Restaurants, Price Gaps, and AI: What We Heard at ICSC
- Jun 8
- 2 min read
We just spent a few days at the 2026 ICSC Conference with operators, retailers, brokers, and investors from around the country. Like always, the most useful part wasn't the panels — it was the hallway conversations about what people are actually doing right now. A few things came up again and again.
Restaurants and Service Tenants Are the Ones Expanding
The clearest signal on the floor: restaurants and service-based concepts are doing most of the active expanding right now. A lot of the market is cautious. These tenants are signing.
We see it in our own leasing — coffee, quick-serve, food and service concepts that people use regardless of where the economy sits. That's the whole appeal. They run on everyday consumer traffic, and well-located neighborhood retail delivers it.
The catch is supply. There aren't enough quality properties to meet the demand, and "quality" has gotten narrow — growing corridor, grocery anchor, good highway access. Retailers are expanding and turning down sites all day. The constraint isn't appetite. It's real estate.
Buyers and Sellers Aren't Meeting on Price
There's a standoff on pricing. A lot of sellers are still anchored to valuations from a few years ago, before rates moved, while buyers are underwriting today's cost of capital. That gap is why some deals sit and others get bid into cap rates that don't make sense.
One result worth noting: new development is competitive again. When building a new center costs about the same as buying a 1970s property at a stretched price, more buyers build. That's a sign resale pricing is ahead of itself — not that retail demand is soft.
AI Took Over the Conversation
AI was the loudest topic at the conference, especially around site selection. Bigger retailers and family offices are leaning on it hard — demographic reports, traffic counts, income data — and in a lot of cases trimming the regional staff who used to drive out and walk a site. The model filters first, and it screens out the large majority of sites before anyone looks.
We use AI, too. It's a strong tool and creates real leverage. But it's just that, a tool, and nothing more.
As more of the industry leans on AI to find the same handful of sites, the value of actually showing up — walking the property, knowing the market — goes up, not down.
The overall tone at ICSC was steady. Less chasing whatever's loudest, more operating well inside a defined niche. That fits how we think about retail: consistency and discipline tend to matter more than headlines.
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