15 May 2026
Alicia Rieniets explores how AI, hyper-personalisation and trust are reshaping the future of QSR, and why the brands that win won’t necessarily be the cheapest or the loudest, but the ones that understand customers best.
Blog
There's a lot of conversation happening right now about AI in retail and hospitality. Much of it focuses on technology:
Important conversations for sure, and they need to be part of the AI strategy for QSR brands. But I think the bigger shift is happening somewhere else entirely.
Customer behaviour. Because the fast food brands that win the next era of convenience won't just be the ones using AI. They'll be the ones using it to understand customers better than anyone else.
For years, convenience in QSR meant:
That still matters. But the definition of convenience is changing. The next generation of convenience will be built around:
Not just getting food faster. But understanding what a customer wants before they actively search for it.
Historically, QSR marketing has been reactive. A customer opens an app. A brand responds with an offer. But AI changes that dynamic completely. The brands that win will increasingly anticipate behaviour instead of simply responding to it.
Think about:
This is not just personalisation. It's contextual relevance at scale. And customers will quickly begin to expect it.
One of the biggest risks for QSR brands right now is relying too heavily on broad, price-led promotions. Most customers are already overwhelmed with:
The result? More noise. Less differentiation. The brands that stand out in the next era will not be the ones sending the most offers. They'll be the ones sending the right offer, at the right moment, in the right context. That's a very different marketing system.
This is where I think many QSR brands need to rethink loyalty entirely. Most loyalty programs today are still built around transactions. Buy more. Earn more. But the next generation of loyalty systems should be designed to understand behaviour, not just reward spend. The real value sits in:
The next generation of loyalty programs won't just reward customers. They'll learn them. And that creates a very different type of relationship. Some global QSR brands are already moving in this direction, using loyalty ecosystems and behavioural data to personalise experiences at scale.
As AI becomes more embedded in discovery and recommendation, trust signals become increasingly important. This is where I believe many brands are underestimating what comes next. Because AI-driven recommendation systems won't just evaluate price. They'll increasingly evaluate:
This is exactly why I believe trust is becoming the new ranking. The brands that are easiest to trust will increasingly become the brands that are easiest to choose.
This shift is not about creating more ads. It's about building connected customer systems. The brands that succeed will not think about loyalty, media, digital, CRM, delivery, and content as separate functions. They'll build ecosystems where each interaction strengthens the next one. That requires:
This is where the opportunity really sits.
In my recent articles, I've written about marketing systems, agentic commerce, trust becoming the new ranking, and why content is increasingly acting as infrastructure, not just communication. QSR sits at the intersection of all of these shifts. Because this category generates an extraordinary amount of behavioural data, repeat interaction and decision signals.
The opportunity now is not simply to use AI. It's to build connected customer systems that make the experience more relevant, more predictive, more trusted, and easier to choose.
If I was leading marketing in QSR right now, this is where I'd start.
Most QSR brands are still heavily reliant on broad discounting and generic offers. But the future of growth won't come from sending more promotions. It will come from understanding:
The difference between a generic lunch offer and a high-protein recommendation after a gym session is the difference between mass marketing and contextual relevance. And customers will increasingly expect the second.
2. Treat Loyalty as a Customer Intelligence Engine
This is one of the biggest missed opportunities in QSR today. Most loyalty programs still operate as points systems. But the brands that win will use loyalty to build behavioural understanding. Not just frequency, spend, and transactions, but:
Because the future value of loyalty is not rewarding purchases. It's predicting needs.
3. Build a Trust Index, Not Just a Brand Campaign
In an AI-influenced environment, trust signals become commercially critical. This goes beyond brand awareness. It includes:
Historically, marketing measured visibility. Increasingly, brands will need to measure confidence. Because recommendation engines, AI systems and customers themselves will all favour the brands that feel easiest to trust.
4. Connect Content, CRM and Customer Experience
One of the biggest problems I see across marketing systems is fragmentation. Content sits in one team. CRM sits in another. Customer experience somewhere else entirely. But in categories like QSR, these systems should be working together constantly. Your loyalty data, content strategy, app experience, creator partnerships, offers, and customer journey should reinforce the same behavioural patterns and positioning. This is how brands move from transactional relationships to embedded relevance.
5. Pressure Test Your Brand Through an AI Lens
This is the question I believe more leadership teams should be asking. Not "Are we using AI?" but "Would AI confidently recommend us?" Because increasingly, brands will be evaluated based on:
The brands that are easiest to understand and easiest to trust will increasingly become the easiest to choose.
The next era of QSR growth will not be won by the brands shouting the loudest or discounting the hardest. It will be won by brands that understand customers deeply, remove friction intelligently, personalise meaningfully, build trust consistently, and create experiences that feel relevant, not generic. That's a very different competitive advantage. And it's arriving faster than many realise.
The next era of convenience won't be won at the counter. It will be won in the moments before the customer even realises they're hungry.
About the Author
Alicia Rieniets is the founder of CMO On Call, a fractional marketing consultancy helping organisations drive growth through aligned brand, customer and performance strategies. With over 20 years' experience across brands including Ford, Bupa, Australia Post and UniSuper, Alicia is known for transforming marketing functions into commercially driven systems that deliver measurable results. She works closely with leadership teams to simplify complexity, unlock growth and build marketing that works.
Expert Contributor
Alicia Rieniets
Chief Marketing Officer
Results-Driven Marketing Leader Specialising in Transformational Strategies
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