Electronic Menu Boards: What's for Lunch?

KEY TO SUCCESS

Company: Quick Serve Restaurants

Project: Upgrading to digital menu boards

Key to success: Digital menu boards can give franchises the ability to save money by making changes quickly and consistently through all of their locations.

The menu board is an important element in the quick serve restaurant industry, displaying items, prices and color photos to help customers choose quickly. (Courtesy LEDCONN)

One of my favorite sandwich shops has a menu board with all the items written in different colored chalk on an old-fashioned blackboard.

It’s attractive and folksy, but I can’t read it very well, especially blue letters on the black background. So instead, I look at the paper version on the counter.

In the quick serve restaurant (QSR) niche of the restaurant market (the niche formerly known as fast food) menu boards are all about helping people make a choice, ordering and getting served faster. The menu board is an important element because it reminds people that they want—say, sweet potato fries with that Reuben—and it does this before they place their order. And, because a picture is worth a thousand words, it can show them just what a Dagwood Supreme Reuben with sweet potato fries looks like.

The technology driving these contemporary menu boards and how well they function has progressed quite a ways beyond blackboards and chalk. Dominating the market are fluorescent light boxes for backlighting full color digital prints, but indications are that fluorescent backlit technology will itself soon become pretty rare. As costs drop dramatically, replacing it will be two relative newcomer technologies to the menu board market: LED and LCD.

An LED writing board is an illuminated, rewritable signboard that is an excellent choice for displaying specials in a quick serve restaurant. These boards include a pack of marker pens, so that the menu can be changed easily on a daily basis. (Courtesy Golden Gate Dragon Trading)

While at first glance LED and LCD technologies appear similar—to each other and to the fluorescent one—among end users, two large differences quickly emerge: LED light boxes are much thinner than fluorescent light boxes; and the LCDs are displaying digital images, not backlighting a print, which means if you keep watching, the image will probably change or even turn into a video.

TRENDS

Of the many installed light boxes, menu boards are at or near the top of the list of most common applications. DSA Phototech’s Bob Riley for example, says menu boards account for about 20 percent of all the light boxes the company sells.

And the trend among those light boxes is toward bigger, thinner and brighter—for less money.

Compared to their predecessors that were up to six inches deep, the new class of menu board options is sleek and lightweight. Because of LED technology and edge-lighting technology, displays have become thinner, going from six inches to one inch. “We can actually make a double sided light box that’s about one inch thick,” says Eddie Lee of Bitro Group Inc.

Standard sizes of up to 4' x 8' are common. Edge-lit panels are also popular, squeezing the panel down to less than 1/4" in some cases. And these can be ganged together for even larger displays.

Riley says while a lot of clients are still using fluorescent backlit light boxes, LEDs are becoming increasingly popular, due in part to an increase in white LED performance alongside a dramatic reduction in costs over just the past three years.

In busy quick serve restaurants, systems for menu boards often utilize intelligent switching capabilities between multiple input computers and display monitors. (Courtesy NEC)

“Two years ago, when we first came up with our LED product line, it was only three percent of our revenue; today it’s 30 percent,” says Riley. He says he expects that to increase even further. “In the requests for quotes I’ve seen in the last year, almost every one has asked for an LED option,” he says.

The configuration of the LEDs in a light box also allows the whole package to be thinner and lighter. Rick Farrell, president of LED Concepts, says his company modernized its entire product line with LED technology over two years ago. Previously known as ExpoTrans, the company invested heavily in the development of a new generation of LED menu boards that are now sold under its subsidiary, Advanced Menu Systems.

“We build our menu boards very differently than we did in the past,” says Farrell. “All new designs integrate proprietary LED backlighting technology.” He says the LED light source inside the new generation of light boxes is configured with component LED arrays, .08-watt LED per square inch, 144 LEDs per square foot. An aluminum layer in the circuit board acts as a heat sink. The design is also modular, and includes the power supply, which can be placed remotely. “If something happens, anyone can change the power supply; if an array fails, they can change it in five minutes, like a light bulb,” Farrell says. “It’s an innovative approach to high-performance and energy efficiency in menu boards.”

DIGITAL MENU BOARDS

Digital menu board systems are another animal, much more complex than the printed backlit versions. Lee notes that a lot of things can go wrong with hardware and software, and they are often placed in an environment with oil, moisture and heat. Protecting components from these conditions becomes expensive.

“There’s a lot people who don’t understand, especially small businesses. Some may think it’s just a TV with a computer connected to it. The truth is yes, you can do that to a minimal standard, but beyond that minimum you need a lot of knowledge and resources to make it work successfully,” says Lee.

Brightness is another issue. A regular home TV won’t be bright enough and will not hold up to being turned on all the time, but a commercial screen costs three to four times as much as a regular home TV.

A new class of menu board options is sleek and lightweight. (Courtesy LED Concepts)

In commercial locations, displays often run on a 24/7 schedule and the big enemy of these displays is heat and extreme temperature swings.

The hardware and software components of the digital signage used for menu board applications is in many ways the same as the systems used in other retail applications, such as department stores for example, but one important difference is the redundancy that’s built into a menu board application. “If you just connect one monitor to a PC and display all the items on the menu, what happens when the monitor or PC goes out?” asks NEC’s Mike Zmuda.

The answer is the systems for menu boards often utilize intelligent switching capabilities between multiple input computers and display monitors. Zmuda explains that if one computer breaks, another one could drive multiple monitors; or if a monitor goes down, another monitor could switch the display between the content from two computers.

By contrast, most of the department store environment is already branded with a protected look and feel and prices are already attached to the items. So, if the digital sign were to lose power in that situation, other branding and signage would still be present. “In a department store situation, there is a lot less concern for redundancy compared to a menu board,” Zmuda says.

Consistency is also important to QSR chains. Zmuda says that one of the QSRs’ first concerns—and why some companies are looking at digital signage—is to insure that when an advertising campaign first starts, that everything else is in place. “There is no easier way to do that than electronically,” says Zmuda. “The worst thing for a national advertising campaign is to spend millions on a national basis, and then local stores are tardy in putting up the new pricing and menu items.”

The second concern is savings. It may be politically correct to be green, but it also costs a lot to produce, distribute and mail thousands of prints. So another reason QSRs look to digital signage is to mitigate the costs of printing and the logistics of shipping different graphics to different locations.

Another issue involves the requirements in some states and cities that restaurants display ingredients, calories and nutrition information on their menus.

“It’s a big problem for QSRs because there is no national standard,” says Zmuda. “Even some cities have regulations that differ from other cities nearby. But because every computer in a digital sign network typically is addressable, local content can be displayed adjacent to network content, which makes it simpler to design content that meets local ordinance criteria, then deploy it where it’s needed.”

MENUBOARD MARKETS

“QSRs are a niche business with characteristics that are more unique than other markets,” Zmuda says. “When they convert to a digital menu board system, QSRs tend to implement them first in larger markets such as Las Vegas in order to get a faster return on investment. They don’t want some to look the new way and some the old way, so they tend to always blanket a market for a uniform look and feel, whether they are franchises or a company-owned store. The advantage is when they create content, they can push it to all locations.”

Lee agrees that the QSR market has a huge potential, even for small businesses. “Big franchises see the potential of this and have the money to implement it,” Lee says. “They’ve done enough research to realize it takes a lot of solutions to make it happen. It also means they are convinced there is a lot of cost, but it’s worth it.” But he says small restaurants can implement the technology as well. “A lot of digital, modularized systems have been developed and are available at lower cost, so smaller projects can be implemented,” Lee says.

Zmuda believes in another couple years, a melding of all the prototypes will occur, costs will come down further and in the next few years, almost any QSR location will have some kind of digital menu board installed.

He also believes sign companies will play a larger role in deployment of digital menu boards. “With good partners, we’ve been able to bring some good solutions to the market,” Zmuda says. “Key to working with sign companies is they can leverage our technology with the relationship they already have with their client.”

gravity

May 18, 2011 12:17 am

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Sign & Digital Graphics

Electronic Menu Boards: What's for Lunch?

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