10 Benefits of Digital Menu Boards for Takeaways and Restaurants

Have you thought about ways to improve your customer experience? Or are you fed up with printing out paper poster menus every time there is a change? Have you thought about adding digital menu boards to your restaurant or takeaway?

If it is the cost that is putting you off, technology is always changing and improving with costs being reduced. Also, the benefits of the digital menu boards far outweigh the costs.

Menu changes are a major issue for restaurants and takeaways, especially businesses with multiple sites. Just one price change can mean you need to pay for a designer to change the menu, then pay for a printer and distributor, then your staff must display the new menu.

However, with digital menu boards, you have full control at the click of a button. You can change the menu instantly from any remote location, saving you time and money.

Another major benefit of the digital menu boards for restaurants and bars is that you can display marketing messages on the digital screens.

For example, if you are running a promotion for a certain drink or seasonal meal, you can have a video or image of the offer. This is more eye-catching than a traditional paper poster.

With the flexibility that digital offers, you can constantly change offers and content quickly to suit your customers.

Digital menu boards are great tools to help upsell products, especially when integrated with POS systems. When the two systems are linked, the digital signage can display complimentary menu items.

This can help to increase sales and increase profit. For example, if you are a restaurant, your digital menu board might recommend extra sauces or the perfect wine to go with the meal. Many customers will order these extra items as they are recommended.

Why is digital signage good at the upsell? It’s because an image is worth a thousand words. For example, if you see a video or image of a steaming cup of coffee on a cold day, you are more likely to want to buy it because you can imagine the taste and warmth. This is a big difference compared to the words ‘White Coffee’ on a chalkboard.

The digital menus do the upsell for you.

While digital menu boards can increase your profits, they can also reduce your operating costs.

It is expensive when you have to reprint your menu. Using digital menu boards in your restaurant or takeaway can cut out this cost all together and gives you more flexibility.

For example, have you ever had a load of menus printed, only to find out too late that there is a typo or the wrong price associated with an item? Well, digital gives you the opportunity to change it in an instant, no more printing fees.

Digital menu boards showcase beautiful images, and this can encourage customers to make a quick decision.

This is because customers do not have to read a big menu to understand the options. With the mouth-watering images, they can order the item they like the look of.

This may seem like a small benefit, but if you can take orders and serve customers quicker, you can increase your bottom line.

This faster service can improve your customer rating as people are not having to wait in a long line to be served. This can often make the difference between a returning customer and one who never visits again.

This goes with streamlining your ordering. Integrating imagery and video content on your menu boards is a great tool to entertain your customers.

By pre-occupying customers while they are waiting, their perceived wait time is much less. This, in turn, will improve their overall dining experience.

Some ideas of how to use your digital menu boards to entertain customers include adding fun facts, trivia, your chef providing a recipe, upcoming events or your restaurant’s history.

Have you ever forgotten to change your menu from breakfast to lunch? Or had a disgruntled customer who wants a breakfast item just as you are changing to the lunch menu?

With digital menu boards, you can schedule the menus to automatically change at a certain time of day. This gives you more time to concentrate on serving customers and improving their experience.

You can also schedule special items to appear depending on special events. For example, if your takeaway is near a football ground and you know there is a game on that day, you can schedule the menu to display a special offer for football fans during that time.

Digital menu boards can make displaying calorie counts for menu items very easy.

Also, as ingredients or recipes change, you can instantly update the calorie count without having to reprint your menus.

Another benefit of digital menu boards for takeaways and restaurants is that you can manage the menu content from anywhere. With content management systems (CMS), as long as your display is connected to the internet, you can connect to it and update the content from a PC anywhere in the world.

This gives you much more control over your brand, with each store showing the same content. Or you can even tailor each store to have their own content. This level of control is not possible with printed posters.

Digital menu boards are part of your overall customer experience and journey. They can help to create brand trust and consistency.

As digital menus are easy to use, this can free up more time for your staff to build relationships with your customers and provide a better service.

Great relationships are fundamental to the marketing of your restaurant or takeaway. This trust that you build, ultimately, means customers will return.

The benefits of digital menu boards for restaurants and takeaways far outweigh the cost of the initial installation. They are a great tool that can help improve your customer experience, cut costs and give you the control that you have always wanted.

At LCD Showcase, we have been manufacturing our very own digital menu boards and CMS for over 10 years. We are the one-stop-shop for all your digital signage needs. We can provide the whole package from manufacture and installation, through to content creation and training. This helps to keep your costs down and gives you control of the project, instead of having to source hardware, having to employ a graphic designer, and then having to install the system.

We pride ourselves on helping our customers discover the right solution to suit their needs and budget.

If you would like to discuss how we can help your takeaway or restaurant with digital menu boards, please call our team on 03300 020120 or fill in the contact form below.