After several years of disruption and recalibration following COVID, the restaurant technology M&A market is beginning to move with greater clarity and purpose. While 2025 did not represent a full return to peak deal activity, it marked a meaningful improvement over 2024 and reinforced the direction the market is heading. Improving operating performance across many restaurant technology businesses, combined with the aging of venture and private equity investments made between 2017 and 2021, is creating the conditions for increased consolidation. The restaurant technology sector remains highly fragmented, with a broad array of point solutions serving front-of-house, back-of-house, and enterprise-level needs. Over the past few years, that fragmentation has persisted largely because market uncertainty and depressed valuation multiples delayed exit timelines. As we move into 2026, those delays are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Investors are further along in their holding periods, and companies that have not met growth expectations are [...]