Digital signage for cafes has never been more popular with big brand franchises and independent coffee houses and tea rooms.
Whether you are running a modern cafe for city professionals or a boutique shop for families, pensioners and tourists, digital screens bring a host of features that you shouldn’t operate without.
Here are 5 benefits of going digital in your cafe:
Easy to update menus
Anyone running a restaurant or cafe will know that menus are never static. They can change with the season, availability of ingredients or at the whim of the kitchen staff. Yet updating menus can be a headache for management and the front of house team. The need to reprint menus, or worse, replace entire menu boards can be an expensive and tedious process.
Digital signage for cafes alleviates this pain-point. With cloud-based software, cafe staff can update digital versions of a menu from any laptop or PC. There is no wait time for printing. Updates can be made instantly online from the comfort of your home.
With the ability to regularly change your menu, your cafe will no longer be held back from improving. Update your prices as necessary, indicate when items have run out, and make new additions with minimal hassle.
Specials boards are a common way to spice up your menu and offer something a bit different to customers. Just like with regular menus, however, they can be time-consuming to update. More than that, it can be difficult to convey a lot of information in a way that is easy to read.
Using digital screens to display your specials is the answer. In addition to the ability to remotely update your menu as regularly as required, there is a huge space-saving advantage. Item lists and descriptions can be presented in a slideshow that enables you to present a lot of information in a relatively small space. Gone are the days when you would need a different specials board for different times of the day and drinks. You could deploy a different screen for each or transition your content to display everything in one place.
Digital signage for cafes also allows you to showcase your specials like never before. Utilising its multi-media nature, you can add high-resolution images and videos to show off your dishes and offers. Promoting something on a special deal? Spread the word!
Share customer reviews
The success of the most popular cafes is built through word-of-mouth.
Customers who have had a great experience are likely to tell their friends or leave reviews online, whether that’s on Google, the cafe’s Facebook page or a community platform like TripAdvisor. The online ratings and testimonials received by restaurants and cafes have never been more important. Rising to the top of TripAdvisor with a positive reputation can bring in a steady stream of new customers.
By installing a digital display in the cafe itself, or perhaps in the window facing passersby, an establishment can make the most of this opportunity. Showing off positive reviews in person can extend their impact beyond those searching online for somewhere new to try.
More than that, screens can be used as a prompt to gather new reviews. Content such as requests to like your Facebook page, or post a Google review, can even be incentivised with a special offer like a voucher to spend when customers next visit.
The above directly links with extending your social media presence. On our digital signage platform, you can embed your live tweets as well as slideshows of images straight from Instagram or a Facebook gallery. Sharing pictures of your food and drinks are a great way to create a positive environment in your cafe and leave people hungry for more.
When it comes to social media, the most important thing is that restaurants and cafes engage with their customer base. Digital displays can be used to encourage visitors to post pictures of their food or tweet about their experience. When the cafe’s account is tagged in these messages or perhaps a hashtag it promotes has been used, they can be pulled in and shared on the screen too.
Customers will love seeing their messages up on a screen while they are tucking into their coffee and cake. This level of engagement is highly likely to boost a cafe’s following and presence online. In this way, digital signage has an impact offline and online.
Advertise other local businesses
The final reason to deploy screens in your cafe is perhaps the most lucrative opportunity of all. Cafes are often well placed when it comes to attracting footfall, usually located in a high-street or sometimes adjacent to attractions such as museums. A sought-after position, when coupled with the time customers spend at your establishment, can make for an attractive advertising proposition.
Cafes can install screens and then offer the chance to advertise on them to other local businesses. This can utilise relationships already in place and help cross-pollinate customers. A nearby attraction would be incentivised to pay for an advert on your screen as it could entice the tourists popping in for a coffee to visit them too. The same can be said for restaurants, bars and a wide range of events.
When used for advertising, cafe owners can actually generate revenue on top of returning the cost paid to deliver their own content and messaging alongside adverts. In terms of the content split, they have full control to dictate the terms of advertising agreements.
In this way, even the smallest of cafes can afford to go digital and reap the benefits.
If you are interested in launching an advertising platform, check out our ultimate guide.
To discuss digital signage for your cafe, call 02380 981110 or book a demo.
