In QSRs and arenas alike, digital menu boards driving revenue

Digital menu boards and QSRs may go together like French fries and ketchup, but DMBs can be used to drive revenues — and provide additional benefits — at more venues than just the quick service restaurant.

Digital Signage Today recently hosted a webinar, "Driving Sales Revenue with Digital Menu Boards," with digital signage software provider Omnivex Corp. that looked at how the new technology can help drive revenue in QSRs, dining facilities in corporate or higher education settings and sports venues, among others.

Omnivex President Jeff Collard led the hour-long presentation that included a question and answer session at the end, examining some of the different venues where DMBs are deployed (say, ski resort concession stands) and how they can drive revenue (say, promoting off-season rentals or selling timeshares) for businesses.

In recent years the presence of DMBs has grown substantially, as companies recognize the revenue and cost-cutting benefits of moving away from traditional static displays. According to Collard, by using data to drive content, deployers can ensure that the right message is being shown to the right people, at the right time — which helps drive the customer to the desired outcome: making a purchase.

DMBs also help brands and food and beverage facilities ensure the consistency of their branding and promotions and the accuracy of the information on their menus; provide for more efficient and dynamic use of the limited menu board real estate; and help venues keep pace with new legislative challenges, such as new federal nutrition labeling guidelines.

"With all the reasons out there, there are core benefits," to DMBs, Collard said during the webinar. "Some of these are activities that drive revenue through higher sales or improved productivities and efficiencies; others are enhancing that customer experience and promoting your brand; and the third area that you really have to think about that lines up and fits one or multiple of these is meeting regulatory requirements, because that is a real world real issue that everyone needs to address."

Collard also looked at how DMBs in other venues can help in other ways, for instance, in test marketing. Sports stadiums can draw one-night captive audiences in the tens of thousands and have "bankers and truck drivers lined up side by side" at concession and beverage stands, Collard said. DMBs offer "great opportunities" for brands to test market new products or compare different products, drawing on purchase information or getting interactive with mobile-enabled voting or tweeting to find out consumers' reactions to the products, he said.

"So there are some creative things you can do," he said. "And at the end of the night you've got your test marketing complete, and you have information you can roll out to all of your locations that might be all over town, or all over the city, or all over the state, based on being able to sample in one night at that sporting event."

The Q&A session looked at issues of scalability across multiple venues and of the relative slowness of DMB adoption in the face of compelling benefits. To watch and listen to the free, recorded version of the live event, click here.