Why Restaurants Need to use Digital Menu Instead of Paper one?

Often a restaurant or any dining area is remembered for the taste and quality of food that they offer. What we always tend to miss out is that the reason a person might want to go to your restaurant at the first place is the kind of menu that you offer. Menu being the first point of contact for a customer, it needs to make an impression. In a restaurant, customers do not read ‘the menu’ but quickly scan them and a well-designed digital menu for restaurants can significantly enhance this scanning experience.

While we follow the tradition of having paper menus and spend time, money and resources on it to get an appealing design and effect on the customer, after a couple of months the same menu is often unrecognizable.

Again, if a customer prefers to speak with the wait staff to decide on order rather than deciding from menu, restaurant needs to improve menu as early as possible.

Paper Menus – Current Challenges

Difficult to capture customer’s attention
As per recent survey, 86% of customers get confused what to order inside restaurant due to lack of information available in menu

No Real Time & Slow to update
With Paper menus, it is not possible to update instantly with your latest offerings or unavailable items.

Ruined or dirty paper
The restaurant can’t completely maintain the paper menu away from water or oil stain. Many customers prefers to order without touching the menu due to hygiene issues

Cost and Time consuming
Average restaurant prints menu 3 times in a year which leads to high printing cost. Moreover it takes time to design, approve and print the menu. Menu expenses become liability rather than investment

Why Use The Advanced Interactive Digital Menu in Restaurant?

why use digital menus in restaurants

A tech revolution is on its way for restaurants. Be it online reservations, Mobile apps to place orders and make payment or providing feedback with a few taps on phone, there is a tech solution available for every need of a customer and restaurant. QSRs and the fast casual restaurant segment have been pioneers to adopt these tech solutions. However, full service restaurants are gradually becoming more open to give these solutions a try and offer their guests more choice.

With the advent of tablet-based interactive digital menus, restaurants are now rethinking the traditional dining experience that they offer. But what benefits do restaurants get by using digital menus?

The perfect first impression to capture customer’s attention
As digital menu support HD images and videos, it becomes easy for a customer to decide quickly with confidence on their order. Visual information leads to increase in sales.

Easy & Flexible to update and manage
It’s quick and easy to update the digital menu. Upload images, add description and schedule the items as per session. With single click all the devices gets updated in no time. It works offline as well.

Better serve with photos and translations
Customer always take advice from the wait staff to decide on their order. It is usually hard for them to suggest as they are not aware with customer’s preference. Real photos with language translation surely helps customer to decide quickly.

Better ROI return on investment
Digital menu for restaurant becomes investment rather than liability to any restaurant since it is very easy to update. Any change to menu can be done within minutes which does not require any additional cost

Benefits of using Digital Menu

1. Update menu on all devices just on a single click
2. Control all the linked devices, monitor and decide which device will have what menu
3. Eliminate human error in uploading the menu to the device
4. Load the same menu to geographically dispersed devices at the same time
5. Easy, flexible, dynamic, quick way of creating menu and playing on device
6. Schedule different menu in a day to be played on devices

Digital Menu Design Option

1. Full Screen Image Menu:

full screen digital menu
second screen full digital menu
add to cart digital menu

Give your diners the high-quality restaurant feel with full screen Digital menu. Engage your customers with images of your dishes and description so they know what to order and are open to try new dishes. Highlight the special dishes of the season or your most recommended ones as well.

2. Digital Paper Menu:

digital paper menu

Get rid of paper menus and the printing costs that come with it. According to a research, paper menu cards are 100 times dirtier than toilet covers. Digital Paper menu comes as a rescue here eliminating the need of paper menus altogether. One can make free updates to the menu without having to go through the long process of getting them printed.

DotSignage is one of the Best Digital Menu solutions to look out for. Letting you upload ready templates of menu, HTML, videos or also offering in-built menu templates, this system is easy to use and manage updates in no time. With advanced scheduler, one can schedule menu day wise or time wise as per their need easily.

With DotSignage Digital menu there are several design options like displaying either image or paper menu or letting your customer know what they are ordering with HD images or having an interactive Digital paper menu that enlarges images upon click.

DotSignage Console – Manage Devices From Dashboard

There are several things that can be done with our web console with major points listed below.
1. Intuitive console to update menu items with images
2. Central library to store all the images or videos
3. Manage all devices from single dashboard
4. Update all your devices with single click
5. Schedule your menu as per day, time or event.
6. Track what’s playing on devices

Conclusion:

Digital menus are certainly the need of the hour now that we know how much they can improvise the dining experience of customers. They are eco-friendly and one can update menus in all the devices with a single click, eliminate human error, manage uncertain updates and schedule the menus as per need DotSignage

Smit Nebhwani

Smit Nebhwani is a tech entrepreneur with expertise in successfully building SAAS based products. Boasting over a decade of experience in the startup sector, he takes pleasure in sharing valuable insights on all facets of SAAS products. His extensive experience in the digital signage sector has established him as a reputable authority in the industry, and he channels this expertise through some valuable content. In his free time, Smit enjoys music, travelling and spending time with his family.

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