The best digital menu boards for restaurants and cafes

Digital menu boards are transforming how restaurants and cafes do business around the world.

As a restaurant owner, you know that increasing sales is essential for success. But how can you capture attention, bring more people in through your doors and motivate them to buy? The answer may be as simple as upgrading your menu display to a digital solution.

The best electronic menu boards for restaurants are an easy, affordable, and effective way to attract customers, share menu items, and boost sales.

What are the benefits of digital menu boards?

The benefits of digital signage in restaurants and other food venues are many.

They help increase sales, profits, foot traffic, marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction while saving time, money and the planet.

Digital menus are incredibly well-suited to the needs of restaurants. Thousands of restaurants install digital signs every week and reap the rewards. Here are the six top advantages of using restaurant digital menu boards:

1. Grow daily sales by up to 30%

Electronic menus for fast food stores, restaurants and cafes help you enhance the messaging and dining experience of your sit in customers. It can improve the drive through ordering experience with speedy, high quality service. Going digital with menu boards can increase your daily sales by promoting specials, new menu options, loyalty programs and discounts. Customers will find it hard to resist a mouth-watering chocolate cake when they see it in high-definition full color on tempting digital displays.

2. Boost profit margins

Increase your profits by encouraging people to buy higher-margin items. A staggering 70% of customers purchase products because a sign caught their eye. Restaurant signs are perfect for influencing purchasing choices and driving upsells and cross-sells.

3. Increase foot traffic by 17%

Digital menus capture people’s attention and entice them into your venue. Forget the laminated takeaway menu taped to the front window. Imagine eye-catching graphics, videos and animations showcasing your delicious menu options in all their high-definition glory on crystal-clear screens.

4. Improve effectiveness of marketing messaging with insights

The insights gained from Mandoe Media software will help elevate your restaurant’s messaging to a whole new level. You can test promotions and specials on your digital screens to see what works best. By matching the promotion times and periods with sales data, restaurants can easily figure out what’s working and what isn’t. It is possible to update your screens remotely and run effective promotions that increase revenue and profits.

5. Improve customer experience

The stats are impressive. Studies show digital signs lead to a 33% increase in repeat buyers and a 21% increase in customer satisfaction. In part it’s because restaurant digital menu boards are easy to read and always up to date. Unlike with old school menus, your customers will never be disappointed when their food choices prove to be unavailable because you can easily update availability within minutes and a few clicks. All of this adds up to enhance customer satisfaction and positive customer experience.

6. Save time, money and the planet

There’s no need to design, print, ship, and install new menus whenever a menu changes. You don’t have to erase sold-out items or scribble over price changes. You can easily create beautiful restaurant menu boards in minutes and display them on one screen or many in just a few clicks. Without taking too much time, quickly tailor professional digital menu board design templates to make them your own. The best part is that digital menu board prices are a lot more affordable than you think. In the long run, the investment you make in installing and maintaining electronic menus will deliver a bigger dividend. Compare that with the time and hassle involved with traditional alternatives and it becomes clear why digital menus for restaurants, fast food stores and even food trucks is on the rise globally.

Mandoe digital display menu boards

Easily create beautiful, customized digital menu boards with Mandoe’s drag-and-drop menu board builder.

1. Start with one of our professionally designed templates

Wondering how to get menu board ideas to use in your restaurant or food venue? Mandoe comes pre-loaded with hundreds of beautiful digital menu templates for every hospitality venue imaginable.

2. Make it your own

Personalize your menu board by adding your text and images or choosing from our library of thousands of stock images, icons, graphics and more.

3. Easily deploy to one screen or many

Group screens together by location, store or state and deploy to one or many screens in just a few clicks.
Get your message across at the right time by setting start and end dates and specific times for your signage to display. Perfect for limited-time promotions or lunch specials.

4. Set display schedule

Get your message across at the right time by setting start and end dates and specific times for your signage to display. Perfect for limited-time promotions or lunch specials.

5. Know what content is working and what isn’t

See what content played at what times and match it up to your sales data to see what drives revenue.

Digital menu board ideas and inspiration

Here are six ideas on different ways you could use restaurant digital menu boards.

1. Day Parting: You can have a menu board that details your breakfast menu, automatically changing to the lunch or dinner menu when you choose. You can have specials that come and go, offer lunchtime drink and food combos and switch to the dessert menu late in the evening. It’s all pre-programmed so you and your staff can focus on serving your customers.

2. Education: Use digital screens for staff training outside of hours, or help customers know what to do. Explaining where to order and pay via your screens will free up staff time, speed up service and improve customer satisfaction. If your country has legal requirements to share nutritional information, digital signs are great for that too.

3. Entertainment: You can reduce perceived customer wait times by showing sports, current affairs or other entertaining content on your digital menu screens. Here’s a corny food gag to get your creative juices flowing: Did you hear about the new restaurant on the moon? Great food but no atmosphere.

4. Engagement: Telling stories builds relationships and makes customers more likely to return to your venue. You can use your menu screens to introduce the chef and the rest of the team,  have a live kitchen cam so people can see their food being made, share a favorite recipe or interview the farmer who supplies the produce. You can update content remotely and push it to one screen or many. It is possible to customize your content, a great feature if you have more than one or even many locations around the country.

5. Getting Social: Food selfies are a thing. And most people eating out would take food selfies before tasting the dishes. Some among your customers would love seeing their posts on your social feed while they’re in the restaurant. Give them the satisfaction of seeing their posts on a big screen and encourage them to share the images and videos with their networks. Remember that positive word of mouth is a great way to grow your brand reputation and goodwill.

6. Additional revenue stream: Some restaurants have created an additional revenue stream for themselves by selling advertising space to local businesses on their screens. Your sit-in customers and those waiting in line at take away outlets as a captive audience. Think outside your own walls and promote the products and services of other local businesses with your digital displays.