Why Choose Digital Drive Thru Menus?
The world is constantly changing. Printed content, including drive thru light boxes, is becoming more and more obsolete as businesses increasingly devote resources to digitizing their business.
Digital menus are an important way in which to future-proof your business. Below are seven reasons to consider upgrading your drive thru menu to digital.
1. Return on investment
The initial investment can be a deterrent from upgrading to digital. However, it is important to look at ways in which digital signage will provide additional revenue for your business.
One study found that restaurants that implemented digital signage saw a five to eight percent increase in revenue.* Others found that brand awareness increased by 47%.*
The allure of bright, high definition videos, and colorful images help draw in customers and increase sales. We will discuss other ways in which digital menus bring in additional forms of revenue later in this list.
2. More Real Estate
Drive thru menus require thoughtful planning and attention to detail. Not even a small corner of the screen should go to waste. Space is precious on a menu, every spot is an opportunity to sell. With such a premium on real estate, why not find a way to make even more room on the menu.
A wonderful feature of drive thru menus is their ability to alternate the content being displayed for customers. Unlike traditional light boxes which display static content, digital menus allow you to fade in a variety of products and options, all on the same real estate. Feature beautiful closeup images or video of key products, which cycle among several products, saving economizing space and increasing sales.
3. Draw Attention, Increase Sales
We’ve all seen those dingy, aging light boxes at restaurant drive thrus. The yellowing plastic displays of dark, uninviting food images do anything but excite potential customers.
The visual sense is the most influential on human perception, making up over 90% of information transmitted to the brain. It is so essential to present menu items with bright, crisp images to entice your customers and get them interested in your offerings. Because as amazing as the food may taste, customers eat with their eyes, and if the menu items don’t look delicious, they will assume the food isn’t either.
By displaying high definition videos and quality images, your menu will not only give off positive vibes that makes customers feel invited, they will also increase sales. Research has shown that, specifically in restaurants, digital menus increased unplanned purchases by 80%. Four of five brands who adopted digital signage noticed a 33% increase in sales, and the research concluded that a single digital sign, anywhere on site, increased annual sales revenue by 4.5% on average.
4. Less Perceived Waiting Times
No one likes waiting in line. Research has shown that customers have a threshold for waiting in a drive thru line of about 200 seconds. After that, customers will begin to drop out and take their business elsewhere. It is absolutely critical that businesses find ways to mitigate long lines and that sense of stagnation customers so fervently dislike.
Digital signage helps alleviate this in two ways: efficiency and perception.
Efficiency refers to improved engagement from customers, ease of reading and information processing, reduced ordering anxiety, and other simple ways that optimize menus and help funnel orders more quickly.
Perception has to do with how long a customer feels like they have been waiting. Thus, without any improvement in wait times, by simply having visible instances of digital signage, customers perceived their wait time to be shorter. This is due to the well known psychological phenomenon in which occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time. By having interesting, engaging videos and images, 84% of customers said digital signage helped to pass time.
5. Change Signs Instantly
With traditional menus, modifications were always a challenge. Changing a menu was a daunting feat, requiring design, printing, distribution, and annoying installation.
Now with the ease of digital menus, making modifications is incredibly easy. From any device with internet access, you can make modifications to your sign. Want to try changing a price temporarily, or running ads at certain times of day, or in particular weather? Its a simple click away, anytime, anywhere.
7. Automation
Automation is the future for many industries. The drive thru experience will not be immune from the far-reaching effects of automation. In fact, the drive thru is an ideal candidate to be transformed into a fully self-functioning system within the coming years.
Artificial intelligence will power the ordering process for future drive thrus. Whether customers choose to fill out and customize their order using a touchscreen, voice recognition, or via mobile app, the built-in artificial intelligence will help guide ordering, take full account of analytics and other important information, and use this data to guide future marketing. Personalized menus and offers will be displayed for each customer, and will further increase sales in ingenious new ways.
The possibilities for automation will continue to expand as machine learning, and other forms of software continues to progress.
In Closing…
Although upgrading to a digital drive thru can be a daunting investment, the return on that investment over time makes it a financially effective purchase for your restaurant or business.