Digital Menu Boards
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Menu Boards are of course, everywhere and anywhere that there is a menu and a price. Some change often and some don’t.
There aren’t however that many Digital Menu Boards around – which we think is incredibly surprising when you think how well digital signage (especially in conjunction with HD displays) is suited to this sort of solution.
The digital menu boards pictured above look great we think – we especially like the two screens side by side in the centre of the counter, the good use of colour and the legibility of the text. Menu boards of course are the one thing that is almost guaranteed to be looked at in QSR environments.
Beaver Solutions supplied this digital signage menu board system to U4 Coffee, a local coffee shop near their offices in Hertfordshire, UK.
Using Scala InfoChannel 5, Beaver designed a custom menu board which incorporates easy-to-use templates and high-impact graphics and video. The system is managed on site by the coffee shop manager, and is supported by Beaver Solutions.
It’s a solution that we would love to see in Starbucks, Costa, Pret,, Cafe Nero etc etc. – not just in independent coffee shops!
The last digital menu board we pointed you at before this was in Finland on board a Ferry courtesy of Cayin Technology.
Bizarrely we have only ever seen a very small number of McDonalds digital menu boards also (a few high profile restaurant sites in the Netherlands with LibriumTV and a couple of restaurants in Singapore).
January 21st, 2008 at 20:15 @885
Menu boards do appear to be an obvious application for DDS. We have a number of installations throughout Australasia which conform to the model shown in the blog, but of course using our own Wallflower software ! the largest of these is in the Crown Casino in Melbourne who use 42 inch landscape displays paired. These are used in most of the food outlets to display a mix of menus and promotional content. In a situation such as that one of the main advantages is being able to show menus that are sensitive to time of day. Breakfast, Lunch etc.
I believe that Scala have a number of McDonalds installations in Germany.
Locally in New Zealand one of the most innovative installations consists of portrait 50 inch displays mounted one directly above the other for a chain of pizza outlets. Their branding is ‘Hell Pizza’ and we show a combination of music video content and menus with flame effects to match their corporate style.
One of the main concerns with menu boards is the issue of screen burn. In many cases the content is by its very nature static as customers need time to be able to read the menus and decide on their choices. The content needs to be carefully designed to overcome this.
July 7th, 2008 at 13:11 @591
McDonalds in Sweden are rolling out menu boards, and the biggest and only move chaine (SF) are starting to roll them out. They are starting to appear everywhere.
March 30th, 2010 at 09:31 @438
Yes digital menu boards are perfect for advertising “meal deals”, as the content can be updated with a few clicks of a mouse, whilst creating an entertainment experience for the customer.
This is a win win situation for everyone.
Graham Gallagher
October 27th, 2010 at 06:21 @306
http://www.menu-cast.com has a digital signage software package that gives restaurant owners the flexibility to do anything with their menus, including integration with existing POS systems and allowing for complete customisation of their menu with colors, fonts, sizes, imagery, video etc..
We currently have over 60 Installations worldwide, check out the site!