Call it a happy accident. A fluke. A stroke of genuine good luck.
But when the company that Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes had been working with on its digital signage and promotions went out of business five years ago, thus leaving the upstate New York chain with blank displays at 23 of its stores, the retailer thought about removing them altogether.
Instead of incurring costs as high as $400 per site for removal, however, Michael MacDougall, head of IT for the Canastota, N.Y.-based operator, thought to repurpose the displays. He wrote a program that tied all displays to a central hub—and, just like that, all foodservice-equipped locations were set up with vibrant, colorful, flexible digital menu boards.
“It took me a couple months, and we got everything in place and we just let it run,” he says. “We turned lemons into lemonade on that one.”
If you’re still relying on static menu boards, look up: Digital is dotting the landscape of QSRs and, increasingly, the c-store arena. And in an era of Xbox, Wii and other interactive platforms, digital menus create an on-the-go perception that underscores most retailers’ foodservice offerings.
Content, often delivered via a central operations hub, is displayed on the menu in real time and can be shown across many stores. Most retailers use the boards for menu items and pricing, while others cycle through different screens, touting daily specials and other promotions. In short, they’re used for information, including calorie counts and portion sizes, and marketing and loyalty initiatives.
Such flexibility excites Scott Zaremba, owner and operator of eight-store Zarco USA Inc., Lawrence, Kan. “It allows us to change and modify our menu on the fly. We’re changing all the time,” he says. “We’re adding products and we’re doing things differently all the time. With the video screens, we’re also showing our products that we’re updating and changing all the time.” For example, Zaremba says the stores just added a new cheese to submarine sandwich options.
In addition to the traditional benefits, digital boards are ideal for promoting limited time offers (LTOs) and helping to drive traffic, according to Richard Ventura, director of sales, vertical solutions, for Itasca, Ill.-based NEC Display Solutions. Integration of mobile and social media with the menu boards is also driving new strategies within QSRs and convenience stores, Ventura says. For example, displaying approved tweets on a scroll at the bottom of a message board could help steer a customer toward higher-margin items, or other LTOs.
Making It Work
A quick Google search for “digital menu board” brings up pages full of potential suppliers, replete with product offerings for every possible scenario. Nevertheless, many operators prefer to control digital operations. “I can buy all the monitors for what it costs to print one menu setup. Right now, we have five screens that are together,” Zaremba says. “We figured out how to mount them easily. We’ve created all our own graphics. We were able to do that extremely cost-effectively.”
“Different companies came to us in the past and told us they could do it for us in a Web portal,” says MacDougall of Nice N Easy. “They were all very expensive. So we did it in-house. I developed a little program routine that all our displays check hourly to see if there’s an update—and if there is, it throws it up there.”
For those who decide to go with a more turnkey solution, the initial cost could be more than doing it themselves, but experts believe the ROI is considerable.
According to Ventura of NEC Display Solutions, digital menu boards provide some obvious savings in printing costs, cross-promotional advantages and physical impact, but they also reduce time to market promotions and product.
“Focus needs to be first on ROO (return on objective),” Ventura says. “Before you can decide ROI, you need to establish what your objectives are for the pilot or rollout, as well as your one-, three-, five-year plan.”
And accept that not every promotion or every application may fly with your customers. “Making sure to remember that use can and will change over time due to lessons you learn, as well as the different strategies you want to implement,” he says. “Once this is understood, then look at your hard and soft costs in order to establish an ROI line.”
Zaremba agrees that nailing down ROI is impossible when messaging and branding is involved: “ROI is a relative term. When you’re talking about media inside the store, it’s just a crisp, clean professional look that we can manipulate to look however we want. Having the ability to change things is huge. All of a sudden that next idea comes, and we can change [the displays] in 2 minutes.”
According to Zaremba, Zarco routinely changes its promotional items weekly on the rolling digital display screens. And on the still portion of the menu boards, he updates pricing on a monthly basis.
Edge of Innovation
Despite the obvious advantages of digital display technology, there is still some reluctance in the industry to adopt a measureable, widespread use of the menus. Whether it’s upfront cost, or concerns regarding maintenance, the industry is still a long way from saturation, NEC’s Ventura says.
“We are at the tipping point right now. The next step is outdoor menu boards and full integration of mobility and things like augmented reality,” he says. “Also, taking the content and information and getting it to the table is being discussed. The use of tablets and other similar mobile technologies will have more impact.”
Some retailers have used digital technology elsewhere in their stores for years but haven’t made the leap to digital menu boards. Scott Hartman, president and CEO of Rutter’s Farm Stores, York, Pa., says his company has had digital kiosks for marketing purposes for about 10 years, but stores don’t yet have electronic menu boards in place. He estimates the kiosks alone have contributed a 20% increase in sales.
“We continue to explore [digital menu boards] as an addition to our current signage. We currently use kiosks, which are our primary way to inform customers of our offers during the ordering process,” he says. “We also have TVs in some of our stores’ restaurant areas, which provide information about new food items.”
Rutter’s controls its digital messaging from a central office, the same way Nice N Easy does. Its marketing team is behind the controls. For Nice N Easy, it’s as easy as updating a PowerPoint file, which is then directly uploaded. Nice N Easy’s MacDougall also programmed the system to send him a text message each morning to indicate that all displays are online and operational.
“If one of [the displays] goes offline, I get a text,” he says. “And every morning we get a summary of what’s online and what’s not. We had instances where the menu boards or one of the floor displays [weren’t operational]. I’d walk into a store where maybe we lost power and we forgot [to reboot]. It gives me a heads-up so I can call the stores.”
Zaremba, who has the displays in his four locations with his Sandbar Sub Shop and Scooter’s Coffeeshop programs, determined that the $500 cost per display monitor is the same amount he’d previously spent screen-printing the menu boards. His next goal is to get interactive screens and menus at the pumps, so customers can order a sub or a cup of coffee while pumping gas. The item would be ready when they were done outside.
“Over the years, I’ve found that there’s a lot of things that happen out there and we always seem to be on the front edge of what is going on,” Zaremba says, in reference to the digital menu boards in his stores. “This is one of the times where the technology has caught up to what we need. I love them.”
But for all his affection, the boards don’t garner much attention from the customers. And that’s OK.
“We put the first ones in probably eight to 10 months ago. You don’t get a lot of feedback,” he says. “It’s like displaying the American flag. When I have the flags at the locations, no one notices unless they’re tattered. You have the menu boards up, the only time you hear is if they’re off. That’s the kind of interaction you want.”
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