7 Ways Digital Drive Thru Menu Boards Boost Restaurant Sales
Digital signage is transforming the way that businesses advertise and communicate with their patrons. With the heightened competition of restaurants across the country, you need to do everything you can to improve your visibility and customer experience. While investing in a good drive thru menu board requires higher than usual upfront costs, it’s estimated that restaurants will recoup this cost anywhere between 9 and 18 months.1 What’s more is that over time, this ROI will continue to increase, therefore resulting in higher restaurant sales and more profit. In fact, restaurants that switched to digital drive thru signs saw an 8% increase in sales consistently.1 How? Here’s 7 ways digital drive thru menu boards boost restaurant sales.
1. Strengthen Your First Impression
Your first impression matters. The way that you present yourself can make or break your business. When you have visually appealing digital signage throughout your drive thru, you’ll catch the attention of prospective customers and make a strong first impression that can improve customer loyalty.
2. Presales and Promotions
From the moment a customer enters the drive thru lane, you have an opportunity to presale them with new or popular menu items. By strategically placing drive thru signs, you can promote any menu item you want to help plant the seed for purchase at the window. This is extremely beneficial when introducing new menu items as it serves as both a presale advertisement and improves exposure for future visits.
3. Upselling an Order
A lot of people that visit the drive thru for a restaurant have some idea of what they want—especially if the restaurant only sells a certain type of food. However, digital menu boards can be used to highlight certain food items or specialties that can be added to an order easily and quickly. This increases the likelihood that customers will add sides, drinks, or dessert by roughly and helps to encourage upsizing of certain meals. It’s been found that drive thru lane menu boards can increase the average value of orders by 2.5% and boost drink sales by 5% to 7%.
High-quality energy efficient menu boards allow for more realistic and enhanced image representations of menu items, which makes the food more appealing to those ordering. To understand how this affects customers consider the results of Prime Burger’s changes. When Prime Burger, a popular UK-based hamburger place, installed digital menu boards and began using image enhancement to advertise their menu items, they saw a 50% increase in sales.1
4. Segmenting Popular Menu Items
While having a large drive thru menu board and lots of options is nice, it can be overwhelming to digest. Digital menu boards allow you to segment popular menu items and showcase your bestsellers. You can have these alternate depending on sales, time of day, or throughout the week without having to physically print and change a laminated sign. In the morning, you can advertise breakfast items, switching to lunch and dinner as the day moves on. You can also collect data to determine which items sell best at which hours and advertise those. Not only does this save you time, but it also increases convenience for your employees.
With the ability to quickly change your menu through digital technology, you save thousands of dollars on printing costs. According to a Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study of outdoor menu board systems, quick-service restaurants can save up to $30,000 in printing costs per year in addition to labor expenses that are often required to change out signage.
5. Drive Thru Entertainment
There’s nothing more frustrating than waiting in a long drive thru lane when you’re hungry. However, it’s been shown that by strategically placing a few digital screens in your drive thru, the wait feels and actually is shorter. Digital menu boards can reduce wait times by up to 5.7%.
Consider putting a few signs up that have menu items and a few that focus on entertainment when your lines are long to help lighten the mood. As an added benefit, vibrant drive thru signs can help improve a customer’s impression of your business.
6. Improved Customer Experience
If you want to increase your profits, you need to focus on improving the customer experience. Digital menu boards allow you to do all of the above and more. However, you need to be strategic about it. To get the most out of your outdoor business signs, focus on placement, sizing, creating a strong message, using the right imagery, and adding movement. When things are easy to read, the drive thru lane is sped up and people are able to make decisions faster. This avoids problems with long lines and therefore, increases customer satisfaction. Increased satisfaction leads to loyal customers and more profits over time. Not convinced? 74% of quick-service restaurant customers value easily digestible content when they’re making a purchase. If you want to continue to get repeat business, digital menu boards are a great way to do so.
7. Innovative Technology
There are certain opportunities with digital signage to incorporate innovative technology. McDonald’s, for instance, has integrated weather tracking technology into their drive thru signs so that they can promote McFlurries when it’s hot and hot chocolate or coffee when it’s cold. This helps increase the customer experience and the point-of-purchase sales. You may also be able to integrate some sort of recognition technology to better understand your customer base. While it can be seen as controversial, recognition technology is used more commonly than you’d think. For example, some McDonald's in Sweden are starting to use recognition technology and AI in drive-thrus. By utilizing this, you can store customer’s previous orders so you can make more strategic recommendations when they come back.
When looking to boost your restaurant sales, investing in a high-quality digital menu board is essential. For the best results, opt for reflective color LCD technology from Sun Vision Display. Our technology allows for perfect readability in direct sunlight, uses ultra-low power consumption, and can operate in a large range of weather conditions. To learn more about how your restaurant requiring a drive thru menu board can benefit from reflective LCD technology digital menu boards, contact the professionals at Sun Vision Display today at 224-268-3343.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Contact Us
Want to know more about Sun Vision Display?
Leave us your info, and we'll get right back to you.
Sign up to our newsletter
PRODUCTS
APPLICATIONS
ABOUT
FOLLOW US
GET IN TOUCH
Sun Vision Display
25 S. Grove Ave., Suite 401, Elgin, Illinois 60120
United States of America
Phone: +1-224-268-3343
Email: sales@sunvisiondisplay.com
Sun Vision Display is a trademarked brand of New Vision Display.
The terms HDMI, HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface, and the HDMI Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of HDMI Licensing Administrator, Inc.