8 Types of Restaurants That Should Use Digital Signage

Digital signage is one technology that every restaurant should embrace. Statistics show 71% of consumers believe digital signage stands out more than online ads. Instead of wasting budget money on static signs and dull online banner ads, eateries can benefit a lot more from using digital signage.

With this in mind, regardless of the type of restaurant you run, you should use digital signage to promote your brand and communicate with your patrons. Interestingly, 80% of customers decide to enter new or unfamiliar stores or establishments after seeing a digital sign. That proves that digital signage is a powerful marketing tool for businesses. Think of the ripple effect of your restaurant’s outdoor and indoor digital signs. Let’s discuss how various restaurant types can benefit from restaurant digital signage.

1. Fine Dining and Family-Style Restaurants

Whether offering a Michelin star-rated menu or keeping it family-style and casual, your restaurant can incorporate digital signage in multiple ways. If your restaurant category falls into fine dining, use digital signage to keep guests abreast of their wait times or showcase the chef’s special of the day. Digital signage also can display customer menu favorites, elaborating on dish names guests may not be familiar with on the menu.

For casual dining, use digital signage to show live TV inside your restaurant. For example, display children shows to keep them engaged, calm and quiet while waiting for their food. Additionally, you can premiere sports games on game day to draw in a big crowd. With the great resolution, crisp pictures, and HD video features of digital signage, this will engage your customers and appeal to them to revisit your establishment.

2. Fast Food Restaurants or QSR

Quick service restaurants, popularly known as fast food establishments, sell packaged food for customers to eat on the go. Fast food restaurants are often popular franchises or chains with a nationwide or global presence. Whether they sell from a counter or a drive-through window, fast foods can benefit from restaurant digital signage.

For example, they can create a digital menu board to increase sales by approximately 38%. By offering their customers beautifully branded digital experiences, QSRs can set themselves up for success. The flexibility of digital signage menu boards makes them the perfect choice for an ever-dynamic restaurant environment.

Unlike static menus that require new printouts when you need to update content, digital menus are easy to change at the click of a button. With digital menu boards, customers can quickly look up the items on sale, special offers, and prices.

3. Bars

Using digital signage in bars is an excellent avenue to increase community engagement with the patrons. It allows you to keep the customers entertained with uninterrupted content. If done correctly, digital signage in bars can enhance the customer experience and provide value to the patrons.

Besides, depending on the digital signage placement, digital signage in bars can feel like a natural part of the bar’s environment and atmosphere. As such, the content should be exciting and engaging for the audience. While this sounds like simple advice, few bar owners implement it, yet it’s crucial for increased customer engagement and entertainment.

The day’s special drinks and happy hour offers are a must-have on a bar’s digital signage. These are tried-and-true methods of getting more customers to your bar. Your level of creativity counts in displaying these promos. Instead of simply showing a drink and indicating its price, incorporate high-quality video and motion-graphic content to display exciting content on each beverage.

4. Coffee Shops

Other restaurant types that can benefit from restaurant digital signage are coffee shops. The first place to get started is with a coffee menu board that makes it irresistible to place more coffee orders.

While at it, avoid having a boring restaurant menu board. Instead, create a video that amazingly demonstrates how you make or prepare the coffee at your shop. For example, if your coffee shop boasts a selection of single-origin coffees, use 1080p Full HD resolution video content to show off the supplier’s farms. Such content will make your customers feel more connected with the products.

Additionally, highlight each coffee type’s primary benefits and healthy ingredients for a more profound impact. With a well-done digital menu board for your coffee shop, you’ll be in a better position to:

• Highlight specialty drinks in a way that best appeals to your customers
• Promote new offers and newly added items on the coffee menu
• Upsell and cross-sell
• Serve multiple locations from a single system at the same time
• Prepare engaging videos and animations to keep your customers engaged, entertained, and informed.

Coffee shops can also do well with digital out-of-home signage for more effective marketing.

5. Donut Shops

Restaurant digital signage for donut shops isn’t a far-fetched idea. Donut shops attract over 201 million customers, according to 2020 statistics. So, why wouldn’t you use digital signage to ramp up your marketing efforts and attract an even bigger crowd? Besides, digital signage is an effortless way to modernize your donut shop because it brings a more aesthetic look to your environment.

Some other reasons to employ digital restaurant signage in your donut shop are to:

• Save costs on static banners, menus, and paper flyers
• Instantly update your menus without reprinting them
• Display offers with a higher order margin and promotes them more easily
• Create a playlist of visually catchy images and slideshows of your offerings as needed

The number of digital screens you’ll put up depends on the number of items on your menu. If you have many things on the list, you might need more than one screen.

6. Food Trucks

If you want your food truck to get noticed, use restaurant digital signage. At the same time, digital signage solutions:

• Help customers place their orders with ease
• Allow for seamless real-time content management for menus and daily specials
• Animate menus and provides inviting digital displays to improve the order size
• Enable you instantly switch from breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus
• Decrease perceived wait times as you prepare orders for your customers
• Ease menu integration into the point of sale (POS) system

Restaurant digital signage is the point of attraction for your food truck when you’re out on the streets. Potential customers can see what’s on your menu from a distance and approach you for an impulse purchase, increasing your sales. Besides, you can boost your brand recognition with high-definition images and logos.

7. Pizzerias

Pizzerias make good money in the US, generating more than $45 billion in sales in 2021. Undoubtedly, pizzas are famous among busy moms and dads with kids, college students, and working people during lunch break. They’re also a good food choice for friends as they meet for various reasons.

Digital signage enhances the ambiance and supports the operations of pizza restaurants. The restaurants can create well-organized digital menus that show the entire menu, nutritional information, and pricing. Depending on the digital signage software in use, they can take advantage of various drag-and-drop features like:

• Slideshows
• Images
• Videos
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Text
• Shapes and background
• Polls
• YouTube
• Weather
• Twitter
• News RSS

All these content types can be a source of entertainment for customers as they enjoy their pizzas. At the same time, use eye-catching imagery with legible menu items to catch customers’ attention and boost their experience.

8. Bistros

Bistro restaurants typically have a more relaxed atmosphere, with people attracted to them for socializing or relaxing purposes. While they’re similar to cafes, they have more food options. Therefore, they also should leverage digital restaurant signage, not only to display their menu offerings but also to:

• Enhance the restaurant’s brand experience and messaging
• Stay ahead of the competition
• Increase efficiency
• Boost your brand’s social proof
• Customize the menu anytime and anywhere

Bistros can display their social media walls on their screens to entertain and engage customers. For example, video walls endowed with mouth-watering food items can increase customers’ appetites and drive sales.

Engage Your Patrons with Restaurant Digital Signage

Whether you run a coffee shop, fast food restaurant, food truck, lounge, or pizzeria, restaurant digital signage should be one of your marketing strategies. Now more than ever, customers want a better customer experience and don’t want to spend time queuing. Digital signage solutions can help you achieve that and much more for increased sales and a good investment return.