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Digital Signage Denver presents:
Digital Menu Boards
When the founders of the fast casual restaurant chain The Cereal Bowl opened their first restaurant, digital menu boards were beyond their means. At the time, prices for the emerging technology were simply too high to justify. Now, they say, prices of digital menu board systems have fallen to the point where it's hard to justify not purchasing one. When the concept was launched in Miami in 2006, static vinyl foam menu boards were used.
"As a growing brand, we were continuously tweaking things here and there," said Michael Glassman, chief technology officer of The Cereal Bowl. "When you have a static board of any type, you are continually replacing parts of it, and it gets to be very expensive."
Today, the company operates three stores and has 44 in development. Digital menu boards are now standard in its operations. "We've always been very tech-savvy, and we wanted to have a menu board that would integrate into other technologies that we had in our restaurants," Glassman said. "There are so many things you can do with digital menus that you can't do with static menus." For example, if a restaurant is running low on a particular item, the store manager can easily remove it from the menu. Likewise, if a restaurant is overstocked on a particular item, the manager can discount or promote that product to keep it from going to waste. Digital menu boards allow for easy dayparting, Glassman says. "If we want to promote something in the morning and then promote something different at lunchtime and let people see what we have, the system allows us to do that," he said. And because the company's growth is occurring via franchising, corporate officials wanted a way to maintain control of the brand, even as The Cereal Bowl opens restaurants as far away as Qatar. "We wanted something that we could control the changing of prices and so forth from outside the franchise," Glassman said.
"In terms of brand control, a digital menu board system is a no-brainer."
Calculating the ROI
Included in the 2,000-page healthcare reform bill passed by Congress in early 2010 was language mandating that chain restaurants with 20 or more locations will have to display nutritional and calorie information on their menus. Menu labeling laws are already on the books in New York City as well as California and several other states. For companies operating multiple locations in multiple states, digital menu boards may be the answer to managing the costs associated with menu labeling. "That's where digital menu boards are much more of an advantage compared with static menu boards," said Mike Zmuda, director of business development with Itasca, Ill.-based NEC Display Solutions, a provider of professional- and commercial-grade digital signage. "Many restaurants are always trying to come up with healthier recipes," Zmuda said. "The nutritional information is going to change, and it is much easier to make The major components of a digital menu board system are hardware (screens and computers or players), software, content, method of connection and implementation.
Hardware: The price of screens and computers changes quickly, so operators should avoid purchasing a technology that may be out of date in the near future. Although some operators still use plasma screens, LCD screens are now more popular. Projection and LED screens also are widely used. The computers should be industrial grade so as to withstand heavy usage. All screens should have the same or similar specifications and
be commercial grade, not consumer grade.
Software: Software is used to create, download, manage, schedule and play content, as well as to record how often and when content is played, to monitor the health of the system and to alert service people when there is a problem. Several software options should be tested to see which would serve the operation best and is easiest to use. The software program should be adaptable to ne w technologies. Content: What is seen on the screens is the most important part of a deployment. Many digital signage companies supply their own content, but it may be better to contract with a company that specializes in content creation, especially for animation. The content also can be created by a brand's own staff or marketing agency. Remember, if the graphics don't engage the customers and call them to an action, the value of a digital system will be lost.
Method of connection: The most popular method of connection is the Internet (either dial-up or broadband). However, a satellite connection may be the better choice if there are many locations and live content is involved. A cellular connection also is an option, but cellular connection speeds can vary due to the number of
cell phones in the area.
Implementation: There are a number of ways to mount a digital menu board system, with professional installation management companies being the preferred option to safely manage the process.
Installation best practices: An operator needs to calculate the cost of changing a static menu board several times a year versus the one-time cost of a digital menu board system. Deciding whether a digital menu board is a good investment isn't as simple as doing a side-by-side cost comparison. With requirements for the displaying of nutritional information changing on a regular basis, not to mention menu price changes dictated by fluctuating commodity costs, an operator needs to calculate the cost of changing a static menu board several times a year versus the one-time cost of a digital menu board system. Menu boards also can serve as an additional revenue stream through vendor partnerships. "Let's say it's a chain that serves Coca-Cola and maybe they have the leverage with Coca-Cola to say to them, 'We have this new system, and we want to sell advertising space to you as one of our strategic partners,'" Zmuda said. "You can create wonderful full-motion video of Coca-Cola pouring into a glass or something like that and play it in the dining room."
Many operators are seeing a sales lift simply by deploying digital menu boards. Steve Sharon, president of the Naples, Fla.-based digital menu board deployer Vertigo Group, worked with a restaurant operator who wanted to see a certain sales lift in a pilot test before committing to deploying digital menu boards throughout the company. "Their criterion was that if their sales lift was at least 5 percent, they would roll it out throughout their system, and they beat that 5 percent sales lift," Sharon said. "That seems to be kind of a magic number; if an
operator can get a 5 percent sales lift, then they will use it in their system." Although it's difficult to define exactly
why such a sales lift occurs, it's a story that's heard over and over throughout the industry. According to Sharon, digital menu boards are simply a better way for restaurant operators to communicate with their customers.
"Digital boards are much more effective, and operators can communicate a lot more, a lot better and more easily," Sharon said. "[Digital menu boards] get noticed more, and they have a huge amount of flexibility. Once [operators] start using a digital menu board system and seeing the results, they will love it."
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