10 Benefits of Using a Digital Menu Board

Make ordering easier with more pictures and less text.

Have you thought about adding a digital menu board to your restaurant?

The benefits of this type of menu can far outweigh just the aesthetics of the board itself. The benefits extend to additional efficiency, increased revenue, and more customer satisfaction. (tweet this)

#1: Easily Change the Menu

When you want to change a menu sign, you have to pay a designer to change it, and then you have to pay to reprint it. But, with a digital menu board, you can change the menu yourself at no cost to you.

This makes it infinitely easier to manage your food items and prices and update the menu as necessary. You can add new items easily, remove non-performing ones, and even spice up the menu by moving things around.

#2: Display Your Marketing Message

Another benefit of the digital display is that you can show any of your marketing messages.

For example, perhaps you have a new menu item to highlight, or you are offering a special promotion. You might even be hosting an event and can highlight it on the digital board.

Because the display is ever-evolving, you can display new graphics and video at any time to grab the attention of your customers.

#3: Upsell with Ease

Digital menu boards are champs at the upsell especially when they’re integrated with your POS system. When this integration is working, the digital screen can display complimentary menu items.

This can give you a huge rise in sales. For example, if you are a pizza restaurant, your digital board might recommend a salad or breadsticks. Many customers will go ahead and order, thus increasing sales.

Why is the digital menu board so good at the upsell? Well, because an image is worth a thousands words from your staff. (tweet this)

Imagine seeing a photo or video of those steaming hot breadsticks, nice cold drink, or delicious, cheesy appetizer. By adding your most enticing products to your digital menu, the board does the upsell for you.

#4: Save Money on Printing

Yes, digital menu boards increase your profits, but they also reduce your operating costs.

When you use a digital menu, you don’t have to update and reprint your menu. For many restaurants, this saves a lot of money because they reprint menus on a monthly or seasonal basis.

You can update your digital menu at no cost. What’s more, if the inevitable typo shows up, you can fix it in seconds.

#5: Streamline Ordering

Your digital menu board showcases beautiful imagery, and this encourages your customers to make a quick decision.

This is because they don’t have to read a bunch of words and can just pick out their order by what the food looks like.

You’ll find that you can take orders faster and serve more people, again increasing your bottom line.

This also improves your customer service rating because people aren’t having to wait to order food in a long line. This can mean the difference between a returning customer and one you never see again.

Entice your customers with vivid, beautiful photographs.

#6: Manage Perceived Wait Times

This goes hand in hand with streamlining your ordering because integrating imagery and video content on your menu boards provides your customers with in-restaurant entertainment.

Because they’re preoccupied while they’re waiting, their perceived wait time is much less, and their overall dining experience is better.

Some tips include adding fun facts, trivia, interesting videos, your chef providing a recipe, or upcoming events to occupy your diners while they wait.

On a really busy shift, the digital menu board just may keep your diners from abandoning your line.

#7:  Use Dayparting

Say goodbye to the traditional breakfast, lunch and dinner menus.

With the digital board, you won’t ever forget to change out your paper menus. You can set your digital board to automatically change from breakfast to lunch and on to dinner.

With the menu, you can preset and schedule your content to display when and how you want.

By automating your dayparting, you can spend more time concentrating on your customers and providing them the best experience.

#8: Comply with Menu Labeling Laws

Many areas of the country require restaurants to list a calorie count for their menu items, and the digital menu board makes this easy.

What’s more, as your ingredients or recipes change, you can instantly update the calorie counts without having to order more printed menus.

#9: Enjoy Usability

Another benefit is that you can manage the menu board from anywhere – the restaurant, your home, or on vacation at the beach.

You can manage your entire network from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.

This eliminates any headaches for your staff and ensures the job is done right and consistently.

#10: Build Stronger Relationships

Digital menu boards are part of your overall brand experience and as such help you build stronger relationships with your customers.

Because the menu board is simple and easily used, your servers have more time to develop relationships with your customers and provide better service.

Building relationships is fundamental to the marketing of your restaurant and ultimately means the difference between customers with long-term loyalty and those that rarely visit.

Final Thoughts

The benefits of the digital menu board are many because it allows you to connect in a visual manner with your customers.

Digital boards connect with your customers and mentally affect their order choices by providing beautiful images as well as nutritional information.

The board lets you concentrate on customer service and provide a better overall experience to your diners.

Today’s restaurant guests expect a great dining experience, and the digital menu board helps you provide it.

At Restaurant Engine, not only do we create great, responsive websites, but you can count on us to create a website that drives business to all your restaurants and edges you above the competition by using mobile-friendly design with a terrific user experience. Ready to take the plunge and create a website with an online menu, blog and beautiful photos? Get your free website consultation today!

Image: Levi Elizaga and Gabrielle Cepella on Unsplash

One response to “10 Benefits of Using a Digital Menu Board”

1. Digital Menu Boards says:

   April 8, 2020 at 4:24 am

   Yes It’s true that Digital Menu Boards keep increasing restaurant sales, help in order processing, eye-catching food photos will increase the selling of similar menu, as well as increase seasonal food sales during seasons. So digital creation of digital menu boards is significant. Lucky Blog.

   Reply