A recent Gallup Poll found that people spend an average of about 109 seconds looking at a restaurant’s menu.
That short browse of your menu may be the best opportunity to engage your customer and help them connect with your brand.
Unfortunately, standard menu boards aren’t very good at this. If you want to make the most of the time customers spend looking at your menu, you’re better off with an engaging LED menu board powered by digital signage.
Not convinced? Keep reading for seven reasons why that’s true.
What are LED menu boards, exactly?
LED menu boards are large digital screens that restaurants can use instead of traditional printed menu boards. They’re distinguishable from other types of digital menu boards through LED technology.
LED screens are beneficial because they:
- Are very energy-efficient
- Enable vivid, attention-grabbing displays
- Are low maintenance and high-durability
To bring your LED menu board to life, you also need digital signage software. You use this to create and manage the display screens that your customers will see when they look at your menu board.
So, without further ado, here’s how an LED menu board can help you take your sales to the next level:
1. Upsell with complimentary menu items
On average, upselling is 20 times more profitable than cross-selling. So if you can do it well, your restaurant should see a nice bump in its revenue.
An LED menu board can help you make this happen. You can use these to automatically suggest more expensive versions of the food that your guests order.
For example, your restaurant might sell individual chicken wings and combos that include chicken wings, a drink and fries. Just before someone checks out, you could show them that they could get a drink and fries with their wings for a small amount more.
If that works even a fraction of the time, you’re likely to see a noticeable increase in revenue.
You may be thinking that your employees can do this type of thing themselves. But LED menu boards automate the upselling process, so it’s never forgotten and give guests the information before they begin ordering.
These two key differences make LED menu boards a more effective channel for upselling.
2. Help customers visualize your dishes
LED menu boards enable you to share high-resolution images of your restaurant’s options. They also let you rotate through a series of pictures so you can highlight everything that your business has to offer.
This is beneficial for a few reasons:
- High-resolution images make your dishes look tastier
- Showing photos of unique offerings can convince customers to try them
- Showcasing what your dishes look like can get rid of customers’ preconceived notions that may impact their ordering decisions
- You can strategically use images to highlight whatever dishes you want to sell the most of
This feature can be valuable when you have extra supplies that you need to get rid of.
For example, you might have more onion ring inventory than you want. With an LED menu board, you could highlight onion rings on your menu to encourage customers to order them so that you can bring your inventory back down to where it should be.
3. Add eye-catching animation
Digital menu boards also let you bring an entirely new dimension to your menu. For example, animation is an excellent way to draw your audience’s eye toward certain pieces of information.
Humans naturally pay more attention to moving images than static ones. You can use that fact to your advantage by using animations on your menu board to do things like:
- Introduce new deals
- Highlight menu items you want to sell more of
- Advertise your loyalty programs
- Upsell and cross-sell
- And more
You have a lot of room to be creative here. If there’s anything on your menu that you want to draw attention to, an LED menu board enables you to use animation to do it more effectively.
4. Change things up
Even your most loyal customers may get tired of coming back to your restaurant and having the same options presented to them repeatedly.
That’s why it’s a good strategy for restaurants to change their menus from time to time by offering new items and evolving old ones. LED menu boards make this easier to do.
You can use digital signage technology to easily update your menu boards by creating new display screens on your computer.
That should enable you to change your menu more often, as you won’t have to worry about printing out and installing a new menu every time you want to make an update.
Armed with this feature, you’ll be able to keep a higher percentage of your customers engaged by giving them new menu items to try more consistently.
5. Make better use of your menu space
We outlined in the last point how digital menu boards enable you to make changes in more efficient and cost-effective ways. That capability also extends to how you use the limited space of your menu.
With a digital menu, you can:
- Change the version of your menu shown at different times of the day (breakfast, lunch, happy hour, dinner, late night, etc.)
- Rotate through several menu screens at the same time of day
- Change the placement of different categories based on your sales goals
It’s another example of how you can use an LED menu board to be more precise about how you’re sharing your menu items with your audience.
6. Share special discounts
When your restaurant has a special discount or deal, you want to make sure it’s displayed prominently. What better place to do it than on your menu board itself?
Without a digital menu board, you would need to print up a new version of your menu and install it to make this happen. But with one, the process is as simple as creating a display screen.
This opens up a ton of possibilities. For example, you could get into the habit of sharing lightning deals that customers hear about and visit you for. Or you could highlight a consistent rotation of daily specials.
If you integrate your POS system with your digital signage software, this feature gets even more powerful. For example, you can use inventory data from your POS system to automatically show ads for items that you have extra inventory of in real-time.
This can help you reduce food waste and increase your profitability.
7. Bring brand uniformity to your locations
Part of engaging your audience is creating consistent branding, offers and menu items across your locations. But if you’re using printed menu boards across many locations, it’s almost impossible to remain flexible while ensuring brand uniformity.
That means there are times when you’ll likely have to choose between being consistent and sharing information with your customers that could increase your revenue.
LED menu boards fix this problem. They enable you to manage the displays on your menu boards from a single internet-enabled device.
That way, you can remain consistent with your branding and offers without sacrificing your ability to be flexible as new opportunities arise.
8. Ease the burden on busy employees
Employees who take orders from your customers are busy. They’re often juggling multiple tasks, making it difficult for them to always remember what they need to tell customers when they're ordering.
For example, many restaurants instruct order-takers to let customers know that they can upgrade their order for a small charge. Others will ask counter workers to share daily specials or limited-time deals with customers while making their purchases.
But busy employees aren’t perfect. They’re liable to forget to share the information you want them to share with every customer they see. That means your business could be missing out on valuable revenue.
LED menu boards give you an easy way to ensure this doesn’t impact your bottom line. You can share the information that you want your customers to know as they’re waiting in line with them.
That keeps guests engaged as they wait and reduces the impact that a forgetful employee may have on your sales that day.
UPshow makes it easy to keep your customers engaged with an LED menu board
Are you interested in adding an LED menu board to your restaurants? If so, UPshow can help you do it.
Our digital signage software offers:
- Third-party POS integration
- Complete display management from any internet-enabled device
- Loads of pre-made and customizable templates to choose from
- Everything you need to unlock the full potential of your LED menu board
