Opening a restaurant involves more than just having a cool concept and tasty menu – it also requires a significant investment.
It’s crucial to ensure that the investment pays off and yields returns over time. But not everyone who loves to serve some delicious food can necessarily afford such a big investment.
That’s where food trucks come in. They’re a hot and happening trend, offering a more affordable and flexible option.
In the past decade, they’ve experienced steady growth and are rapidly becoming one of the fastest-growing segments in the food industry.
Food trucks were picked up as a major trend with the Great Recession and it gradually picked up in the market.
As of 2023, there are over 36,000 food truck businesses operating in the US, which is an increase of nearly 10% from the 2022 number.
Total revenue for food trucks in the US is expected to exceed $2 billion by 2030
The food truck industry has grown an average of 9.9% annually between 2018 and 2023
What Makes Digital Menu Boards a Necessity for Your Food Truck?
Running a food truck means facing tough competition. To attract customers, your menu needs to stand out. It’s the first thing that grabs attention before customers even taste the food.
Proper placement of menu items, using the right colours, and showcasing appetizing food images are crucial. The display solution for your menu matters too. Digital menu boards meet all these criteria, making them an excellent choice for food trucks. They help showcase your offerings in an appealing way, setting the stage for a positive dining experience.
Digital menu boards provide numerous benefits for food trucks, playing a vital role in improving overall efficiency, customer satisfaction, and business operations.
Benefits of Using Menu Boards for Food Truck
Easy Menu Updates
Menus often need updates and if you are someone who changes menus weekly, it could turn out to be a very costly task. Paper menus surely don’t make the cut. With the software that you need to manage digital menu boards, one can easily update items or add new ones, change background or edit almost anything for that matter.
Instant offers can be added or if any item is out of stock, it can be removed from the menu as well. A print menu is not flexible at all, is costly and seems like a downturn when compared to digital menu boards.
Grab Attention
Digital menu boards revolutionize attention-grabbing strategies for your restaurant business. With vibrant displays and dynamic content, they effortlessly capture the eyes of passersby.
Instant updates allow you to showcase daily specials and promotions, ensuring your offerings remain fresh and appealing.
The flexibility to modify content easily enables real-time adjustments, keeping your menu relevant and engaging. Interactive features enhance the customer experience, while consistent branding elements make your food truck memorable.
Increase profitability
With digital boards, grab hardware and reliable software then you are good to go. No reprinting, easy updates and cost saving on the menu prints are the plus points. With local hardware — it makes the screen more resistant to the weather and with robust software like DotSignage, any kind of content can be easily managed.
By designing the menu the way you need, with the right offers displayed, more orders can be grabbed and profitability can be increased.
Visual Appeal
Digital menu boards transform your menu into a visual feast, enhancing its overall appeal. With vibrant images and dynamic displays, they capture attention and make your offerings look irresistible.
The easy update feature ensures that your menu always reflects the latest specials and promotions, keeping it fresh and enticing.
This modern presentation style goes beyond traditional menus, making your food truck or restaurant more visually appealing to customers.
Digital menu boards are a simple yet powerful tool to elevate the visual charm of your menu, attracting more customers and leaving a lasting impression with their eye-catching display.
Cross-sell
With strategic and well-thought menu designs, you can entice customers to explore complementary items, add-ons, and enticing combos. These dynamic boards effortlessly promote upsells, increasing the average transaction value.
Eye-catching visuals and real-time updates draw attention to these additional offerings, encouraging customers to make more informed and diversified choices.
The interactive nature of some digital menu boards allows customers to engage directly, enhancing the cross-selling experience.
Ease operations/increase sales
Digital menu boards offer instant updates, letting you make changes with just a few clicks. Studies reveal they cut checkout wait times by up to 35%.
These menus can also be set according to different times of the day like breakfast in the morning, happy hours or holiday specials.
It’s a smart way to drive sales, tailoring your offerings to maximise customer interest at different times.
How can You Use Digital Menu Boards for Your Food Truck?
To display menu of course
Digital menu boards make your life easier. Imagine being anywhere and updating your menu effortlessly. They’re super flexible, unlike old-school paper menus.
The best part? They wipe away the downsides of printed menus. No more headaches with changes – just smooth, hassle-free updates to keep your offerings current.
Display marketing videos or promotions
Digital menu boards serve as dynamic platforms for showcasing compelling marketing videos and promotions.
Seamlessly showcase videos to highlight special offers, limited-time deals, or seasonal promotions, capturing customer attention with visually appealing content.
Tailor content to align with seasons or events, and utilize customizable templates for easy updates.
Use QR codes to link website or social media handle
QR codes have gained a lot of popularity since they give access to a lot of different things to the customers at the comfort of their smartphones.
You can link websites, offers, social media handles and much more using QR codes to make the digital menu boards a much more versatile tool that can work to your benefit.
It’s a savvy move, transforming these boards into versatile tools that bring added convenience and benefits to your business.
To promote your offers
With vibrant displays, these boards highlight special deals, discounts, and featured items, grabbing customers’ attention instantly. Update promotions in real-time, ensuring your menu always reflects the latest offers.
Their dynamic nature allows for eye-catching visuals, making your deals stand out and enticing customers to make the most of your enticing offers.
Elevate your promotional game with the visual appeal and flexibility of digital menu boards, driving customer engagement and boosting sales.
How much do Digital Menu Boards cost?
DotSignage offers your a free trial of 7 days post which you can get started with either a monthly plan of $12 or an annual plan of $120 (You save for 2 months in the annual plan)
The solution works with any Android TV (needs a Google Play Store) or any Amazon Fire Stick, both of which are very easy to procure.
Depending on the budget that you have, you can go for any kind of screen that you need. Or if you already have a Smart TV, you can go for an Amazon Firestick which costs around $30 if you go for the lite version.
Check out some of our hardware suggestions here.
Sign up for our 7-day free trial here or you can schedule a quick demo with us as well to know more about the solution.
