Whether you are in the throws of opening a new restaurant or your current setup needs a facelift, the most critical piece of signage you have at your disposal is your menu board. Menu boards, whether indoor or outdoor drive-thrus, present you with the single-most captive of audiences. When done right, they enhance the experience, influence purchasing decisions, reinforce your brand, increase efficiencies, and increase your average ticket amount. Today, we’ll share a breakdown of different options and offer some considerations before buying your system.

In its most traditional sense, a drive-thru needs three components, 1- a sign, 2- a way in which to communicate and 3- vehicle detection so you know someone is waiting to place an order. While these alone are far better than nothing, there are new and innovative ways to cater to the emerging clientele desperate for a convenient, time saving, accurate order-taking process at the drive-thru.

You know that thing called the Internet?  Well, it isn’t a fad and it’s not going away.  In fact, some studies have shown that 27% of the world’s consumers do their shopping online with that number creeping to 55% during the holiday season.  It increases even more when you consider those who do competitive “browsing” online only to make a more traditional face-to-face or telephone transaction.

So why do I bring this up?  How does this relate to menu boards, drive-thrus and digital signage?  Quite simply it’s because people are using this avenue to learn, research and buy these types of products just as they would an airplane ticket, a pair of shoes, or a knife set.  Yet, when you compare one menu board company to another, to another, to another, you begin to see that there is not a lot of differentiation between them.  They have similar products at similar price points.

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