Owner, Harry, contacted James Hogg Display for advice on his existing menu display after seeing more and more commercial digital menu boards appear in QSR’s (Quick Service Restaurants) and the commercial success a number of these boards where having locally.
The Lobster Pot caters for takeaway and sit-down meals and with the variety of meals available at different times of the day.
His restaurant is very popular and is open into the small hours catering for, as Harry puts it, ‘His special customers’ (We think he means the late night revellers needing sustenance on their way home)
Harry wanted to make his entire menu accessible to all his loyal customers. He soon realised that to achieve this he was going to need a solution that enabled him to change, not only the vast and varied meal choices but his pricing quickly and effectively and with the minimum of fuss.
The causes for menu changes are:
- There are two different menu choices, a breakfast/lunch menu and an evening menu. With all six of his existing printed menu boards he had to change each one, twice a day, by hand.
- The fluctuation in food prices from his supply chain, causing a huge headache with the constant changing of each set meal price.
- Meals are often removed completely or replaced with new, and exciting savoury meals.
The added burden of staff reliability in changing the menu’s over was drawing Harry ever closer to change. But what to do next? How do you swap-out printed menu’s for digital menu’s?
Harry openly admitted that his technical prowess was extremely limited. Working off a spreadsheet was a technical as it came, However, simply throwing someone into the deep end and expecting them to turn their vision into a viable working solution overnight was not only unfair but could cost a lot in both money and time.
The Lobster Pot has a good reputation locally and is loved by the community. Harry could see his vision and where he wanted it to be. His new technology was going to play a huge part in this transformation and it had to be right. He knew retail extremely well and new that to succeed he would need to evolve and move into the digital age.
Content would be the critical factor in the success of this digital transformation. So, through various telephone conversations with James Hogg Display, the trust and the relationship was established.
Simply by replacing an existing printed menu with a digital screen will not increase any revenue at all. All you would achieve here would be some very nice but very expensive light boxes.
The Lobster Pot had no visual or library assets. After all, why would they? As a takeaway restaurant the written word stood and a mantra for the way this industry sells its product.
What was needed was a visual reference to underpin the written word and so, the team at James Hogg Display, met up with Harry one early spring day at The Lobster Pot and spent a day building a visual reference library by photographing and videoing some of Harry’s most popular meals. The staff at the Lobster Pot prepared the meals, brought them through to a hastily constructed photography booth located in a back office, and so began the creation of a reusable asset library that would become one of the key engaging pieces of content to appear on each of his new digital menu boards.
Working closely again with Harry we devised six animated templates that reinforced the Lobster Pot brand using 3D animation of the logo and some clever little animated tricks that would keep the attention of the customer on the digital menu board. For example, certain popular meals would feature a laser like under score travel across from left to right to identify that particular meal.
The game changer and the feature responsible for the sales increase was when we added video profiles of the various meals, appearing as a single video dedicated to a complete digital board. With the applied template, these meal deals would soon show upwards of 5% increase in food sales because the movement and the virtual appetite these video meals created the single, most important reaction when viewing content and that is emotional engagement. Content must have that emotional connection with the viewer otherwise the value of the digital menu board will be lost.
All that was left was to decide on the hardware to support this new and exciting content.
Harry knew the space he had available and so, with close consultation with the team at James Hogg Display, it was decided that six 42” LCD landscape digital menu boards would be the preferred size and orientation for the installation.
Due to the type of environment the digital menu boards would be installed in it was crucial to specify a digital menu board that had a seamless, tempered glass front with no control buttons or heavy stepped bezel (frame) where airborne particles would become trapped. The Hygiene standards are mandatory in an environment such as this so the choice of hardware and the subsequent ease and frequency in cleaning is of paramount importance.
Harry now has state of the art hardware, compelling and emotionally engaging content. All he needs to do now is to find a way to upload the digital information to his new menu boards.
Out of the six screens, five where chosen as standard USB memory stick upload and the final digital menu board connected to our on line or cloud based server. By accessing his account, via the online portal, Harry can upload all of his assets where they would sit in a virtual library and be downloaded onto a content management platform, again, via the online server, enabling him to create new content templates, create a playlist and finally schedule his digital menus to appear and change on screen at any time of day seven days a week.
The online portal gives him access to his digital menu board from any internet enabled device, from any location with an internet connection. This means he can change his menu offer, price, nutritional information and individual promotions without physically touching the digital menu board in fact from anywhere in the world!
From start to finish the project was completed in a little under 4 weeks. With the reassurance of telephone technical support Harry soon became comfortable with the operation and use of his digital menu boards. But don’t take our word for it. Here is a wonderful testimonial from Harry that confirms why digital menu boards are considered the next step in the customer experience......
“ Great product and service! These screens really do bring the power of marketing to your business, as well as being really aesthetically appealing in a retail environment.
For me and my business this is really the future if you want to be ahead of the game in your field”
To arrange for a consultation about digital menu boards, how they can help boost your fast food outlet or transform a retail business then call James Hogg Display on 0330 333 6106 or email info@jameshoggdisplay.com