APAC QSR leaders shift focus to culture and collaboration in 2026

Growth ranked as the top priority for only a small fraction of leaders.

Asia-Pacific operators are recalibrating their priorities, not around revenue growth or innovation, but around the people on the floor.

Speaking at the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards 2026, Mark Dembitz, general manager for APAC at Lark, underscored the rising cost of ignoring frontline staff. 

“When people feel supported, included, and valued, they stay—and businesses tend to thrive,” he said. “When they leave, they take customer knowledge, relationships, and ownership—and in a tight-margin industry, that’s a big problem.”

Dembitz and his team interviewed 22 leaders from across the region to understand strategic priorities for 2026.

Their findings challenge conventional assumptions: growth ranked as the top priority for only a small fraction of leaders.

Instead, operators are putting culture first, viewing company culture as a competitive advantage, whilst collaboration and smarter, faster cross-team communication are increasingly central.

Innovation is still on the agenda, but its focus is on embedding creativity and problem-solving across all layers of the organisation rather than chasing headline growth alone.

Several operators are already making structural changes to back this approach. 

GYG has renamed its headquarters the “Restaurant Support Centre” to signal its role in supporting outlets, whilst Nando’s has shifted decision-making back to store managers, granting them autonomy to run operations locally.

Dembitz pointed out the operational stakes of neglecting frontline input: mistakes and delays in communication are costly, and high staff turnover erodes both knowledge and margins.

He emphasised that technology, including artificial intelligence, cannot replace the nuanced judgment and customer relationships cultivated by frontline teams.

“The floor now informs headquarters as much as headquarters informs the floor,” Dembitz said. “This is what we call democratising innovation—it makes some players stand out from the others.”