Digital Menu Boards: Don't Buy Into the Hype

When you walk into your local quick service restaurant, there's a distinct possibility that you'll be studying a digital menu board. More and more restaurants are adopting the trend—giants such as McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King have had them in place for several years, and many other chains (as well as smaller, mom-and-pop establishments) have hopped on the bandwagon as well. 

They are attractive and convenient in some ways, but there are many factors to consider before making the commitment. There's a reason for the relatively slow roll-out of digital menu boards since their introduction just over a decade ago. Many restaurants are reluctant to adopt the new technology. Let's explore the pros and cons of embracing this trend. 

Pros

Convenience Factor:  It's undeniable—digital menu boards are very convenient. You can display different menu items based on the time of day or day of the week, you can alter prices or remove menu items, and you can do all of this without bringing a ladder into the process. A few clicks of your keyboard and your changes are made. 

Nutritional Information:  With the FDA's new guidelines for menu labeling, the ability to make changes to your menu is key. It's much easier to add detailed nutritional information for every item you serve to a digital menu board than having your standard board reprinted. You can avoid major trouble with the federal government for noncompliance by altering your digital menu board. 

Customer Engagement:  A digital menu board can showcase different parts of your menu in new and tantalizing ways You can easily upsell menu items by displaying attractive photos of the item, perhaps enticing your customers to make purchases they weren't planning to make through the power of suggestion. Changing pictures allow you to highlight several different menu items—a static menu board can't do that. 

Cons

Expense:  This is a big one. Implementing a digital menu board can be an enormous expense. The more elaborate they get, the more expensive they become. You'll have to purchase the hardware, the software, and the infrastructure required to implement the signage. If you've got more than one restaurant, this cost can be crippling. While replacing the interior menu board with a digital board isn't necessarily a deal breaker, the drive-through signage and framing structures can be prohibitively expensive. If you're a franchisee, you'll probably be footing the bill for this upgrade yourself; in most cases, corporate won't pay for this expense. Additionally, there are often monthly fees associated with a digital menu board. These fees cover updating the digital content, the call center, and recovering crashed systems. 

Maintenance:  While traditional printed menu boards require very little by way of maintenance, a digital menu board will need continuous maintenance. Digital menu board maintenance will require some technical know-how—do you, or does someone on your staff, have the tech-savvy knowledge that can fix any issues that might come up, or will you have to pay for the board to be serviced by a professional? 

All or Nothing:  Should your digital menu board go down, it’s DOWN. There’s no backup, so your customers are left staring at a blank screen. Can you afford to be without your menu while your in-house expert makes the necessary repairs—or, worst case scenario, while you wait for hours (or even days) for your professional repair person to arrive to restore your menu? You’re also dead in the water if the company that runs the board has an outage; if you don’t have traditional signage that can display the menu for your customers, how will they order food from the broken menu? 

Poor Display: Sure, your digital menu board might be cheaper in the long run, but it might be at the expense of the appearance of your food. A poor-quality digital menu board can make pictures of your food look very unappealing. Print menu boards will provide the sharp, crisp photos of your menu items that you desire. 

The Case for Printed Menu Boards

While digital menu boards are on trend right now, there's definitely something to be said for traditional printed menu boards. A high-quality printed menu board is generally executed better than the best of the digital menu boards. It's crisper, clearer, and the colors are richer than their digital counterparts.

Printed boards are significantly less expensive to implement, and they're much easier to install, too. If you're considering digital because you don't want to manage the print buying or figure out the installation, rely on your printing partner to do it all – from creation to installation to online ordering solutions. Ordering printed menu boards can be a streamlined process that saves you time and money, while avoiding the technical malfunctions, maintenance, and down time associated with digital menu boards.

A customized store profile and our online ordering system make it easy. Here's how:

We conduct a thorough store profile for each store location—capturing the layout and graphic needs of each footprint to make a blueprint so we know exactly what each location needs. This is saved in your store profile. By knowing the exact graphics each store needs, we send the right graphics to the right location so there are no overages, no waste, and no extra effort sorting through your kit.

Conveniently, The Vomela Companies offers an online ordering system featuring each store footprint and specific store graphics so your team can re-order only what is needed. This makes re-ordering and fulfillment an easy process that we manage for you.

In this way, ordering a fresh set of beautifully printed menu boards can be a streamlined process. In the end, print saves you time and money, while avoiding the technical malfunctions, maintenance and down time associated with digital menu boards.