Five Creative Ways to Use Digital Signage in Your Restaurant

3 Min Read By Nicholas Rubright

Digital signage screens are everywhere. Big restaurant chains such as McDonalds and Taco Bell use them to display their different menu items next to delicious looking images. But digital signage doesn’t just have to be used to display menu items. You can use it to lay out your menu items in a way that influences your customers to purchase more, increasing the average order value. With the use of digital signage software, you can be creative with how you use this technology to increase sales and customer engagement.

Here are five creative ways you can use digital signage in your restaurant.

Menu item placement is important, even when using digital screens. Where and how you place desserts and sides on your screens is an important thing to consider. When placing these items on your screens, make them easy to find when looking at regular menu items.

Additionally, you can leverage video and image galleries to upsell these items to your customers. An example of this would be a video or moving image that reads “upgrade to a large for just $1!” This can be a powerful driver of additional revenue per customer.

If your customers are likely to be huge fans of the music you play, keep them engaged by using digital signs to display the current song! Better yet, allow them to pick the song. Background music services allow you to leverage this technology to keep diners in your restaurant longer. If you’re less sensitive to table turnover and would prefer your customers stay longer to purchase additional drinks, this is something to consider.

Sometimes, you become unexpectedly busy with a sudden influx of customers. If wait times are often a problem for you, you can use digital signage to show your customers some form of engaging content such as a Twitter feed with your hashtag, games, or even just showing them where they are in the order queue. If you can keep your customers active during their wait, they won’t perceive the wait time to be as long, which will lead to better satisfaction and more positive reviews.

In sit-down restaurants, it’s often the case that menu item placement influences consumer purchasing decisions. This is the case with digital menu screens as well, but with a twist. Digital screens offer more dynamics when it comes to how you display your menu items. You can leverage things like video or moving image galleries rather than just still images. Since consumers are more easily drawn to video than still images, feature your most profitable products as a video or a moving image gallery. This will draw more attention to these items, resulting in more sales. Experiment with which menu items you leverage video and galleries for until you find the ones that drive the most profitable sales.

If you manage multiple locations for your restaurant business, some digital signage software gives you the option to update your menus remotely. This can make updating your menu across locations a breeze. Instead of having to send physical assets to each location for a menu update, you can simply update your menu inside software to quickly and remotely update all of your menus at once. This saves lots of time that your restaurant staff can dedicate to serving your customers.

Digital signage is a great way to inform your customers of how the procedures you are using during the COVID-19 crisis to keep them safe. Make sure they know about any sanitary guidelines you have such as handwashing, wearing gloves, and sanitizing tables. If you’re keeping managers at home and having them connect with staff with video conferencing software to improve internal social distancing, let them know about this as well.