chicago.
Most media attention went to the many eye-popping robots, a cumulative demonstration that every part of the restaurant experience — greeting, ordering, grilling, frying, waiting, running food, extracting payment, cleaning floors — can now be automated, a further reminder of the wisdom of the City Council voting to pause the increase in the tipped minimum wage on Wednesday while humans still have jobs.
Futurists could also spy the rising tide of nonalcoholic beverages, fancy drinks, some laced with mind-altering substances and many more with caffeine, designed to command premium menu pricing and capable of generating more profit than food in an era when many Americans are taking weight-loss drugs. And you could see writ large the determination of the big delivery apps (the likes of Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash) to rehabilitate their reputations and sell themselves to restaurants as partners, not predators.
But we were most interested by something else entirely: the acknowledgment that to run a restaurant (any business, really) in the America of 2026 is to have to pick a lane between two completely different economies — 20% of the country is doing great, spending money, supporting the growth of those that serve its needs, while the other 80% is cash-strapped and flailing.
You might argue that it long has been so. But then you’d miss the massive recent acceleration of the K-shaped economy, symptomatic of a country going in two directions at once. This issue has implications far beyond the hospitality industry — for example, it explains why airlines are adding premium seats and removing them in coach — but the restaurant show laid out this all-American dichotomy in the starkest possible terms.
Simply put, the issue is not just that there are two American economies, one serving Broken Yolk or Starbucks customers and the other IHOP and Dunkin’ fans. It’s that the former is growing so much faster than the latter, as much as 20 times more, meaning that the K-shaped metaphor is becoming less applicable, unless you write your K with the top right line flowing all the way to the edge of the page.
This stunning contrast in growth is, of course, a large part of why Spirit Airlines went bust. That and the collapse of what restaurant consultants call “price lanes.” It used to be that a burger, fries and shake at, say, Five Guys was a lot cheaper than going to a sit-down restaurant. Not anymore. At the lower end, everyone competes with everyone.
Graham Humphreys, the president and CEO at The Culinary Edge, a San Francisco-based consultancy, is in the business of helping eateries survive in this environment.
His first piece of advice at a session Tuesday? Pick a lane. And, by the way, one is a whole lot better than the other.
What does the free-spending top 20% want? Personal recognition and curated experiences, Humphreys said, further noting that this group is happy to spend money on luxuries, conspicuous consumption being alive and well, but is “intolerant of disappointment,” which will come as no surprise to those who serve them on a regular basis.
And the other 80%? “Intolerant of disappointment” becomes “minimizing regret.”
And what brings about regret in most of our fellow Americans? Most Americans feel under constant pressure, Humphreys argued, and, at least where food is concerned, the pressure points are money, time and calories. They don’t want to regret how much they spent, how much time they wasted and how much fattening stuff they consumed. So they are constantly auditing all three of those things, while those in the top 20% of income don’t audit much at all. Just as long as everything exceeds their expectations.
People attend the National Restaurant Association Show at McCormick Place on May 18, 2026. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
People like Humphreys are, of course, in the business of helping their clients survive in these environments, which is why he pointed to businesses like Dutch Bros Coffee, which basically dispenses small, sugary luxuries in the middle of the afternoon to those who can’t afford an expensive lunch, a democratic dopamine hit at 2 in the afternoon. These Americans still crave emotional rewards, he argued, and they ache for celebratory moments outside of the home. So it’s all about satisfying those needs in a way that minimizes worries about having regrets. Meanwhile, businesses like the Australian-style java chain Bluestone Lane can curate merrily away for the top 20%, making their customers feel like the experience is both “local” and personally curated for them.
As interesting as all this may be, you have to worry about this new 80/20 economy and what it means for our shared future. Much attention goes on supposed billionaires, partly because urban progressives in positions of political or cultural power tend to be in the top 20% themselves and they sure don’t want to stare uncomfortably in the mirror. But those billionaires are not the real drivers of inequality; it’s our growing comfort with 80/20.
There will always be those with more resources than others, of course, but what concerns us here is the contrast in growth rates. In a healthier country, those businesses that serve the majority of Americans would not be seeing anemic growth while those that serve the elite see double-digit progress each year. Otherwise, all of the innovation goes into serving one group and not the other, even though 80 is four times 20. It’s un-American, we’d say.
That’s what both political parties will need to prioritize in upcoming elections. You know, as they drink their handcrafted lattes.
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