In today’s fast-paced restaurant industry, staying ahead means embracing modern solutions – yet many establishments still rely on outdated paper menus or static chalkboards.
These traditional methods come with several drawbacks: reprinting costs add up every time there’s a small change in pricing or menu items, and physical menus take up valuable space, especially when displaying an extensive menu. Even static chalkboard menu can quickly become cluttered and hard to read after some changes.
This is where digital menu boards come in as a game-changer. With a single TV screen, restaurants can showcase their entire menu in an eye-catching slideshow, complete with high-quality images and dynamic content.
This not only enhances the customer experience but also streamlines operations and reduces costs in the long run. Let’s explore why upgrading to TV screen menu is a smart move for any restaurant.
Switching to digital display menu isn’t just about aesthetics – it’s a proven way to boost your restaurant’s revenue.
Studies show that well-designed digital menus can enhance customer engagement, leading to increased sales. In fact, 91% of our customers report that upgrading to digital menu boards has helped them increase sales by up to 10%
Digital TV screen menu attract more attention, promote high-margin items more effectively, and make it easier to update promotions in real-time, encouraging customers to spend more.
What are digital menu boards?
Digital menu boards are electronic displays that showcase a restaurant’s menu using screens instead of printed menus. They allow for dynamic content updates, animations, and real-time promotions, making it easier to attract customers and boost sales.
Why Your Restaurant Needs Digital Menu Boards Today?
From eye-catching visuals to real-time updates, they offer numerous benefits that drive engagement and profitability. Below, we’ll explore 15 key advantages of digital menu boards and why they are a must-have for your restaurant.
1. Customers can visualise your menu
A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the restaurant industry, high-quality images and dynamic animations can significantly influence customer decisions. Unlike static paper menus, digital display menu allow you to showcase mouthwatering food visuals that immediately capture attention.
Even a slight change in an image or animation can make a dish stand out, enticing customers to order more.
Moreover, customers don’t always want to read long descriptions. Instead, seeing a well-presented dish or a short video of it being prepared creates an instant craving, leading to quicker decisions and increased sales.
Digital menu boards transform your menu into a visually engaging experience, making it easier for customers to choose – and more likely to return for more!
2. Save Time in Updating Menus Across Multiple Locations
Imagine managing 10 restaurant locations, each with three TV screens displaying your menu. Without digital signage software like DotSignage, updating all 30 screens would mean sending a person to each location, manually uploading the new menu via a USB drive, and even climbing a ladder for every screen a time-consuming and inefficient process.
With digital menu boards powered by DotSignage, you can instantly update all locations from a single place, ensuring menu changes, promotions, and pricing updates are applied seamlessly.
Plus, our easy-to-use template editor makes small changes like updating prices or menu items effortless and instant. Once your menu is created in our editor, you can modify it in just a few clicks, without needing a designer’s help.
No more back-and-forth revisions, waiting for updated images, or manually uploading new menus just quick, seamless updates that appear on your screens instantly, saving you time and effort.
3. Cost Saving
While the initial investment in digital menu boards may seem high, they offer significant cost savings in the long run.
Many restaurants update their menus monthly, whether it’s adjusting prices or adding new items. Every small change means reprinting paper menus, incurring printing and design costs repeatedly.
With restaurant digital signage, these costs are completely eliminated, allowing you to update menus instantly without additional expenses.
Beyond printing costs, digital menu boards also save staff time. Instead of manually replacing paper menus, your employees can focus on customer engagement and order-taking, improving efficiency and service quality.
Plus, you reduce paper waste and no longer have to worry about menus getting damaged by spills your digital displays remain clean, professional, and easy to update, making them a smart, long-term investment.
4. More Memorable Experience
Digital screen enhance the overall customer experience. The right mix of graphics and videos can keep customers entertained and help them make an informed choice with the correct information displayed.
5. Better Visibility of Menu
The digital display have the ability to grab user’s attention with videos and animations. On any given day, the digital boards are more eye pleasing than the regular paper menus. One can easily attract and retain more customers by sharing the day’s specials or showing pictures of happy customers in video format.
See our templates below, which you can edit and add to your TV screen in a few minutes!
6. 24/7 Support
One can schedule multiple menus for a single day for breakfast, lunch and dinner day wise. These updates play on the time set which solves your purpose. Many restaurants have started opting for 24/7 menus which create an impression on passersby too. One can do many things right from showing head chef making magical dishes, customers sharing feedback on their experience with the restaurant or show highlights on seasonal dishes that they specialize on.
7. Boost Sale up to 21-23%
Digital menu boards are said to have boost up sales by 21-23%. Investing in a restaurant digital display might seem to be a doubting thought but it’s a one-time deal which will eliminate several costs at your end permanently. You can change menu items, prices, and promote specials without having to invest anything more to have your menus changed. Over a period of time, this activity would be saving you a lot of money.
8. Promote New Items
Considering options that one has, digital menu boards seem to be the best option to go for to sell and promote your newly introduced items on the menu. Many huge restaurant chains are said to have followed this strategy which has helped them make their freshly introduced items quite popular in no time. This helps in getting restaurants achieve what they are looking for.
9. Convenient and Easy to Use
Digital menu boards are too simple to update. In fact, they are handy and you would be relieved to not have to go through the tedious process of having updates on paper menus from time to time. With digital signage, more details can be shared without bothering the viewer’s eyes. More information shared means more purchases which will indirectly increase your profit margins.
10. Lower Costs & Higher Profit Margins
By investing in digital menu boards, there will be a cost reduction in printing out new menus every time a minor change comes up. Sales will boost reasonably which would indirectly help you in scaling up profit margins.
11. Adaptable Menus
Flexible updates can be made to a single menu or even multiple menus can be displayed based on time. Do you serve breakfast, lunch & dinner? Replace manual updates with adaptable and smart updates.
12. Brand Consistency
Its human to make mistakes and there is always a tendency for employees to ignore or forget a change in static menu boards. Digital menu boards ensure that all the restaurant locations are up to date and and also ensure consistency with each other. This is a crucial factor, especially for restaurants that have a chain of businesses in multiple locations. Brand loyal diners get to enjoy the same service irrespective of where they choose to go to which enhances brand loyalty.
13. Reduce Wait Time
Digital menu boards help waiting diners to decide on what to order and instantly place their order once they are seated. Moreover a restaurant can use several other things like display fun facts or display promotional material to distract the waiting customers and get them less frustrated.
14. Meet Health Care Regulations
Health care regulations for the food service industry are always changing and have gradually become more prominent. It is essential for chain restaurants to display calorie counts next to each menu item. This becomes quite a test to achieve unless you have digital menu boards that can be updated as per your need. It is crucial to stay in compliance with federal and state law, and keep all visitors fully informed. Digital menus make this convenient for chain restaurants.
15. Time to Go Digital!
The pros of having a Digital menu are much more than the cons. With every minor need getting a form of being digitized, its high time a restaurant decides to go digital by adapting an on the go digital signage system.
With all of that going on, there is only one thing left to say — Go Smart, go digital, go ahead!!
Case Study
Shaka Restaurant – Pittsburgh’s top Hawaiian Restaurant
Shaka is Pittsburgh’s top Hawaiian restaurant, famous for mixing traditional Hawaiian recipes with modern twists. Skilled chefs create their dishes using fresh, local ingredients, bringing the flavors of the Hawaiian islands to life.
Shaka’s menu is extensive and detailed, with many dishes needing clear descriptions.
They needed a menu board solution to present each item and allow easy updates on multiple screens. DotSignage lets them manage their menu updates effortlessly across remote screens.
American Releaf
American Releaf Green Therapy Cannabis Dispensary offers top-quality therapeutic cannabis products. They focus on holistic wellness through natural remedies, providing customers with a wide range of products designed to enhance well-being and promote health.
With DotSignage, they found the perfect digital menu board solution. The easy-to-use editor allows them to create custom menu boards that effectively showcase their brand and products. This solution enables them to update their menus quickly, ensuring that customers always have the latest information about their offerings.
DotSignage helps American Releaf maintain a professional and appealing display, enhancing the overall customer experience.
Bagel Market in New York, USA
For more than 15 years now, Bagel Market has been delighting millions of its customers with mouth-watering breakfast and lunch at the Grand Central Area of NYC. They have started DotSignage to display their wonderful bagel menu on TV screens at their New York outlet.
Find our product interesting? You can always reach us on info@dotsignage.com for more details or you can try our 7-day free trial
About Smit
Smit Nebhwani, a tech entrepreneur with over a decade of experience, specializes in building successful SaaS products. An authority in digital signage, he shares valuable industry insights through his content. In his free time, he enjoys music, traveling, and family time.
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