Food Industry and the Growing Use of Outdoor Digital Signage

For a long time now many outdoor digital signage companies have targeted eateries and restaurants, however the uptake by fast food chains and other quick bite establishments has up to now been fairly slow.

The main reasons have been high prices, an unclear return on investment and poor warranties offered by outdoor digital signage companies.

Time, however, are changing and there has been a huge surge in the number of outdoor digital screens being used as digital menu boards. And there are several reasons for this.

Firstly, more and more outdoor digital signage companies are offering extended warranties on products such as Armagard’s five year warranty. This is vital with such large investments that these restaurant chains spend on hardware equipping all their sites. A fear of continual replacement is one of the reasons many companies have been reluctant to invest up to now.

Secondly, outdoor screens and other digital signage systems are continually falling in price and increasing in reliability, making it less of a risky investment for these sorts of companies.

Thirdly, recent legislation introduced in the States (Health Care Reform Act) that requires nutritional menu labelling to be displayed in all these types of restaurants has seen a surge of interest in outdoor digital signage from these sorts of food establishments.

With this impending legislation, many of the fast food organisations have realised the potential benefits of going digital, with many of these chains facing the high costs of having to amend thousands of existing menu boards, something that a digital screen can be programmed to do for little or no cost.

And there are additional benefits to using digital signage, particularly outdoors. Digital menu boards attract far more attention over their static rivals.  Not only that, but having the ability to instantly change content, providing daily specials or instant updates on availability of menu items, without the cost of printing or manual changing of signs.