Eddy Goldberg

You’ve just signed a multi-unit development deal with the restaurant brand you’ve been eyeing for years—and in the perfect territory. You’re looking forward to the multiple benefits the deal will bring: territorial exclusivity, economies of scale, operational efficiencies, reduced franchise fees and royalties, shared staff with a path to grow, closer relationship with the franchisor, and, of course, better margins and a faster path to your ROI. And you’ve all agreed to a reasonable development schedule.

It’s been a rocky road for some (but not all) franchised restaurant brands this year. Restaurants in general have been rocked by the usual external forces: changing consumer tastes, population shifts, tightened family budgets, mandated wage increases, and a diminishing workforce with new and heightened expectations about what it means to be an employee in 2025. Oh, and tariffs. You know the litany… you’re living it every day, and for some, every night. So what’s a franchisee to do to turn around an underperforming location?

When it comes to meeting changing consumer tastes, restaurant owners and operators have always scrambled to keep up—hoping to spot emerging trends before their competitors do—and adapting their menus, operations, and pricing accordingly, in an attempt to catch the next wave. But it’s not enough just to identify new trends. That’s when the hard work of creating new products and customer experiences begins.

At a time when the AI boosters are selling their wares across every sector at top volume, flooding everyone everywhere with the fear of missing out (FOMO), and when it seems like the loudest voices opposing them are the equally hype-tastic AI Doomers, it can feel impossible to see a way through. —The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

For many (not all!) restaurant franchisees, money is tight, customers scarce (and picky!), and here comes the ever-critical Q4, followed by an uncertain 2026—for restaurant operators and customers alike, who both are dealing with inflation (cost of goods for the former and menu prices for the latter). With margins shrinking like an Ozempic waistline on speed, restaurant brands are experimenting with AI to improve just about everything. But let’s stick with marketing here.

“I’ve worked hard, paid my taxes, raised my family, operated a small business, and stayed here through good times and bad, says Richard Pfeffer, founder and owner of Gritty McDuff’s, a brew pub in Maine’s largest city. “But I’ve never seen city leaders so determined to drive away small businesses and burden taxpayers as they are with this proposal going to voters to raise Portland’s minimum wage to $19 an hour by 2028.”