KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – Kansas City restaurants are buzzing in anticipation of the influx of worldwide visitors that will descend upon the city next summer.
The 48-team FIFA World Cup tournament is anticipated to bring a major business boom, and the restaurant scene is already transforming in preparation for the event.
“I think we’re as ready as we can be,” said Mike Burris, the Executive Director of the Missouri Restaurant Association.
Next year, six matches will be played at Arrowhead Stadium, and an anticipated 650,000 soccer fans will arrive in the area, bringing a projected impact of $653 million.
Kansas City’s Union Station decorated to promote the FIFA World Cup coming in the summer of 2026.(KCTV5/Ryan Hennessy)
Burris says restaurants are expected to see between $60 to $90 million as fans pack into Kansas City dining rooms.
“We’re excited, and there’s no reason not to be,” said David Lopez, the Director of Operations at Manny’s Restaurant, a fixture in the Crossroads for nearly half a century. “For us, we’re a very large restaurant and we’re very accustomed to handling big crowds, big parties, large walk-ins, large reservations, private events.
“Our staff, we’re ready to go.”
First, Burris says getting past language barriers is an important step toward a successful visit for international fans.
“There’s like five regions they can come from in the world,” Burris told KCTV as he, the Missouri Restaurant Association and KC 2026 organizers await official word on which teams are coming. “What we’ve done so far is we’ve prepared for what we know.”
Twenty-eight of the 48 teams that will play in the tournament have officially qualified. Of those 24, Burris says they already have a playbook that features tips for serving 11 different languages. In December, the entire field will be determined.
“Now, we have basically a playlist or a worksheet that shows us how you would communicate with every one of those (possible) languages,” he said.
The playbook Burris mentioned is for hosts, servers, and restaurant owners, and is available for any restaurant. He says it will play a critical role in making sure communication is clear with the city’s visitors.
“So we have about 50 phrases that it would take from greet-and-seat to the whole menu experience, all the way down to closing out the check and letting them go,” Burris said.
Restaurants will also have to adjust to the cultural dining habits of those who visit the City of Fountains. Europeans, for example, eat later than Americans, with dinner in Spain typically falling between 9 and 11 p.m.
Kansas City sports fans, dignitaries and many more celebrated the City of Fountains as a World Cup host city in 2026.(Mike Gunnoe 2022 | KC2026)
With dinner comes wine or other alcoholic beverages.
To handle those changes in behavior for consumers, Burris says Missouri recently passed a temporary liquor law that will allow restaurants to sell food and alcohol for 23 hours during the World Cup.
“If (fans) want to stay out ‘til 5 o’clock in the morning, they can,” Burris said.
Europeans also tend to pay in cash, something Americans aren’t used to anymore.
“About 90 to 95% of the payments that we take here in the restaurants is credit cards,” Burris said. “It may sound funny, but the first thing we started telling our restaurants is to make sure that everyone knows how to give change.”
Burris says restaurants will staff up, and he doesn’t anticipate any worker shortages.
“For us, that’s a good problem,” he says, noting restaurants will “put their part-timers to work full-time if they want to.”
The Missouri Restaurant Association’s new “Serve Success” program also gives restaurant staffers a chance to level up with the big event on the horizon.
Lopez says serving people is at the heart of Manny’s mission. The World Cup crowd will bring its biggest challenge yet.
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Dining and Cooking