Enjoy a morning of golf on the picturesque fairways of the Wildfire Golf Club. This is the perfect opportunity to continue building business relationships while practicing your swing. After the tournament, enjoy lunch with your fellow golfers.

6:45am - 7:45am - Check-in, breakfast and warmup 

8:00am - Tournament begins (Shotgun Start) 

Following Tournament - Lunch

6:30pm - Results and awards will be available at the RLC Product Gallery 

Two different hikes will be offered by our professional guides: one for the more fitness-oriented hiker seeking a unique outdoor workout and one for the more leisurely hiker looking for an up close and personal tour of the desert's beauty.

6:45am - 7:45am - Check-in and breakfast at Saguaro Ballroom Foyer 

8:00am - Bus departure from the Sunset Terrace (outside the Saguaro Ballroom) 

8:00am - 10:30am - Hiking

 11:00am - Arrive at JW Marriott Desert Ridge

Climb on board in an open-air Jeep and experience the beauty and serenity of Arizona's Sonoran Desert on this guided tour. Learn about the spectaular trails from a genuine cowboy guide.

7:30am - 8:00am - Check-in and breakfast at Saguaro Ballroom Foyer

8:00am - Departure from the Sunset Terrace (outside the Saguaro Ballroom)

8:00am - 11:00am - Desert Tour

11:30am - Arrive at JW Marriott Desert Ridge 

Test your sharpshooting ability at the Scottsdale Gun Club, the largest public indoor shooting range in the United States with state-of-the-art features, including user-friendly touchscreen control panels and a 360-degree rotating target system. 

8:00am - 8:30am - Check-in and breakfast at Saguaro Ballroom Foyer

8:30am - Bus departure from the Sunset Terrace (outside the Saguaro Ballroom)

9:00am - 10:30am - Range Time

10:30am - 11:00am - Awards presentation

 11:00am - Bus departure

11:30am - Arrive at JW Marriott Desert Ridge

Great cooking is about more than recipes—it's about techniques. In this custom designed class you'll work together with fellow attendees in a fun, hands-on environment led by professional chef instructors. You'll also enjoy fresh make-your-own Mimosas and Bloody Mary's as well as pick out some swag with a $50 shopping voucher.

7:30am - 8:00am - Check-in and breakfast at Saguaro Ballroom Foyer

8:00am - Bus departure from the Sunset Terrace (outside the Saguaro Ballroom)

8:30 - 11:00am - Sur La Table Experience and shopping.

11:00am - Bus departure

11:30am - Arrive at JW Marriott Desert Ridge 

Always wanted to experience skydiving but too afraid to make the jump? There's no airplane, no parachute and no jumping required! Join us at Scottsdale's brand-new indoor skydiving facility and cross skydiving off your bucket list!

7:45am - 8:15am - Check-in and breakfast at Saguaro Ballroom Foyer

8:15am - Bus departure from the Sunset Terrace (outside the Saguaro Ballroom)

8:45am - 10:45am - iFLY Experience

11:00am - Bus departure

11:30am - Arrive at JW Marriott Desert Ridge

Are you an ace with a racket? We'll pair up doubles to go head to head, rotating through all the teams until we have a victor!

8:00am - 8:15am - Check-in at tennis courts

8:15am - Instruction for the tournament

11:00am -Tournament completes

Test your racing skills at Octane Raceway and zoom in your very own go-kart at up to 45 miles per hour. Will you have the fastest time on the track? Enjoy some friendly competition and get to know your fellow racers.

7:30am - 8:00am - Check-in and breakfast at Saguaro Ballroom Foyer 

8:00am - Bus departure from the Sunset Terrace (outside the Saguaro Ballroom) 

8:30am - 10:30am - Octane Raceway Experience

10:30am - Bus departure

11:00am Arrive at JW Marriott Desert Ridge

It’s crucial for restaurants to have a strategy as they increase their sustainable efforts. From sourcing and waste reduction to recycling and more, there’s a wide breadth of paths operators can take to make their operation more sustainable---depending on the time, effort and budget they are willing to devote. Learn about different efforts and ways those can be implemented, straight from the experts.

How predictive data can transform the performance of critical equipment in your restaurant.

78% of US workers are living paycheck to paycheck and have trouble making ends meet and this can be caused by the timing of payroll. This seemingly insignificant issue can be the reason for employees country wide to ask their bosses for a short term loan/payroll advance in order to make it to payday. This places employees in a very uncomfortable situation because they have to ask their boss for money and be exposed to the inevitable WHY and For What Purpose questions. rapid! now empowers the employee to avoid embarrassment which will lead to less problems with financial stress, moral and absenteeism.

Church’s Chicken led the most successful LTO rollout in years, resulting in double-digit increases in sales and transactions using a “Ready, Set, Execute!” approach. See how they proved ROI in terms of higher profitability, guest satisfaction scores, and mystery shopper scores using a training contest tied in with promotion and other readiness activities. Discover the power of a new metric called the Knowledge Score to drive repeatable success for LTOs as well as other initiatives.

This session offers the opportunity for attendees to hear a panel of franchisees talk through personal insights of their “2020 Growth Playbook”. During the session, the panel will address the key issues facing franchisees in today’s market, including but not limited to: Growing Traffic Counts, Technology, Labor, Food on Demand, and M&A - Consolidation.

Restaurants want new customers, more visits, larger average checks, and more profit. This is especially true now as consumers have more and more dining options. This session will cover how AI-powered personalization works, and why it’s the most profitable way to bring new customers, motivate customers to visit more often, and drive customers to buy more in-restaurant. See results from restaurants utilizing this strategy to increase visit frequency by 2x with a 50% return on investment and absolutely no additional work required.

Six days after David Gibbs moved up to the CEO’s job at Yum Brands, the industry giant announced that it was buying The Habit, its first restaurant acquisition in 18 years. Clearly this new chief would be no passive caretaker of an industry powerhouse that already included Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut. What is Gibbs’ vision for the industry’s second largest franchisor? How does he expect the restaurant business to change, and how, after 31 years with the company, does he see Yum’s famed and winning culture evolving in response? In one of his first interviews since becoming CEO, Gibbs will share his approach to leading a $5.67 billion business that strives to remain entrepreneurial, even as its restaurant chains expand to 20,000 domestic locations while continuing to dominate the foreign scene.

Consumers’ habits continue to shift, but one thing is sure: They want control of their dining experience, from how and where they order and pay to where they actually eat. It’s up to operators to meet consumers where they’re at---or risk losing that guest. In today’s complex and layered restaurant environment, operators need to figure out how to integrate all of these different types of services, which often require a slew of different technologies and touchpoints, into an overall offering. With reliance on technology higher than it’s ever been in the restaurant business, learn how top operators are crafting and executing roadmaps that incorporate automation, AI, robotics and more for every facet of the operation, from labor optimization to streamlining the supply chain and predicting guest preferences and behaviors.

Technomic will profile the current environment facing the industry with a look toward future expectations, using the most trusted global foodservice market data and insights. Overarching US economic and business issues will be discussed to provide context on restaurant industry impact. Latest restaurant industry sales data and over-arching trends that span the restaurant space and that are fueling industry growth will be revealed. Top performers in the Annual Technomic Top 1500 chain restaurant brands review will be covered along with consumer and menu-based insights factors driving success for these industry growth and leading players. Technomic will also present its 2020 forecasts for the restaurant industry, and provide perspectives for underlying growth.

Admiral William H. McRaven eloquently draws on his extensive career of 37 years of service as a Navy SEAL. The discussion addresses issues such as U.S. foreign policy, the current geopolitical landscape, leadership during high-stress situations, risk management, teamwork, resilience in the face of adversity, resourcefulness, personal accountability, and the determination to succeed.

SMG has been closely following third-party delivery trends and their impact on the restaurant industry since our first published report in 2017. Join this session for our latest research on what customers care about most + how it’s impacting their behavior, must-know data about top third-party delivery providers, and ways to regain customer loyalty after third-party delivery failures.

The foodservice supply chain offers incredible potential to 'make or break' a restaurant operation's success. Successful concepts utilize their supply chains to create lean end-to-end procurement networks that are scalable, safe, and reliable. Truly effective supply chain management reaches well beyond procurement to create robust data and analytics that can help gauge the strength of a concept and uncover impactful cost savings opportunities.

Hear from skilled Supply Chain Executives including operators, distribution experts and a manufacturer to learn 5 Steps to Supply Chain Success. 

Please join us as we welcome the new President & CEO of Women’s Foodservice Forum to Restaurant Leadership Conference. Spend a few minutes with Therese Gearhart to learn more about how her vision for the organization will accelerate the advancement of women leaders in the Foodservice Industry. 

For nearly four decades, Dennis Miller has been entertaining audiences across television, film, and on stages throughout the country with his acerbic wit and trademark “rants” on politics and pop culture. Equal parts comedian and social commentator, Dennis’s scathing-yet-playful perspective reminds audiences not to take themselves (or anyone else for that matter) too seriously. In such polarizing times, his pragmatic take on the world is refreshing. The Hollywood Reporter called his most recent special,” Fake News, Real Jokes” an hour of topical, scathing brilliance [. . .] the most cerebral, astute and clever stand-up ever to put mouth to microphone.

Miller’s next initiative is an inventive and humorous presentation—in his own words—“America: A Ten Point Plan for a Return to Civility. A how-to on disagreeing in a more agreeable manner. No sturm und drang, no lecturing, no scolding. Quite simply, a perceptive, tangible approach to sharing the sandbox with each other again.

Which is more important today to drive guest traffic: Creative thinking or Analytics? Each of us lean towards one direction but solving today’s traffic challenges requires the best of both the creative right brain and the data-driven left brain. Come and hear two industry pros: Brad Rukstales CEO, Cogensia and Robin Blanchette CEO, Norton-Creative share real examples of how both analytics and creative strategies are working to improve the guest experience. This will be a spirited, lively interaction and you will leave with specific steps your brand can take to improve your guest traffic.

Labor cost is a critical driver of business success. How can you tell if you are paying too much or too little? How can you learn about the latest offerings in employee benefits? This session will share restaurant compensation and benefits trends and reveal sources that you can use to know how your labor costs stack up!

Who is going to lead the top restaurant chains in the future? In its annual Power 20 list, Restaurant Business highlighted those future decision-makers—the emerging leaders well-poised to rise through the ranks of their operations and end up in the c-suite. In today's challenging labor market, these are not only the top examples of all-star employees, but the ones that need to be cultivated and inspired. They'll share what excites them, motivates them and keeps them sticking around plus much more. Their insights will provide a roadmap for finding and growing your company's leaders of tomorrow.

The restaurant industry is facing dramatic changes in the coming years. The business is saturated in the U.S., with no room to generate additional sales without taking them from existing locations. It faces new competitors in ghost kitchens that promise new economic models that could undercut existing players. And it faces a dramatically changing consumer that has more choices and more information than ever. All of this is putting operators on their heels and changing the very nature of what it means to be a restaurant.

Jonathan Maze, the executive editor of Restaurant Business Magazine, is the author of The Bottom Line blog and its companion newsletter and is the host of the weekly restaurant finance podcast A Deeper Dive. He gives his overview on the future of the restaurant industry, and how operators can combat these changes.