10 Reasons to Put Your Restaurant Menu on TV Screens
There are so many reasons that a restaurant would want to put its menu on a TV screen or digital display. But you probably did not come here to learn about every single reason a digital menu is better than a paper menu, and we won’t waste your time. You want to know how putting your menu on a TV screen is going to help you attract more customers, make your customer’s experience better, and improve the efficiency of your restaurant, right? In this article, we describe 10 of the most pertinent reasons to put your restaurant’s menu on a TV screen.
Why You Should Put Your Restaurant Menu on TV Screens
1. Catch Your Customer’s Eye and Increase Your Sales
A digital menu serves the purpose of giving information while functioning as an advertisement for your restaurant. Bright and colorful signs displaying your menu are far more likely to catch the eye of people passing by. Moreover, you are not limited to static images. With digital signage, you can also include animations, videos, and moving text to create an attraction that no one can miss. This may lead them to enter your restaurant right then and there, upon seeing some tasty meal in the bright lights, or they may think of your restaurant a few days later because your engaging menu board stuck with them.
They say first impressions are all important when making friends or forging business contacts, but the same goes for a restaurant. And the statistics show that digital menus make a better first impression than paper menus posted outside a restaurant. According to one reputable study, most restaurants experience a 3-5% increase in sales after installing digital menu boards.
2. Easily Update Your Menu
When your restaurant uses paper menus it can be a huge hassle to change anything on the menu since doing so means completely reprinting the menu which takes time and money for printing costs. When you have a digital menu, you can change what is displayed easily and instantly, giving you more flexibility and saving you money.
Then there are whatever specials you are offering on any given night. Instead of writing specials up on a chalkboard or having a waiter list off the specials (which most diners will have to admit that they often forget about a second after the waiter has finished their monologue), you can proudly display your specials on a vibrant screen for all to see and, if their curiosity is piqued, enjoy.
3. Schedule Menus to Change Automatically at Appointed Times
Many restaurants have different menus depending on the time of day and day of the week, such as breakfast menus, brunch menus, lunch menus, and dinner menus. If you have physical menus, you will have to waste time changing the different menus out, and some customers may be upset if they enter your establishment thinking that they are going to get breakfast when your restaurant is now serving lunch. Digital menus take all the hassle out of menu changes and provide a sense of clarity that many customers will appreciate.
4. More Control Over How Your Customers Interact with Your Menu
There are often times when a restaurant wants to highlight a specific item or specific items on the menu, such as when the restaurant is introducing something new to the menu. Since digital menus are so adaptable, you can highlight the item by making it larger than the other items on the menu or surrounding a picture of the dish with eye-catching animations. These are capabilities far beyond what one could achieve with a paper menu. The fact is, digital menus give a restaurant so much more freedom and more influence over the choices of dishes that their customers will make.
5. Make Your Menus an Advertisement for Upcoming Deals or Events
As we have hinted at before, a digital menu can double as a menu and an advertisement. If your restaurant hosts events, a flyer simply will not cut it these days. Much better to have the event posted where everyone in the restaurant (and many people outside of the restaurant) can see it. Moreover, with digital signage, the promotion for the event need not be static like it would have to be on a flyer. If you get digital signage infrastructure from a great company like Loop TV, you can level up your promotions with colorful graphics and animations, making attendance at your events totally irresistible.
6. Improve Order Times, Shorten Wait Times
With the menu up on a big screen, the increased visibility will mean that customers are able to make up their minds about what they want to order ahead of time. This means that orders will be placed faster, which means that customers will have shorter wait times. Shorter wait times are sure to increase the satisfaction of customers, which means that they will be more likely to come back to your restaurant again. This is another perfect example of how digital menus benefit both the customers and the restaurants that make use of them.
7. Make Wait Times Feel Shorter
Even with digital signage decreasing the wait times that your customers face, there are still many restaurants that will have varying wait times depending on the model of the business and the availability of staff. But if your customers are going to have to wait for their food, why not make the waiting period feel as short as possible? Seriously, is there any amount of time that feels longer than the time which separates a hungry stomach from the food that will satisfy it?
Luckily, research shows that digital signage can decrease a customer’s perceived wait time by up to 35%. This is because these signs help keep customers entertained while they wait. They can learn about new deals, have a visual feast with their eyes as they look at the delicious foods shown on the screen, and can learn about upcoming events going on at the restaurant. But that is not all. It is here that we should mention all the other things you can do when you have TV screens installed in your restaurant.
In addition to having your menu up on a TV screen, you can also have all sorts of content to keep your customers entertained. Just imagine, if having your menu on a TV can decrease a customer’s perceived wait time by up to 35%, how much shorter would the wait time feel if you had music videos playing on another screen or maybe the day's breaking news.
When you order Loop TV's free TV content and signage player, you will not only have access to free digital signage but also to tons of different content to play on your TV screens, ensuring that your customers are entertained and come away from their time at your restaurant with a positive experience.
8. Easily Manage Health Care Regulations
Health care regulations for the food industry change often, and the effects of these regulations are becoming more visible. For example, regulations require that chain restaurants display the number of calories and other relevant health factors along with each item on the menu. If you have a printed board up with all of your menu items, it will be an incredible pain for you to change the entire board when you, for example, change ingredients since you would have to update the number of calories next to the meal.
The same difficulty arises when you add a new dish to your menu. With a digital menu, this is made extremely easy and customers will undoubtedly appreciate being able to clearly see this information when they are making their choices about what dish to eat.
9. Reinforce Your Brand Identity
A goal for just about any restaurant should be to establish customer loyalty to their brand. Loyal customers are the bedrock for any business and restaurants should use everything at their disposal to reinforce identification with their brand.
Digital signage is an effective way of making this happen since the sign can be covered with brand logos, brand slogans, and information about the company, such as where they get their ingredients from or what their brand ethos is. Having information about the brand readily available and easily digestible will make people feel like they know the brand better, and knowing about a brand helps with brand identification and customer loyalty.
10. Stay Ahead of the Competition With the Newest Technology
In the competitive food industry, it is always important to stay one step ahead of the competition, and this often means integrating the newest technology to improve customer satisfaction. People like to see a business that is innovative, that is willing to change to meet the changing desires and needs of their customers, and the fact is, digital menus are the way of the future.
There are simply too many benefits of digital signage to ignore. If diners see that you are willing to cater to their needs, they will reward you with their business. That's how it is and how it has always been. The only thing that changes are desires, needs, and the technologies available to satisfy them.
So You Want to Put Your Menu on TV. What Now?
Transferring your menu from paper to a digital format can seem daunting, but luckily there are some great products that make the shift to digital signage seamless and easy. Loop TV's free business TV and signage device is one of those products that make the transition easier and more effective than you might even imagine. With Loop TV's device, you get all of your digital signage needs taken care of, and on top of that, you get access to tons of other content, such as music videos, trending news, extreme sports, lifestyle programming, movie trailers and much more.
You might be thinking, “That all sounds great but what kind of financial investment does this entail?” That is the best part: Loop TV is completely free. On top of that, you can actually make money with loop because you will be compensated for the advertisements that play in between the entertaining content. Switching to digital signage has seriously never been easier. Just set up some TVs and let Loop TV take care of the rest.
Now Is the Time to Put Your Menu on a TV
Digital signage is one of those trends that is simply not going to go away, and there will likely become a time when the practice is ubiquitous. It is best that you start putting your menu on TVs now so that you can be ahead of the game and start reaping the benefits now. At some point in the future, it is likely that having a digital menu will not, by itself, make your restaurant stand out from the competition. Instead, it will be one of those things that are expected of every business that wants to stay afloat.
Those who have been using digital signage from the outset will have a major advantage over those who adopt the practice later because they will have become well versed in the best methods for utilizing digital signage to benefit their business. They will know just how to catch a customer’s eye and keep them entertained while waiting in line and how to highlight products in a way that will make their offerings irresistible to customers. You can also use digital signage to strengthen a company’s brand identity and create more customer loyalty.
When you see a trend that is sure to be a staple, it is best to get started early so you can reap the benefits of being ahead of the game while other companies still try to make paper menus work and then reap the benefits again when everyone uses digital signage but no one knows how to use it better than you.