Three days. Multi-track programming. Conference rooms that filled and stayed full. TRC 2025 — the Thailand Restaurant Conference — closed as the largest edition of the country's flagship operator gathering yet. Here's what made the difference this year.
The numbers
Headline figures from this year's edition:
What the audience came for
TRC has always been an operator event, but this year leaned harder into it. The programming focused on the things that actually keep restaurant owners up at night: unit economics, labor pressure, menu engineering, and the rapidly shifting platform landscape. Conversations about AI in restaurant operations drew standing-room crowds.
Notably, attendance held up across all three days. Trade-show fatigue is real — operators usually flag by Day 2. TRC bucked that pattern, which the team is treating as the most important signal coming out of the event.
What's changing for 2026
Next year's edition will expand the regional tracks — more space for operators outside Bangkok to lead sessions, not just attend them. The waitlist for speaker slots was longer than the slot count this year, which is the right problem to have.
"TRC is the one event a year where I can sit in a room of 4,000 operators and know everyone is working on the same problems I am."