Quick-service restaurants are the backbone of America. While the United States may not have the leisurely cafés of Paris, or the tapas of Madrid, we do have the very best in quality, efficient, safe and increasingly healthy quick-service restaurants.
It started as ‘fast food’ and migrated to include taglines such as ‘good food fast’ but today, the category refers to a plethora of up-tempo eateries of all kinds.
But as QSR evolves, driven both by consumer tastes and federal mandates, the menu itself is becoming the most hotly contested battle-ground in the business. And with a requirement for nutritional information, ever-changing menus, and overall agility, digital signage becomes the most important ally for well-run QSR – a trusted marketing partner for a very competitive industry.
As digital signage becomes the standard, there are a multitude of reasons why this holds true. Here are a few select benefits:
• Integration with POS systems, for real-time price adjustments
• Dayparting for menu changes
• Nutritional information
• Dynamic ‘up-selling’ and responsive marketing
• Flexible menu items – even by locale
• Elimination of printing expenses
• Interactive touchscreen displays for customer engagement
• Remote online access
To achieve these benefits, QSR operators must demand the same efficiency and proficiency they have designed into their own businesses. After all, since Ray Kroc pioneered centralization and standardization in the 1950s, the category has been at the vanguard of operational excellence.
And just like the range of QSR, no two AV solutions providers are alike. Specifically, half-baked design, installation and exposed cabling, creating poor viewing angles and exposing expensive panels to the elements can waste operator investment in digital signage, negating its benefits.
In an industry built for scale and given the value of properly installed digital signage, this simply won’t work.
Effective digital signage for QSR at scale requires more than good product – design standards and production capacity have made hardware itself a fraction of the process.
Successful digital signage in QSR requires a holistic approach that considers more than the equipment. Key considerations include:
• Viewer distance for proper screen size
• Viewing angles
• Wall and ceiling structure for support requirements and design
• Elements exposure – including indoor elements such as fry vats
• Cosmetic challenges requiring covers for cables
• Desired branding
• Ease of access and maintenance for maximum uptime and lower costs
• Cabling and content distribution options, including IP
• Effective content design
• Proper mounts for integrated panels
Mounting advisors and strategists, such as Premier Mounts, give QSR operators the single-source provider essential to installing digital displays that address the above opportunities and deliver optimal Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
By leveraging the added-value of consultants, structural engineers, integrators and display partners in one simple package for the operator, AV advisory services maximize TCO – each stakeholder in the process plays an important role greater than the sum of its parts.
And TCO itself in digital signage for QSR is a multi-faceted concern, predicated largely on mounts and enclosures. Chief among TCO calculations is display asset protection, driven by temperature regulation and element exposure. Extending the life of digital signage to reduce or eliminate replacement costs is critical for reducing total costs.
Operating expenses also drive total costs. At the scale of QSR, even small maintenance inefficiencies limiting access to displays, cables or requiring excessive cleaning can pile up. The expenses can be as simple as sign-changing itself at the store level – an unnecessary step with centralized or remote display management enabled by digital display.
Digital signage in QSR lives at the intersection of many critical industry concepts. It has profit margin upside, with its compelling marketing capability, it also streamlines operations, whether through more efficient on-premise maintenance or remote access. It addresses compliance, with nutritional information and the required agility for menu changes. Ultimately, the promise of digital display in QSR is much like that of the industry itself – to improve customer relationships through quality and transparency.
But like any good menu, it takes a village to conceive the right solutions. And with AV Mounting advisory, led by Premier Mounts, scalable procurement is consolidated to one provider, delivering lowest total cost of ownership and maximum ROI.
