16 Reasons to Use Digital Menu Boards for Restaurants

Digital menu boards replace traditional posters and signs and are increasingly popular in restaurants across the country. By offering more dynamic and real-time menu board designs, they are attention-grabbing and have many benefits for your business.

Let’s look at 16 reasons you can consider setting up digital menu boards for a restaurant.

What are Digital Menu Boards?

Digital menu boards are to show electronic menus on digital display screens, typically mounted on the wall or placed in a prominent place. It allows your customers to take a look at your menu while they’re still waiting in line and to see what their options are before they get to the counter.

16 Reasons to Use a Digital Menu Board

1. Easy and Convenient

Digital signage menus offer a win-win solution for both you and the customer. Customers appreciate digital boards because they help to present information in an easily digestible way and are eye-catching.

From a manager’s or owner’s perspective, especially in quick-service restaurants, a digital signage menu is incredibly easy to update. It can help to keep the business running more efficiently overall.

2. Cost-Effective

Regularly printing out restaurant menus and having to order new posters every time your many changes can get pretty pricey. When you use a digital type instead, you will not incur any further costs when you update your menu.

3. Better Customer Experience

When a customer is new to a restaurant, it can sometimes be confusing to understand what food items are offered and what the options are. A digital restaurant menu shown on display can help to make the experience more pleasant and simpler for new customers.

In addition to this, having the experience be more interactive and visual can help customers enjoy their time at your restaurant as well as help to reduce the time that they wait.

4. Help Boost Your Sales

When you use a digital menu solution wisely, it can even boost your sales. One study looking at the use of it by Prime Burger found that their use brought in a 50% rise in sales within one year.

5. 24/7 Advertisements

If your digital menu is visible even when your restaurant is closed, you essentially have a salesperson delivering a marketing message at all hours of the day. It can be a great way to get the word out about your restaurant 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

6. Highlight New or Special Items

If you have recently introduced new items onto the digital menu, it can be a wonderful place to advertise your new options. It can help new items go from obscure and unknown to quite popular much more quickly than if you only have a chalkboard or paper menus.

7. Easy to Update

When you use paper menus, you must incur new printing costs every time you change. Updating digital displays is incredibly simple and free of charge.

To update your menu it will only take one person a couple of minutes to make changes. This is a huge time saver when you consider how long menu designs take when you are using printed materials.

8. Maintain Brand Consistency

Having a brand personality and ensuring that your marketing is consistent with your brand personality across all platforms is essential. When you use a digital board, it means that any marketing changes you make to your Internet presence can be reflected aesthetically in your restaurant right away.

It also means that if your restaurant has several locations it’s easy to maintain consistent marketing.

9. Help Reduce Wait Time

Setting up menu board boards for restaurants can help diners waiting to decide what they’re going to order before they get to the counter. This means that lines will move more quickly, reducing wait time.

Additionally, when restaurants choose to display other promotional material or interesting facts on their menu display, this can help keep waiting customers entertained and in good spirits.

10. Help Meet Health Care Regulations

As a restaurant owner or manager, you understand how crucial it is to stay in compliance with state and federal law. Since healthcare regulations are always changing in the food service industry, using a digital menu can ensure that you can swiftly make any necessary changes to your menu.

For chain restaurants, it is required that they display the number of calories in each menu item. When you go digital with your menu board, you can make such changes quickly and conveniently.

11. Attention-Grabbing

People’s eyes are naturally drawn to screens when they are present. Awaiting customers will be much more likely to take your promotional material if it is playing on the TV rather than on a static poster.

12. Automatically Rotate Your Menus

Many restaurants have different available menus throughout the day. If your breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus have specific times when they start going into effect, you can automatically program your menu board and switch content. This is also helpful if you offer a special menu on the weekends, for brunch, or for happy hour.

13. Help Upsell Customers

The boards are great for displaying add-ons and upselling. This is a great tool for restaurants to help boost their overall sales by encouraging customers to purchase combo deals or add-ons.

14. Make the Most Out of Foot Traffic

If your restaurant is located in a place with heavy foot traffic, then a digital menu outside of the location can help bring in more customers.

It is very common for people to look at a restaurant’s menu before choosing where to eat. Having this new type instead of a printed menu visible outside can be much more engaging for potential diners.

15. Help Build Connection to the Community

Your menu board is a way for you to communicate with all of the customers in your restaurant. This is an excellent opportunity to display relevant local information or news to help your customer base understand your engagement in the local community.

16. Eliminate Inefficiencies and Errors

One of the most important tasks for an owner or a manager is to reduce the number of errors and inefficiencies. The entire network of menu boards can be managed from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

It means that you can avoid printing errors, employee mishaps, shipping costs, or many other things that can go wrong when you have a static printed menu.

How to Make a Digital Menu Board?

In order to have digital menu boards in your restaurant, you’ll need displays, software, and media players.

1. Choosing a Digital Display

When choosing a display for your menu boards, one of the first things you want to consider is the location.

You want your display to be located in a high-traffic area where most people will be able to see it clearly. You also want to consider how big the display will be and the TV’s viewing angles.

Of course, you need to install displays in landscape or portrait style according to your menu board layout designs.

The brightness of the room is also an important consideration when deciding on your display. In a bright space, you’ll want to use a display designed for brightly lit areas.

Lastly, you also want to take into consideration the price, durability, and warranty of any display you purchase.

2. Choosing Digital Menu Boards Software

You have two different options when it comes to the digital menu board software you choose.

First, you could use on-premises software. This type of software runs on your company’s servers and consists of different modules and databases.

On-Premises Software

When you choose to use on-premises software, you will be able to have total ownership and control over the system, and an Internet connection will even be necessary to use it. It’s important to understand, however, that you will also be responsible for maintaining both the hardware and the software. This can cost extra time and money.

A second option is cloud-based software or web-based. The software is not run on servers located at your company but instead hosted on a vendor server. There are many reasons why it can make sense to use cloud-based software instead of on-premises software.

Cloud-based Software

Cloud-based software allows you to access the software from multiple devices anywhere and anytime. You also won’t be responsible for maintaining and upgrading the hardware and software as you would for on-premises software. This is because the providers of cloud servers guarantee both responsibility and security.

With cloud-based software, you must have an Internet connection all the time. It can also be challenging to customize this type of software.

3. Choosing a Media Player

A media player is the second type of hardware necessary for a menu board. This will connect to the display via different ports, such as USB, VGA, HDMI, DVI, or DP, to display your desired digital content.

Searching for an All-in-One Solution for Digital Menu Board?

Hardware and Cloud-Based Digital Menu Software

The necessary research to pick out the supper components for the digital signage menu board can be time-consuming and frustrating. Luckily, there is an all-in-one solution.

With AG Neovo’s Neovo Signage solution, you can publish your content to multiple displays instantly and seamlessly. This digital signage software is cloud-based and is more secure and safe. You’ll be able to publish real-time content and schedule content from any location with Internet access.

The cloud-based digital menu boards solution offers a free customizable layout and everything you could need in order to make the perfect digital content for your restaurant.

The solution can also be revolutionary for your business in terms of maintaining social distancing and other health concerns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. You can opt to create a non-touch digital menu for your customers to help keep the environment safe and your customers happy.

It’s Time For You to Make the Change

If you want to grow your business, using a digital menu board can be a very logical step. As outlined in this article, there are countless benefits to using digital menu displays rather than traditional print material.

Your best choice for designing and displaying the perfect digital menu in your bar, café, or restaurant is Neovo Signage.

Neovo Signage - Discover what we can do for you

If you are looking for a one-stop shop when it comes to digital menu boards for restaurants, you have come to the right place. With a combination of media players, displays, and free cloud-based software, we make your transition to the new type as seamless and simple as possible.

We offer flexible, scalable, and real-time solutions for customers. Displaying digital menu boards can make sense for restaurants, bars, or cafés of any shape and size. Neovo Signage is specifically designed in order to be flexible and easily adjustable to suit the changing needs of your business.

With reliable stability and high-grade security, you can feel good about using Neovo Signage. Doing so could be the crucial step you’ve needed to help your business grow.

Are you interested in our solutions? You can learn more here.

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16 Reasons to Use A Digital Menu Board for Restaurants