Every morning Sarah loves to visit the cafe in her neighbourhood. She orders her favourite Americano and bagels at the counter and then enjoys waiting by the window-side table for her orders to arrive. This is her usual order every morning and she does not feel the need to check the menu card or ask the staff at the counter if anything new has been recently added to the menu.
Recently, the restaurant underwent renovation, during which they installed some modern facilities. One day, Sarah visited the cafe to place her order and came across an advertisement displayed on a digital signage near the counter. The cafe is advertising No Coffee Pumpkin Latte as the latest addition on their menu card. Sarah found the new item displayed on the digital signage interesting. She decided to give it a try. So she placed an order for No Coffee Pumpkin Latte instead of her favourite Americano.
Mark is the manager of the cafe that Sarah visits every morning. He remembers Sarah very well as she is their regular customer. He also knows what Sarah usually orders and so he did not think that Sarah would be interested to order something different. Even if he had plans to pitch about a new menu item to customers, chances are that the cafe is crowded in the morning and he has to take care of the momentary rush. Managing the customers during peak hours in the morning can be quite difficult. However, after the cafe underwent renovation, he noticed a slight difference in customer behavior. He noticed that customers are engaging with digital signages.
Just like Sarah, there are many other customers who have placed a different order, which is unlike their usual pattern, ever since the cafe had installed digital sygnages. The sales percentage has not only risen but the cafe management identified it as very cost effective solution. They do not have to invest time, effort or money on designing and printing new menus.
Installing digital signages is a one-time investment if you can take care of the designing part yourself. The thought of designing menus can sound very ridiculous. But not so if you can use online menu maker applications. These are online digital menu design tools that offer ready-made menu design templates that you can use if you are an amateur and don’t have much knowledge about advertising and design.
Let’s take a look at the key factors that make digital signages an effective medium of communication is today’s restaurant industry.
- Super-trendy ready templates: Nowadays, the popularity of online menu makers have risen so high, finding an application will not be difficult. Some applications offer free templates and come with zero subscription costs. There are also online menu design tools that come with an in-built design editor. These tools (for example MenuRepo) offer advanced features such as an inbuilt design editor that makes implementation of your imagination easier. Such as, you can choose a template that is already available in the application’s gallery and then proceed to make edits using the design editor. The application (MenuRepo) allows you to change texts, graphics, and even the colour of your texts and graphics. Not only that! It’s drag-and-drop feature allows you to move the design elements and position them where you think is appropriate. That’s the maximum length of freedom you get when you are usign a digital menu maker.
- Downloadable designs in multiple formats: Once you are done designing the template, the next thing you would want is to display it. It is important to ensure that the final output of your design is compatible with the OS platform that the device supports. This is important as the look and feel of the designed output will depend on the format in which it is being displayed. Nowadays, many menu makers offer multiple formats in which the final output can be downloaded in any format you want. MenuRepo for example, allows you to download your design in various formats such as pdf, jpeg, video.
- Generate cloud Urls of file formats: With the arrival of cloud computancy, a lot of digital support systems are actually running on cloud. Digital menu makers allows you to generate signed urls that are automatically generated in the backend and returned to the user. Using this Url, you can upload large files directly to the cloud. Since it is a signed Url, your access to the storage remains secure through the dual layers of the intial API call. The advantage about these signed Urls is that it is specific to a single item in cloud storage and which you can only access using credentials. If your entire setup is built on a cloud support system such as AWS, then managing and marketing menus on cloud becomes resource efficient.
- Free 30-days access for subscribers: Finding it hard to decide whether you should invest your capital on a complete cloud-based digital setup? Well menu makers like MenuRepo offers new users a 30-days free trial during which they get complete access to the application’s template gallery and design editor. During these 30 days trial period, you can get enough time to try out the tool and come to a conclusion as to whether investing in a digital menu maker would be helpful for your business or not.
Conclusion
Nowadays, almost every restaurant outlet that you walk into, digital sygnages have become a very common sight. Digital sygnages help to enhance the look and feel of an outlet, while at the same time it helps to make restaurant operations smart and efficient. The rapid pace at which the business operations in a restaurant is carried out, makes digital sygnages a desired point of investment and interaction for both businesses and customers alike.