In today’s market, restaurants that can react quickly and efficiently to recently presented opportunities have the best chance of success. Think about the local deli, fast-food eatery or even the most upscale of restaurants. These companies must promote their continuously changing menus with up-to-date entrees, appetizers, desserts and pricing. With food items and pricing maybe changing every day, the older approach of displaying printed menus on stands outside of an establishment, using kindergarten-style plastic lettering pushed to grooved planks or even relying on professionally printed backlit signs suspended from a wall behind the counter are old, tired and less-than-effective. Enter digital signage.
Digital signs allow Restaurateurs to react quickly to fluctuations in pricing and menu choices. They create emphasizing new specials and promotional supplies at a minute’s notice functional, providing added marketing flexibility. They also reduce the cost of printing new signage. Collectively those benefits can significantly affect the bottom line. But the benefits do not stop there. Consider that unlike printed signs, digital signage is not static. It is simple to add movement and audio to a menu board. Imagine hearing the noise of a searing beef on the grill as a picture of the chef grilling the beef comes up on the signal. Try that with print.
The good news for restaurant Owners is that special-purpose digital signage applications exists that makes producing appealing, effective digital menu boards quickly and effortless. Many times, such programs bridge the gap between other applications commonly utilized to manage a restaurant, such as spreadsheet applications, word processing applications, XML resources as well as Internet resources, and the digital menu board. The Program serves as a data conduit, extracting menu items and pricing from spreadsheet applications and automatically populating attractive digital signage templates for display on digital menu boards.
Such software also lets Restaurant chains tap into the power of networked electronic signals by encouraging centralized management of multiple digital menu board software at a digital signage network. Nationwide, regional, local or even restaurant-specific changes could be made to digital menu boards from a central control point. Digital menu boards open up the opportunity to profit from new revenue streams for restaurateurs. Consider the potential for procuring advertising revenue or any other promotional consideration from vendors, by simply offering time and space around the menu board.
On the level of an individual Restaurant, this opportunity could mean a restaurant owner selling advertisements to other companies in the region or maybe bartering advertising time on the screen in exchange for products or services for the company. For larger restaurant chains, there’s the capacity to tap into national or regional advertising revenue for commercial playback screens across the whole network of signs.