Restaurant managers have been among the very first to discover the advantages of digital signage as it promised a whole lot of flexibility and cost reduction over using traditional printed menu cards. The new-gen signage immediately scored over the age-old practice of printed menu cards and servers suggesting the day’s specials as changes in the menu could now be very easily made and that too at almost no cost. This flexibility of being able to change menus at will added a whole new dimension of restaurants being able to cater to the changing needs of diners according to the time of the day or on account of special occasions. Thus the introduction of digital signage that has a range starting from the humble LED display board to sophisticated high-resolution widescreen televisions has added a new dimension of diner service and restaurant profits.
Manage Content with Online Remote-Access
Digital Menu Board
A significant number of models of digital signage come with the added advantage of being able to be networked with a central server that makes it possible for them to be managed remotely. Remote-management of the digital signage relieves the outlet manager of the responsibility of programming the signage as this can now be handled centrally to cover all the restaurants in the chain. However, the biggest advantage is that now the menu boards of all restaurants in the chain can be made identical very easily. Special offers and custom-menu availability can also be centrally-programmed and the updated information flashed across multiple screens across the nation in a consistent manner without leaving any scope for customer confusion.
Healthcare Law Compliance Now Just A Click Away
New laws in healthcare make it mandatory for restaurants present in more than 20 locations to display calories of each item on the menu in a written form so that customers are better informed on what they are consuming. While conveying the calorific values of food items can be extremely cumbersome on printed materials, adopting digital signage to do the same is extremely convenient. Using a remotely-managed process, this ensures that the information remains accurate and consistent across all outlets irrespective of their locations so that compliance with the regulatory framework becomes very easy.
Presenting Menu Suggestion and Combos Was Never Easier
Using remotely-managed digital signage makes it very convenient for restaurant managers to offer complementary food and drink to customers. They can even offer combos that can be very attractively packaged visually to entice customers into making choices that they would not have otherwise possibly not made if the suggestions had been left to the presence of mind of the people responsible for order-handling. This process of leveraging up-selling can add valuable dollars to the bottom line of the restaurants.
Automate the Time-of-the-Day Menu-Changing Process
The best way of ensuring diner satisfaction is to offer menu selections are most appropriate for the time of the day or those that cater to special occasions. When you leave it to individual restaurant managers to program the menu options on a daily basis, there is a likelihood of errors and omissions being made. When the process is managed centrally, the contents of the digital signage can be updated at specific times of the day without requiring manual intervention and need for error-checking. The hassles of rushing to print different menus, incurring shipping costs, and dealing with printing errors become a thing of the past with the adoption of digital signage. Remote-management of the signage allows you to have unprecedented control over the communication process. When you have multiple screens under your control, new opportunities for generating income also open up automatically with you being to offer advertising opportunities to both local and national advertisers. Keeping interesting and locally-relevant content on the screens is also a good way of engaging customers waiting for their orders to be filled or even for recognition of employees and service staff on a public platform.
Author bio: Melanie Cross is a communication professional employed in a leading advertising agency specializing in digital signage applications. She has seen the industry evolve from the ordinary LED display board to complex networked versions that can be remotely-managed.
