Home | Customer Support 1-877-204-6679

username:   password:

Conventional and Digital Black Menu Boards

The prototypical black menu board is an easel-mounted chalk board that greets customers on their way into the restaurant or shop. As with any menu presentation, many restaurants use variations-on-a-theme to tailor displays to their decor. Indeed, the content design of these boards often explains the motivation for their implementation. Yet, the type of hardware used is critical to ensure the best possible solution for your business. And to this end, digital displays are starting to make an impact on this niche signage application.

Black Menu Board Applications and Examples
The most common application for a black menu board is the promotion of daily specials and new menu items. But the sky is the limit, and individual restaurant locations can customize the content for their customer base. Coffee shops, butchers, bakeries, and other specialty food vendors may be able to show their entire bill-of-fare on these signs.

Other targeted promotions include advertising the benefits of a membership program, upcoming event nights, or happy hours. Coffee shops and other venues often implement a daily trivia question accompanied with a small discount or complimentary item. For restaurants intimately connected with the surrounding community, congratulations and warm wishes for local celebrities, leaders, and organizations are a nice touch. Other times, it's something as simple as a welcome message.

Dynamic Signage Advantages
Admittedly, we're biased, but it's a pretty easy case to make that a digital black menu board offers a superior solution for many restaurants and food vendors. As charming as the traditional chalk-based displays can be, there's only so much labor cost that can be justified with these daily drawings. In the past, venues have used these displays as a task that keeps staff occupied during down times. But rising food prices and increased competition have caused many businesses to trim their staff and work to eliminate as much extraneous labor cost as possible.

On the other hand, permanent chalk displays inevitably become stale, no matter how artfully they're done. With a digital solution, the content can be changed daily with negligible operating costs. Likewise, newer fonts and software design features allow these dynamic displays to approximate the charm of chalk calligraphy and pictorial flourishes. Indeed, as consumers continue to become increasingly familiar with these signs, more and more establishments are bound to convert to digital systems.

Four Winds Interactive
Unfortunately, too many owners prematurely dismiss the idea of a digital solution because of the cost. Admittedly, for many locally-operated restaurants this is the biggest obstacle, but there are ways to implement a digital solution on the cheap. First of all, this technology has now matured to the point where there is a viable resale market of secondhand and refurbished hardware displays. Moreover, a single software license is often not as expensive as restaurant owners fear, even with sophisticated font options and design features.

At FWi, we bring the same industry-leading iDS^® software solution to each of our clients, no matter how big or small. Our project managers and signage architects will help you find a hardware display and create a software package that makes sense for your business. Meanwhile, our creative team can help you retain much of the charm of your traditional black menu board. Plus, our experienced team of service professionals will ensure a hassle-free implementation process. If you have questions about how our software can fit your needs or would like to set up a time to demo our products, please feel free to Contact Us.