Quick-service restaurants understand the power of the menu board. It is their number-one sales tool and profit driver. It’s no overstatement to say a QSR’s success stems largely from the quality of its menu board and its ability to entice, inform, and sell customers throughout the day.
Unquestionably important, the menu board can also be among the simplest of in-store responsibilities. In fact, with some menu board programs in place, local store managers never even have to touch the hardware.
The secret to fast scaling, successful sales performance, and streamlined operations lies in using an agile menu board program that optimizes and automates the entire process from production to placement.
Simplify QSR Operations with Enterprise Digital Menu Boards
Menu board programs are complex. That’s true whether you look at things from the perspective of the national brand or the local QSR operation.
National brands have to consider the entire ecosystem of menu boards, with thousands of endpoints and hundreds of sizes and production variations. For QSR managers, menu boards create another to-do for shift workers. Prices must be updated, new promotions added, and even product selections swapped out to optimize time-of-day marketing performance.
However, much of the stress, complexity, and busywork can be removed with enterprise digital menu boards. They create the foundation of modern, agile menu board programs. Using digital menu boards empowers QSRs to adjust their offerings and sales tactics throughout the day.
With an enterprise digital menu board program, the full stack of your menu board needs is addressed. All data, content, artwork, and dayparting changes are handled automatically. It can be managed at a national, regional, or local level based on the QSR brand’s wants. It ensures precision alignment and quality across the board. Plus, an expert digital menu board partner will be a valuable resource for consulting and strategizing your program.
The benefits of a digital menu board
Automated content scheduling
No more manual changes, allows for on-the-fly regional variability, and supports defined daypart schedules.
Rule-based menu logic
Show or hide items based on availability or prep capacity. Enforce a simplified menu listing during peak hours and feature top-selling products in real time.
Margin-aware merchandising
Showcase top margin product per daypart, highlight high-margin add-ons, and support limited-time or bundled pricing.
Real-time update and limited-time offer (LTO) velocity
Instantly launch, pause, or adjust LTOs chain-wide. Rotate creative without disrupting operations. Test creative and offers by region or store cluster.
Operational alignment
Align menu presentation with kitchen capacity and staffing, reduce staff workload, and ensure what’s promoted is actually fulfillable.
Performance measurement and optimization
Make correlations between sales performance and daypart content. Identify products that over- or underperform, and refine menu content based on sales numbers.
Using an enterprise digital menu board program ensures that every location has exactly the right menu board information, delivered and synchronized at the proper time. All without manual effort and oversight, unless that approach is preferred.
Do QSRs Need Digital Menu Boards?
If you had asked five years ago, the answer would have been no. If you ask five years from now, the answer is yes. The sooner you implement digital menu boards, the faster you’ll be on par with QSR technology and customer expectations. However, the printed menu board has and will continue to work. What’s more, you can still incorporate some of the advantages of a digital menu board solution.
Working with an experienced in-store marketing partner like Momentara is a great place to start. They are uniquely positioned to help QSRs with menu board strategizing, production, fulfillment, and some aspects of installation. Full-service partners like Momentara handle almost everything for you.
The processes of supporting a printed menu board present challenges. That said, QSRs can still use printed menu boards to:
- Influence customer preferences
- Support daypart selling
- Test-market LTOs
- Showcase high-margin products
- Increase average order value
Effective Dayparting Strategy for Quick-Service Restaurants
Dayparting is the practice of tailoring your menu, pricing, and promotions to the time of day. Doing so helps the menu align with customer intent, traffic patterns, and your QSR’s operations. It’s so much more than showing different menus at different times of day. In reality, what dayparting accomplishes is maximizing throughput, improving margins, and optimizing customer relevance. In essence, dayparting is a profit-and-operations strategy.
Dayparting is best accomplished with an agile digital menu board program that can react and automate actions in real-time. That said, with a bit of work and the support of a menu board partner, dayparting can be achieved with printed boards as well.
Dayparting Tactics
Some aspects of good dayparting tactics are elementary. That includes showcasing in-demand items when they are most desired. Another common tactic is to employ margin-aware merchandising. That’s the process of automatically hiding low-margin items during rush times. Using margin-aware merchandising within the dayparting strategy accelerates kitchen performance while increasing shift profitability.
Other aspects of good dayparting are less intuitive. For example, putting technology and partners in place that can optimize dayparting strategies across 2,000 locations — and making updates instantaneous. To do that, you need an integrated approach that unifies sales data with merchandising content creation and delivery.
QSR Dayparting Strategies
Breakfast
Be fast, optimize routine orders, push bundles, and use upsell prompts like adding hash browns.
Lunch
Maximize throughput and order amount while de-emphasizing slow-selling SKUs.
Mid-Afternoon
Attract incremental visits to improve total sales with special mid-afternoon pricing.
Dinner
Cater to family and group orders (high average order value) while promoting add-ons, side dishes, and desserts.
Late Night
Protect margins with dessert or treat items. Use dynamic pricing and remove low-selling items.
Across dayparts, QSRs should employ limited-time offers (LTOs) to counter slow periods, boost order size, and drive traffic. The objective is to achieve high operational yield across the schedule.
The Deel Partnership — Digital Signage That Drives Sales
Momentara partners with Deel to power our customers’ enterprise digital signage solutions. With 15 years of experience providing end-to-end signage solutions, Deel is renowned for digital menu board design and content management expertise.
Why Momentara Partnered with Deel
Technical Excellence
Deel is a well-established leader in digital menu signage that integrates seamlessly with Momentrara’s printed menu programs.
Industry Expertise
Deel understands the menu-selling opportunities of the QSR market and delivers industry-proven strategies.
Performance Growth
Deel unlocks digital screen opportunities, empowering Momentara clients to scale quickly, drive sales performance, and broaden exposure to special offers/promotions.
Shared Data
The Deel CMS integrates with The Engine from Momentara, ensuring all updates, such as a new price, are automatically and accurately implemented across print and digital displays.
Ready to Use Menu Boards to Scale a National QSR Brand?
Creating and executing digital menu board programs is just one aspect of in-the-moment marketing — a strategy created by Momentara. We turn in-store, out-of-home, and event promotions into useful touchpoints that sync with the customer’s routines to encourage behaviors. The Momentara approach makes your marketing messages a welcome, impactful, and natural part of the customer’s day.
Whether your marketing needs are focused on menu boards or if you’re intrigued by the omnichannel opportunities offered by Momentara, we invite you to reach out. We bring you the technology, experience, production, scale, resources, and national presence to build certainty and programmatic success.
