QSR magazine announced that its fifth Fast Casual Meet Up of 2019 will be held in New York City. The Meet Up, part of a 10-city series across the U.S., is on June 20 at 6 p.m. at Loreley Restaurant & Biergarten in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

“This is our fourth-annual New York Fast Casual Meet Up, and we anticipate it being bigger than ever,” says Sam Oches, QSR’s editor. “New York never disappoints, and over the last four years, we’ve had a blast getting to know the city’s leading fast-casual innovators.”

The Fast Casual Meet Up series launched in 2015 as a way to unite communities of fast-casual operators across the country. The free networking receptions feature food and drinks in a relaxed setting, giving founders, executives, managers, and other restaurant representatives a platform for meeting peers and learning more about what’s going on in their local communities.

To date, representatives from more than 600 brands have joined QSR at a Fast Casual Meet Up.

“We’ve had great feedback from operators about the Meet Ups, and countless partnerships and friendships have emerged from them,” Oches says. “Restaurant professionals are always working so hard and rarely get time to interact with their peers. We want to give them that opportunity so they can learn from each other—and we didn’t want to make them fly across the country to a conference to achieve that.”  

To RSVP to the free New York Fast Casual Meet Up, restaurant operators simply need to visit QSRmagazine.com/nyc-meet-up and input their information. (Vendors/suppliers are not permitted to the Meet Ups.)

Emerging Concepts, Fast Casual, News