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At a brand with 10, 20, or 50 locations, the spring menu season looks a little different than it does at the unit level. You’re not designing the menu—corporate is. What you’re doing is something harder: executing someone else’s vision profitably, consistently, across a portfolio of locations with different volume profiles, different staffing realities, and different guest mixes.

That’s the tension most regional franchise operators don’t talk about openly. The spring LTO comes down from brand. The contribution margin target is yours to hit. The upsell strategy—if there is one—is often under-defined. And the data that would tell you whether any of it is working tends to live in systems that don’t talk to each other cleanly.

The pressure on either side of that tension is real. 82% of operators reported higher average food costs in 2025, with the NRA’s data showing food costs running more than 35% above pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, 95% of operators say consumers are more value-conscious than they used to be—making price sensitivity a ceiling that’s increasingly difficult to push through, even with a seasonal LTO.

Spring feels exciting. For a regional operator managing margin across dozens of units, it also carries real risk if it isn’t approached analytically.

Here’s the argument: seasonal menu transitions are among the highest-leverage moments in a franchise operator’s calendar. Done well, they drive traffic, improve per-guest profitability, and generate location-level data that informs smarter decisions across the rest of the year. Done wrong, they create execution inconsistency across your portfolio—some units running the LTO well, others burying it—and burn operational bandwidth on items that never earn their place.

Most regional operators treat spring menu planning as an implementation exercise. The ones who outperform treat it as an engineering problem.

The Menu Engineering Framework, Applied at Scale

The menu engineering framework isn’t new—it was developed by Michael Kasavana and Donald Smith at Michigan State—but it’s underused at the regional franchise level, where operators often have access to more data than their single-unit counterparts but less freedom to act on it unilaterally.

Understanding the framework is still essential, because it shapes how you evaluate brand-mandated items against your actual portfolio performance—and how you make the case internally when something isn’t working.

The four quadrants:

Stars: high popularity, high contribution margin. Protect these. They’re the items your locations can’t afford to deprioritize in favor of a new seasonal push.

Plow Horses: high popularity, low profitability margin. These sell well and feel like wins. They often aren’t. At scale, Plow Horses that dominate the mix quietly suppress your average contribution margin per transaction across every unit.

Puzzles: low popularity, high profitability margin. These are the items that need your merchandising attention most—and in a kiosk or digital ordering environment, they’re the items most likely to be overlooked without active intervention.

Dogs: low popularity, low profitability margin. At the regional level, the ability to retire these may sit with brand—but the data case for doing so is yours to build.

The two metrics that drive the analysis:

• Profitability/Contribution margin: selling price minus food cost per item. According to NRA data, food and beverage costs for limited-service operators ran a median of 32.4% of sales in 2024—useful context, but food cost percentage can obscure what actually matters at volume. A $14 item with $4 in food cost contributes $10 to margin. A $9 item at 28% food cost contributes $6.48. Across 40 locations doing hundreds of transactions a day, that gap is not theoretical.
  
• Popularity index: an item’s share of total sales in its category, tracked per location. At the regional level, this matters not just in aggregate but as a consistency signal—wide variance in popularity index across locations often points to an execution or merchandising problem, not a product problem.

The spring relevance: every brand-mandated seasonal item should be run through this framework at the regional level before rollout—not to override brand decisions, but to inform how you price, position, and sell them across your portfolio.

The Spring Opportunity (And the Trap)

Spring is one of two annual windows—along with fall—when guests actively expect menus to change. That expectation is a genuine asset, and it operates at the brand level as much as the unit level. Guests who follow the brand are primed for something new. The regional operator’s job is to convert that priming into actual margin.

What the spring window makes possible at the regional level:

• Phasing out underperforming items without guest friction—seasonal transitions give cover for removal that mid-year changes don’t
• Introducing brand-designed LTOs with a local execution strategy that the brand hasn’t fully specified (more on that in Section 4)
• Using the novelty of seasonal items to test upsell prompts and price attachment behavior across your portfolio—data that becomes proprietary insight for your group

Spring ingredients—asparagus, strawberries, lemon, peas, fresh herbs, lighter proteins—carry strong perceived value with guests. When sourced in season, they tend to support favorable margins relative to their perceived quality. That’s the brand’s sourcing call, but the margin benefit is yours to protect or lose in execution.

The trap at the regional level looks different from what it does for independent operators.

It’s not usually a failure to design the right items. It’s a failure to execute them consistently across locations. Three patterns show up repeatedly in regional franchise portfolios:

Inconsistent rollout across units. Some locations merchandise the spring LTO aggressively; others treat it like a footnote. The result is wide performance variance that makes it nearly impossible to evaluate whether the item itself works. You can’t improve what you can’t measure cleanly.

Treating the brand’s LTO strategy as the complete strategy. Brand provides the item, the pricing, and the promotional materials. What brand often doesn’t provide is a location-level upsell plan, a merchandising sequence for kiosk and digital ordering, or a defined evaluation framework. Filling those gaps is the regional operator’s leverage point.

Pricing drift at the unit level. In multi-unit portfolios, it’s common for individual locations to apply discounts, modify modifiers, or run local promotions that quietly erode the contribution margin of a brand-designed LTO. At 10 units, this is manageable. At 50 units, it becomes a significant margin leak if it isn’t actively monitored.

Start with Your Portfolio Data, Not the Brand Playbook

The instinct at the regional level is often to wait for brand guidance before doing any planning. That’s an understandable instinct—and it leaves significant value on the table.

The data audit that should happen before any spring rollout begins is entirely within your control, and it shapes how you execute regardless of what brand provides.

The right questions to ask across your portfolio before spring planning begins:

• Which locations have the highest average contribution margin per transaction, and what’s driving the difference? Understanding your top performers’ item mix tells you something about what to replicate in merchandising and upsell strategy.
• Where do your current Stars and Plow Horses sit across locations? An item that performs as a Star at your top-volume units may be a Plowhorse at lower-volume locations. And that distinction changes how you merchandise it.
• Which items consistently appear in multi-item orders? Attachment behavior varies by location and daypart, and that variation is information. A spring LTO that pairs naturally with a high-attachment item is a better upsell target than one that stands alone.
• Are there daypart gaps that a spring item could address? A lighter spring offering that drives lunch traffic is more valuable to your portfolio than one that spikes on weekend dinner and fades by mid-week.

The kiosk advantage for regional operators:

At 10–50 units, kiosk and digital ordering data are among the most valuable assets you have—and it’s often underused. Unlike verbal ordering data, kiosk data is structured, consistent, and captures behavior that aggregated POS data misses: what was browsed versus purchased, which add-ons were accepted at which locations, and how item placement on the screen affected sales mix across your portfolio.

This is the data foundation for informed spring planning. It’s also the input layer that Bite Lift uses to surface the right upsell at the right moment—not as a static prompt, but as a dynamic recommendation tuned to the guest, the item, and your margin priorities.

Building Your Execution Strategy Around Brand LTOs

The LTO environment across the industry right now is more competitive than it’s ever been. According to Technomic Ignite Menu data, LTO launches rose 19% year over year as of late 2025, with the full year tracking 10% above 2024. Technomic tracked 17,790 restaurant LTO launches in 2020; by 2024, that figure had grown to 36,830—more than double in five years. And 55% of consumers now say a restaurant’s LTO offerings factor into where they choose to eat, up from 50% in 2022.

For a regional franchisee, those numbers mean two things simultaneously: brand’s instinct to run seasonal LTOs is strategically correct, and the execution gap between operators who merchandise them well and operators who don’t is growing more consequential.

Where regional operators build their edge:

Operational preparation before launch, not after. Brand announces the spring LTO. The question to answer before it hits your locations: Does this item extend prep workflow in ways that create throughput risk at peak hours? If so, which locations are most exposed, and what’s the mitigation plan? The operators who ask these questions before launch are the ones who don’t spend six weeks watching a good item underperform because of a fixable execution problem.

A location-level merchandising plan. Research from Kerry found that 88% of consumers rated point-of-sale promotions as one of the three most influential purchase drivers for LTOs—making in-the-moment presentation a primary driver of LTO performance, not a secondary one. Brand may provide creative assets—the question is whether those assets are being deployed at every location, in every relevant touchpoint, with the same consistency. In a 50-unit portfolio, the answer is seldom yes without active oversight.

Pre-defined evaluation criteria. Before a spring LTO launches across your portfolio, define the benchmarks: What sales volume justifies the operational complexity? At what contribution margin does the item earn a permanent recommendation to brand? What upsell attachment rate indicates the item has real cross-sell potential? Setting these benchmarks before launch transforms the LTO from a brand mandate you’re executing into a business experiment you’re running—with findings that have value beyond the season.

Monitoring for margin drift. Across 10–50 locations, discount application, modifier behavior, and local promotional decisions can quietly erode the profitability/contribution margin of a brand-designed item. Building a monitoring cadence into your spring rollout—not just for sales volume but for actual contribution margin by location—is the difference between knowing your LTO is working and assuming it is.

How AI Upselling Changes the Seasonal Execution Equation

The structural challenge for regional operators running a spring menu isn’t getting guests to the restaurant. It’s getting guests who are already there—already at the kiosk, already in the app—to engage with a new item they didn’t come in planning to order.

Human upselling is inconsistent at scale. A motivated team member at your best location might mention the spring special on 70% of interactions. Across 50 locations with varying staff tenure, training compliance, and peak-hour pressure, that number drops significantly and unpredictably. Traditional kiosk upsell prompts are an improvement—they’re consistent, but they’re static. They present the same prompt to every guest at the same moment, regardless of order history, item affinity, or which items in your portfolio need merchandising support most.

AI-driven upsell via kiosks changes the equation for regional operators in three concrete ways:

Targeting by guest behavior, not just by prompt position. A guest whose order history shows affinity for lighter proteins is a different upsell target for a spring salad than a guest whose history is built around burgers and loaded fries. Bite Lift surfaces seasonal items to guests who are most likely to convert, rather than presenting the same prompt to every guest and measuring the average.

Weighted toward your margin priorities. The items that need active merchandising support are almost always Puzzles—high contribution margin, lower organic popularity. A well-configured AI upsell system via kiosk can be weighted to push those items harder across your portfolio, turning underperforming high-margin SKUs into active contributors. This is the kind of portfolio-level margin management that’s difficult to achieve through staff training alone.

Consistent across every location, every shift. For a regional operator, consistency of execution is the variable that determines whether portfolio-level analysis means anything. If your top five locations are executing the spring upsell strategy well and your bottom ten aren’t, your aggregate data is noise. Bite Lift delivers the same quality of upsell execution at every kiosk, across every unit, on every shift—which means the data you get back is actually actionable.

The Post-Season Data Harvest

This is the step most regional operators skip—and where the compounding value of disciplined execution either gets captured or evaporates.

The spring menu is not just a revenue event for your portfolio. It’s a research event. Every LTO and seasonal item generates location-level data about guest preference, price sensitivity, attachment behavior, and operational throughput that has direct implications for fall planning—and for the case you make to brand about what worked, what didn’t, and what should change.

Before retiring spring items, capture across your portfolio:

• Final contribution margin versus projected, by location. Did margin drift occur? Where, and why? This is the data that identifies which locations need operational or training attention before the next seasonal rollout.
  
• Upsell attachment rate by location and daypart. Wide variance here is an execution signal. Locations with strong attachment rates are doing something replicable. Locations with weak attachment rates need a different intervention.
  
• Multi-item order frequency for seasonal items. Which spring items appeared most often alongside other items? Strong pair performance is a signal for future bundling strategy and kiosk menu architecture.
  
• Any items that generated repeat guest requests after retirement. This is among the strongest signals you can bring to brand when making the case for a permanent addition or a returning LTO next spring.

Regional operators who build this feedback loop systematically such as using spring data to inform fall design, fall data to inform the following spring, create a compounding advantage over operators who treat each season as a fresh start. Over a two- to three-year horizon, the margin gap between those two operating approaches becomes significant.

Menu Engineering Is a System, Not a Season

For a regional franchise operator running 10 to 50 locations, the spring menu season is never just about the items. It’s about execution consistency, contribution margin management across a portfolio, and turning brand-level decisions into location-level performance.

The operators who outperform in Q2 are the ones who start with a data audit instead of a brand briefing, define their evaluation criteria before launch instead of after, and close the execution gap at the kiosk with tools that don’t depend on staff consistency to deliver results.

The tools to do this at the regional scale already exist. The question is whether you’re using them.

How the restaurant industry’s workforce evolved from pandemic chaos to a new normal — and what operators need to know to compete for talent in today’s market

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Key Data Points

Employment & Recovery

• 42,000 jobs (0.3%) above February 2020 levels as of February 2026 — National Restaurant Association
• QSR and fast-casual restaurants added 79,000 jobs (2%) above pre-pandemic levels — Escoffier
• 18 states plus D.C. remain below pre-pandemic restaurant employment — National Restaurant Association
• Industry added net 128,800 jobs during 12 months ending February 2026 — National Restaurant Association

Wages & Compensation

• Average hourly wages jumped from $13.36 (April 2020) to $19.93 (December 2025) — Restaurant Dive
• Leisure and hospitality sector wages increased 3.8% year-over-year to $22.70 (April 2025) — OysterLink
• Waiters and servers earn average base wage of $17.56 per hour before tips — OysterLink
• Base wages now make up 43% of restaurant worker pay, up from 35% in January 2020 — ADP Research Institute
• Median hourly wage for waiters/waitresses ($15.36) vs. all-profession median ($23.11) — Kezner Consulting

Labor Shortage & Staffing

• 70% of operators report job openings difficult to fill; 45% don’t have enough employees — NetSuite/National Restaurant Association
• 986,000 job openings in restaurants and accommodations sector (October 2025) — National Restaurant Association
• Restaurant unemployment ranged between 5.5% and 6.8% in recent months — Restaurant Dive
• Turnover rates at 73.9% annually — Toast

Technology Impact

• Urbane Cafe: 22% higher check average on kiosk orders and 5.6% lift in total sales — Bite Case Study

2026 Projections

• Industry projected to add more than 100,000 jobs in 2026, reaching 15.8 million employees — National Restaurant Association

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The restaurant labor market has undergone seismic shifts over the past five years. From the devastating pandemic job losses that saw over 3.7 million restaurant workers unemployed in early 2020, to the scramble for talent during the recovery, to where we stand today, restaurant operators have weathered a transformation that fundamentally changed how the industry approaches staffing.

As we navigate 2026, one thing is clear: we’ve reached a “new normal” that looks distinctly different from the pre-pandemic world. The question for operators is no longer “how do we get back to normal?” but rather “how do we thrive in this transformed landscape?”

Let’s examine what’s actually changed, what’s remained stubbornly the same, and what strategies are working for operators who are winning the war for talent.

The Numbers Tell a Complex Story

Employment Has Recovered… Sort Of

The headline news sounds positive: as of February 2026, restaurant employment stands at 42,000 jobs above February 2020 levels, representing a 0.3% gain. While this marks a recovery from the pandemic’s devastating job losses, the modest gains and month-to-month volatility—January saw the industry at 105,000 jobs above pre-pandemic levels before winter weather impacted February—reveal an industry still finding its footing.

But dig deeper, and the picture becomes more nuanced.

Full-service restaurants—the traditional sit-down establishments that were hardest hit during the pandemic—are still struggling to return to pre-pandemic staffing levels. While quick-service and fast-casual restaurants have added 79,000 jobs (2%) above pre-pandemic levels, full-service dining continues to lag behind.

The geographic distribution tells another story entirely. Eighteen states plus Washington D.C. remain below pre-pandemic restaurant employment, led by West Virginia (-6%), Maine (-5%), and New Mexico (-5%). Meanwhile, mountain states like Idaho (+20%), Utah (+14%), and Nevada (+13%) have surged well past their 2020 employment levels.

What This Means for Operators: The recovery isn’t uniform. Your experience depends heavily on your restaurant concept (QSR vs. full-service) and your location. If you’re in a lagging market, you’re competing for an even smaller pool of available workers.

Wages: The Gains Are Real, But Slowing

Perhaps the most significant change in the restaurant labor market is compensation. The numbers are striking:

• Average hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory restaurant workers jumped from $13.36 in April 2020 to $19.68—a nearly 50% nominal increase
• Average hourly earnings in the leisure and hospitality sector increased 3.8% year-over-year, from $21.87 in April 2024 to $22.70 in April 2025
• Waiters and servers now earn an average base wage of $17.56 per hour before tips, with tips making up approximately 69% of their hourly earnings.

The wage surge of 2021-2022, when restaurants saw year-over-year wage growth of 10-15%, has cooled considerably. Wage growth has moderated to more sustainable levels, but the gains made during those years have stuck.

Interestingly, base wages now make up 43% of restaurant worker pay, up from 35% in January 2020, as minimum wage increases and changing tipping behaviors reshape compensation structures.

What’s Changed: Restaurants can no longer compete for talent with pre-pandemic wages. The $15/hour floor that was once debated is now baseline in most markets, with many operators paying $18-20/hour or more.

What Hasn’t Changed: The fundamental wage gap between restaurants and other industries persists. The median hourly wage for waiters and waitresses ($15.36), including tips, is significantly lower than the all-profession median of $23.11, making it difficult to attract talent away from other sectors.

The Labor Shortage: Still Here, But Evolving

Job Openings vs. Available Workers

Despite employment gains, the labor shortage hasn’t disappeared—it’s just evolved. Seventy percent of restaurant operators report having job openings that are difficult to fill, while 45% say they don’t have enough employees to support existing customer demand, according to the National Restaurant Association.

The challenge is structural: there are consistently more job openings than available workers to fill them. While the gap has narrowed from pandemic highs, demand for workers remains elevated. As of October 2025, there were 986,000 job openings in the combined restaurants and accommodations sector, roughly unchanged from earlier months despite ongoing hiring challenges. The industry added a net 128,800 jobs during the 12 months ending February 2026, yet demand for workers continues to outpace supply.

The Turnover Challenge Remains

If there’s one metric that hasn’t fundamentally improved, it’s turnover. The restaurant industry continues to experience some of the highest turnover rates across all sectors.

While turnover rates have decreased from the peak of 2020 to around 73.9% annually, this remains extraordinarily high. To put it bluntly: roughly three out of every four employees will leave within a year.

The financial impact is devastating. Every departing employee costs money in recruitment, training, and lost productivity. With tight margins already squeezed by food costs and rent, high turnover is one expense operators can’t afford but can’t seem to escape.

What’s Changed: The “Great Resignation” has shifted to what experts call the “Great Stay”—workers are staying in their jobs longer, but not necessarily in the restaurant industry.

What Hasn’t Changed: Restaurant work is still fast-paced, physically demanding, and often involves irregular hours. These fundamental aspects of the job contribute to burnout and drive turnover, regardless of economic conditions.

Why Workers Still Aren’t Returning

The pandemic fundamentally reset worker expectations. Many who left restaurant jobs during COVID discovered:

1. Better Work-Life Balance Exists Elsewhere

Other industries like retail and delivery services offer more predictable hours and often better benefits. A gig economy driver can set their own schedule; a retail worker knows they’ll be off by 9 PM. Restaurant work, with its split shifts, weekend requirements, and unpredictable schedules, struggles to compete.

2. Rising Costs of Living Require Higher, More Stable Pay

While wages have increased, inflation has eaten into those gains. Real wages—adjusted for inflation—have increased only modestly since 2018. Workers need not just higher pay, but also predictable pay. The tip-dependent model, while potentially lucrative for some, introduces income volatility that many workers can no longer afford.

3. Health and Safety Concerns Linger

Though COVID restrictions have eased, health and safety concerns continue to influence job choices. Workers in customer-facing roles remain exposed to illness, and some simply aren’t willing to take that risk for restaurant wages.

4. The Job Itself Hasn’t Changed

Perhaps most fundamentally, restaurant work is still restaurant work. It’s physically demanding, often stressful, and involves dealing with difficult customers. No amount of wage increases changes the fundamental nature of the job—and for workers who found alternatives during the pandemic, there’s simply no compelling reason to return.

What’s Actually Working: Strategies from Successful Operators

While the challenges are real, some operators are finding success. Here’s what’s working:

1. Technology as a Labor Multiplier

Smart operators aren’t just trying to fill positions—they’re reducing the number of positions they need to fill in the first place.

Kiosk ordering systems reduce the need for order-takers, allowing restaurants to maintain throughput with fewer front-of-house staff. This isn’t about eliminating jobs; it’s about reallocating labor to higher-value activities.

Urbane Cafe, a 43-location fast casual chain, reallocated labor at the front of house after implementing kiosks. Locations that previously relied on two cashiers now operate efficiently with one team member serving as a cashier, kiosk ambassador, and guest experience facilitator. 

“We used to have two cashiers. Now we really only have one,” says Caprice Kindgren, Director of Marketing at Urbane Cafe. “It’s not like we’re giving worse guest service because there’s a kiosk—you just make sure you’re still welcoming guests.” 

The result? A 22% higher check average on kiosk orders and a 5.6% lift in total sales across 16 locations.

Mobile ordering, QR code menus, and contactless payment all serve the same purpose: doing more with the staff you have.

2. Flexible Scheduling and Quality of Life

The operators winning the talent war are those who recognize that competitive wages are table stakes—the real differentiator is quality of life.

Flexible scheduling options that accommodate workers’ needs—whether that’s childcare, school, or other commitments—make restaurant jobs more attractive. Some operators are experimenting with guaranteed minimum hours to provide income stability, while others offer shift-swapping apps that give workers more control.

3. Career Development and Growth Opportunities

Workers, especially younger ones, want to know there’s a path forward. Operators who invest in training programs, create clear advancement paths, and support professional development are seeing better retention.

The key is making these opportunities visible and accessible from day one. Don’t wait six months to tell a new hire they could be a manager—show them the path during orientation.

4. Benefits That Actually Matter

Health insurance, paid time off, and retirement plans were once rare in restaurants. They’re becoming standard among operators who want to compete for talent.

But benefits need to match worker needs. For part-time workers, access to earned wage access (getting paid for shifts already worked before payday) can be more valuable than a 401(k). For parents, childcare assistance or flexible scheduling trumps many traditional benefits.

5. Streamlining the Hiring Process

In a competitive labor market, speed matters. Technology-enabled hiring that streamlines applications and onboarding can be the difference between securing a good candidate and losing them to a competitor who moves faster.

Operators are using SMS-based recruitment, virtual interviews, and streamlined onboarding to reduce time-to-hire from weeks to days.

The Road Ahead: What to Expect in 2026

As we move through 2026, several trends are likely to shape the restaurant labor market:

The Industry Will Stabilize, Not Return

Don’t expect a return to pre-pandemic labor dynamics. The industry is projected to add more than 100,000 jobs in 2026, reaching 15.8 million employees, but the fundamental challenges around wages, turnover, and competition for workers will persist.

Regional Divergence Will Continue

Labor markets will remain highly local. Some states are seeing robust growth while others lag, and this pattern will likely continue. Operators need to understand their local market conditions rather than relying on national trends.

Technology Adoption Will Accelerate

Labor shortages are accelerating technology adoption across the industry. From AI-powered scheduling to robotic kitchen assistants to kiosk ordering, operators are increasingly turning to technology not as a nice-to-have but as a necessity.

The question isn’t whether to adopt labor-saving technology, but which technologies and when.

The War for Talent Will Remain Intense

With low unemployment rates and workers having more options than ever, restaurants will continue competing not just with each other but with every other employer in their market.

The operators who succeed will be those who recognize this reality and adapt accordingly—through better compensation, better work environments, better scheduling, and better use of technology to make their employees more productive.

The Bottom Line

The state of restaurant labor in 2026 is a study in contrasts. Employment has recovered, but not evenly. Wages have increased significantly, yet staffing challenges persist. Workers have more options, but restaurants still need to fill positions.

What’s become abundantly clear is that there’s no going back to 2019. The pandemic permanently reset the labor market, and successful operators are those who’ve accepted this new reality and adapted their strategies accordingly.

The path forward requires a multi-faceted approach:

• Competitive wages and meaningful benefits to attract talent
• Technology to multiply the productivity of the staff you have
• Flexible scheduling and quality-of-life improvements to retain workers
• Efficient hiring processes to move quickly when good candidates appear
• Career development opportunities to build long-term loyalty

The restaurant labor shortage of 2020-2022 may have evolved into something more manageable, but make no mistake: the fundamental challenge of attracting and retaining talent in a competitive market isn’t going away. The operators who will thrive in 2026 and beyond are those who treat labor strategy not as a cost to minimize, but as a competitive advantage to maximize.