Article

Menu boards deliver upgraded restaurant experiences

With increasingly tight margins and fickle audiences, many restaurant franchises might balk at spending more money on technology. However, despite the initial cost, digital menu boards can help restaurants boost sales and improve guest experience, such as La Paella's recent menu board makeover.

Image via NoviSign

June 7, 2019 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator

With increasingly tight margins and fickle audiences, many restaurant franchises might balk at spending more money on technology. Despite the initial cost, digital menu boards can help restaurants boost sales and improve guest experience.

Boosting sales

Measuring advertising effectiveness with digital signage is slowly getting easier, especially due to increasing integrations with other systems, such as point-of-sale.

Restaurants can directly integrate data from their menu board campaigns with their POS systems, Chad Bogan, director of sales and marketing, NoviSign said in an interview.

"An example of this, would be a restaurant has one monthly special (say large three topping pizza only $9.99) that plays exclusively on one of the digital menu boards. On a static menu board (non digital) a separate special (say medium one topping pizza $4.99) good be displaying," Bogan said. "After a 60 day period a POS sales report can be generated that only lists the two monthly specials. From that report you will be able to how the two specials performed = sales on digital menu board versus sales on static non digital board."

The price of much of the hardware and software has also gone down significantly, making the investment more attractive. For example, Bogan said most restaurants can find Android media players for around $40 each, or they can utilize system-on-a-chip displays.

Guest experience

Another big advantage of menu boards is that they allow restaurants to easily change menu items on the fly and directly engage with guests, as La Paella, a traditional Spanish dining fast casual restaurant based in Los Angeles found out. La Paella has one location in Los Angeles, which opened in 1995.

La Paella was recently looked at improving its guest experience by making it easier for customers to view its expansive menu of paella rice dishes featuring clams, shrimp or Spanish sausage as well as its tapas and Bocata sandwiches. In order to do this, the franchise deployed digital menu boards.

La Paella was looking for a solution that offered:

• System-on-a-chip display.
• Pricing, images and descriptions.
• Cloud-based CMS.

The fast casual teamed up with Nextelix Connect, which selected four Philips D-Line 49-inch commercial grade SoC Displays, powered by NoviSign's Cloub-Based Digital Menu Board Software for the boards.

"Within minutes I was able to easily design my menu, add new items, changes prices, and insert my food images," Eddie Estevez, COO, La Paella, said in the statement. "Whenever I need to make an update, I simply log-in to my account online and apply my changes. Within the seconds of applying my changes, my digital menu boards update."

NoviSign itself offers monthly pricing subscriptions and doesn't charge any activation fees, Bogan said.

How to pick the right one

Of course, even with all these advantages, many restaurants might be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of digital signage solutions on the market. There are a few easy ways to simplify the process, Bogan said.

"Start with taking measurements of the available space you have for the actual digital menu boards," Bogan said. "Once you understand the total number of screens that can be installed, outline your menu and all items that you want displayed."

Restaurants should also consider if they want to integrate larger images and videos into their menu boards.

"If you're looking to add images and videos either feature 10+ items on one half of the screen and dedicate the other half to large HD images and videos," Bogan said. "Adding a screen just for media based promotions would be the best option because customers purchase food with their eyes. Having large HD-4K media content of the food items will best emphasis the items while ensuring people clearly see the items."

About Bradley Cooper

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Bradley Cooper is the editor of ATM Marketplace and Food Truck Operator. He was previously the editor of Digital Signage Today. His background is in information technology, advertising, and writing.

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