There are many ways to make your business more environmentally friendly. These include minimizing food waste, planning a sustainable menu, and switching to eco-friendly packaging. You can also reduce energy consumption by reducing the demand for electricity in your restaurant or purchasing recycled supplies and sending the waste to recycling systems. And one of the easiest and most popular ways for businesses to go green is by providing a digital menu. Let's discover what it is and what are the key benefits of this tool.
What is a Digital Menu Board?
Let's start from the basics! Digital menu boards are electronic menus displayed on digital screens that can be placed in a prominent location, or used on smartphones. There are many advantages to using digital menus instead of traditional paper menus. QR menus are contactless and can be easily updated, they are more cost-effective and environmentally friendly. Additionally, paperless menus can be used to promote larger orders and faster turnover.
One of the best examples of a digital menu on the market is HotelFriend Digital Menu System. Using this QR menu, you can be sure your clients will have a fantastic experience with technology and innovation. Here are at least three reasons to try it:
- ● Available for orders 24/7 – customers can place orders anytime without worrying about store hours.
- ● Contactless technologies – having a contact-free system in one place, your customers won't have to worry about getting too close to anyone, and you won't have to worry about sick customers.
- ● Being time- and cost-saving – you won't have to worry about any extra fees, and you won't have to buy any additional equipment.
What Are The Benefits of Digital Menus?
Give customers value-added information
Digital menu – this is an excellent opportunity to bring complete information regarding all the dishes from the menu to your clients. This way, you don't have to sacrifice design to accommodate all ingredients.
You can also include nutritional information and an ingredient list on a digital menu so customers can make informed choices. You can create a paperless menu that allows you to segment or filter items so that only vegan or gluten-free items are displayed. All of this can be tidied away in a drop-down menu or pop-up. Each position of the menu may include images of the food. According to studies, our brains respond extremely positively to pictures of food, so this could help customers decide what they want to order.
Create a better customer experience
If your paper menu is as huge as Ulysses by James Joyce, there is an option to make it easier to use. In this case, filtering preferences or adding some search specifics is crucial. The only way you can offer this special functionality is with a digital menu.
Furthermore, you can then automate specific processes and begin to personalize the menu for customers who come back regularly. QR menu with personalization features makes it easy for regular customers to choose what they want. This also means that they are more likely to keep coming back to your restaurant since you will know their order. It makes the choice of food easier & more pleasant.
Promote deals and offers
A digital menu is a great way to showcase your deals or add-ons. With an interactive menu, people can browse your menu, clicking on whatever suggested items catch their eye. Business Insider reports that one in four customer visits to quick-service restaurants is because of a deal or bundled offer. If you have new items on your menu, it's a great place to advertise them. They can become popular much more quickly than if you only have chalkboards or paper menus.
Moreover, this is also an opportunity to do your part for the environment and sustainability. Just imagine – 1.9 million tonnes of food is wasted in the UK every year. When you want to sell more of a particular dish or drink that hasn't been very popular, you can put it at the top of the menu for a day and avoid potential food waste.
Cost-Effectiveness & data studies
Every time you make changes to a paper menu, you have to print new ones, which can get expensive. Besides, the average restaurant produces enough paper to contaminate nearly 10,000 gallons of water. Clearly, this is not environmentally friendly. With a digital menu, you have no further costs when updating it. In addition, you can collect data to analyze clients' preferences and enhance their experience.
We recommend using an order management system by HotelFriend for the best service. In addition to data collecting, this system allows complete control of the ordering and delivery process. You can forget missed orders, as every new request automatically goes to a specific department.
Reduce your carbon footprint
Do you want to make your restaurant more sustainable by incorporating eco-friendly practices? An accessible way you can do this is by using a digital menu. This is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint and show your customers that you care about the environment.
Getting started with Order Management System by HotelFriend is very simple.
An estimated 8.2 million acres of forests are cut down each year, with 42% of the wood harvested going towards paper products. This means that restaurants, which create more than 1.5 billion pounds of paper waste annually from receipts alone, are responsible for a significant amount of paper consumption. When you add in paper packaging, napkins, and paper menus, it’s easy to see why so many consumers are looking to the food industry to do their part in reducing paper waste.
What else? Around 1 million ink cartridges are thrown away in landfills every day, taking up to 1,000 years to decompose and polluting the ground soil and water with volatile organic compounds and heavy metals. Traditional restaurant menus use a lot of ink, but eco-friendly digital menus can help minimize that impact.
In fact, 83% of consumers want restaurants to have more environmentally friendly practices. Sustainable practices not only help reduce paper waste but may also help increase the customer experience. That’s why so many restaurants are taking steps to reduce their paper waste.
Maintain Brand Consistency
One of the keys to successful marketing is ensuring that your branding is consistent across all platforms. This can be difficult to do if you have physical locations, as any discrepancies between what is supposed to be displayed and what is actually displayed can leave a negative impression on customers.
However, digital menu boards can help with this problem. This menu board software is quick to adapt and easy to manage, meaning that you can easily update any menu content across multiple screens at multiple locations. This will leave a positive impression on customers and help establish your business as credible. A contactless menu is essential to form a positive image of the brand. Besides, you can quickly test all new promo campaigns using it.
Meet Health Care Regulations
Even now, when most COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, contactless experience is still essential for the hotel & restaurant industry. Smartphone menus become increasingly popular because they support the contactless concept and allow customers to use their own phones to look through the menu. HotelFriend has developed a web app that can be accessed by scanning a QR code at the table. All smartphones today have QR-code scanning capability built into the camera, so customers don't need to download an app or sign in before using it. Changing healthcare regulations mean that you need to be able to change the information quickly, and using a digital menu makes this easy.
Scale your business
Do you want to boost your sales and scale your business? Using a digital menu allows you to cooperate with third parties to deliver even more products and services to your customers. Bring them a solution for several needs at once, and you will definitely get some new brand advocates.
How to Make a Digital Menu Board?
Getting started with Order Management System by HotelFriend is very simple.
- Create a digital menu of services that you offer.
- Choose specific services from our catalog, add all images and descriptions needed.
- Let our system generate a QR code for each item.
Voila! Your guests can use the QR code to access the menu and select what they want. They can also specify when they want it delivered, and where, or leave a comment if necessary. There is an option to pay online or continue shopping.
Conclusion
The restaurant industry has seen positive growth due to the adoption of QR menus, which has resulted in a better overall customer experience. Now that you understand the benefits of digital menu boards, it's reasonable to conclude that traditional paper menus and notice boards are no longer useful. Restaurants that embrace technology can better meet the requirements of a broader range of customers. Follow this trend and you will definitely stay ahead of the competition!
