7 Benefits of Using Digital Menu Board in Quick Service Restaurant
A quick-service restaurant (QSR) is also commonly known as a fast-food restaurant. The restaurant aims to serve customers with food and drinks that require minimal preparation time. The QSR industry has existed for a very long time. From the assembly line to the food menu and customer service, many aspects of the quick service restaurant have been innovated to meet current trends and demands. One of the innovations made is to display food menus digitally using a digital menu board.
A digital menu board is a digital signage or a digital display that is used to display food menus and other information in digital media formats such as images, videos, and animations. Due to some outstanding advantages, more and more restaurants are replacing their traditional food menus and display tools with digital menu boards.
In this article, we will look at the top 7 benefits of using a digital menu board in a quick-service restaurant (QSR).
- Quick Content Update
- Reduce Waiting Time
- Promote Upsell Offers
- Dayparting and Scheduled Content
- Remote and Centralized Management
- Improve Customer Experience
- Save Money and Increase Revenue
1. Quick Content Update
From designing to printing, traditional food menu takes time to process. Besides, it lacks flexibility when it comes to promotional menus. Most promotional menus are time-based. Promotion periods are shorter and may be changed or extended at any time. In short, more printings are needed if there are any updates or revisions to the menus.
Using a digital menu board can help to save time in updating menus and content. Digital menu board is equipped with a content management system that helps to facilitate the processes of uploading, managing, and publishing content. Most content management systems also come with pre-designed templates. Thus, menu updating is no longer a time-consuming task.
In addition, digital menu board uses digital formats such as videos, images, and graphics. While designing a digital content from scratch can take some times, uploading and publishing content can be carried out easily with only a few finger or mouse clicks.
When the printing task is eliminated, lots of time is saved.
2. Reduce Waiting Time
Time is not only valuable to your quick service business, but it is also important to your customers. You can lose your customers easily if the waiting time is too long.
To reduce waiting time or the time spent in the queue, using digital menu board is one of the most effective methods. Digital menu boards allow customers to review your product offerings or menus while waiting for their turns. This can save both food ordering time and waiting time. What a win-win situation for your business and customers!
3. Promote Upsell Offers
It is no secret that upselling is one of the most profitable strategies used by various fast food restaurants. The traditional approach of upselling usually happens at the counter or cash register where the cashier will recommend additional items to buy. This approach can be ineffective as most customers are not willing to spend more time during food ordering. Some customers may feel uncomfortable too when the cashiers are promoting aggressively.
Digital menu board can offer a better solution as it allows the upselling approach to happen in an earlier stage when the customers are waiting in their queues. You can display all kinds of set meals or combos on the digital menu boards alongside your core products.
Displaying upsell offers while the customers are waiting can also give you more times to persuade your customers. From colours to design layouts and attractive visual elements, you must use whatever you can when displaying your offers on the digital menu boards. Try your very best to attract customers’ attention while they are still queuing.
4. Dayparting & Scheduled Content
Traditional signages and menus are static. Static display materials are not interesting yet inflexible. Imagine that you are selling sandwiches only in the morning and spaghetti only in the evening. Are you going to display both offers together regardless of the time session?
It is useless to promote your spaghetti menus in the morning when you do not offer spaghetti during the breakfast session. It is confusing and ineffective.
Then what are you going to do? Are you going to replace the signage or menus when it is evening? And change again for morning’s breakfast session?
When you are using digital menu boards, you can upload and schedule both breakfast and dinner menus beforehand. The digital menu board will then display relevant menus or content accordingly based on your content schedule.
5. Remote & Centralized Management
Some restaurant owners argue that printed menus or displays are more cost-effective. Depending on the situation, this can be true especially when the owner owns only one or two restaurants. Everything can be done manually and easily.
However, what if you own a large network of restaurants or branches nationwide? Do you still want to update your printed menus and materials manually at every single branch? How can you monitor effectively if there are any damaged materials and outdated promotional content or menu?
Digital menu board provides a centralized management approach where everything can be done remotely. It can help to standardize content deliveries for all branches. From a single remote location, whether it is uploading content, monitoring the health status of devices, updating or scheduling content, most tasks can be carried out by a single administrator.
If the business owner wants to run a campaign at all of his branches, all menus or promotional content at all branches can be updated remotely. This can help to save time and reduce human error when updating manually.
6. Improve Customer Experience
Using digital menu board is beneficial to both businesses and customers. The ultimate goal of an enhanced customer experience is to build great relationships between a business and its customers.
But how can a restaurant achieve that? Simple. Just make your customers happy.
When waiting time is reduced, customers are happy. When there are attractive add-on offers, customers are happy. When the menus are attractive and relevant, customers are happy. When all obvious mistakes are avoided, customers are happy. All of these can be achieved by using digital menu boards.
Besides, a restaurant owner can also use the digital menu boards to display corporate videos or brand stories. While waiting in the queue, customers can understand the brand or the company. The digital menu boards can also be used to display nutritional information. This does not only help the customers to understand more about the food products but will also establish a trusting relationship with the restaurant.
7. Save Money & Increase Revenue
No matter how many benefits a digital menu board can bring to the business, nobody will adopt it if it does not help to save money and generate profits. Luckily, investing in digital menu boards is profitable.
Digital menu board is invented to replace traditional signages and menus. These traditional menus and displays are expensive over the long term since they require ongoing maintenance costs. Besides, using these traditional tools can be time-consuming too.
Digital menu board is easier, faster, and time-saving. When less time is involved, more money is saved. When it is easier and most tasks can be done remotely, fewer human resources are needed.
Ultimately, when time and all the unnecessary costs are reduced, a restaurant can generate more profits over the long term.
Conclusion
Digital menu board is a great display tool for any quick-service restaurant. It helps a business to connect with its customers effectively by displaying engaging menus and content. It also helps to provide a better customer experience.
Today, restaurant owners must understand that food is not the only winning formula for a successful food business. Digital menu board is also one of the important aspects that must be paid attention to.