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Go ahead and add Ronald McDonald and Travis Scott to the list of unlikely 2020 team ups, as the world’s hottest rapper and the world’s biggest burger joint recently unveiled a limited time promotion, the first celebrity-branded meal at McDonald's since the Michael Jordan extra value meal in the mid 1990s. 

As retailers prepare to reopen their doors, there are immediate needs to be addressed: Compliance with local restrictions, realigning resources, and, most importantly, ensuring employees and customers both feel and are as safe as possible. 

In what has become an annual tradition the first week of every year, Coachella announced its 2020 lineup and, as always, it’s basically everybody who’s anybody. Frank Ocean! Lana Del Rey! FKA twigs! (And that’s just Sunday!)

Malls, if recent southern California developments are to be believed, are trying to become more like homes. Indeed, as brick-and-mortar retail steadily loses foot traffic to second-screen, at-home shopping, traditional retail spaces are reconsidering their value proposition in a post-anchor store world, and it seems some are proposing they become more like a home.

Yet fast casual remains a singular force in food service, one that continues to dominate the cultural landscape. So, a little more than a decade into its reign, we thought we’d check in on the industry: what do consumers want from a fast casual experience, what are they actually getting, and how can operators start to bridge the difference? What concepts most excite consumers, which seem passé at this point, and what can QSR and casual dining operators learn from all of this? These are some of the questions we set out to answer in our 2019 Fast Casual Food Industry Report.