Panasonic Bets On Growth Of Drive-Thru Digital Menu Boards
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
New Digital Drive-thru Solution Hopes to Entice QRSs
Panasonic today unveiled its new fully-integrated digital drive-thru menu board solution, which includes proprietary displays created to weather outdoor elements and eliminate the need for enclosures.
With over two thirds of all fast food business occurring at the drive thru, an investment there could drastically impact consumer sentiment and the bottom line.
Fast food restaurants are weighing a number of factors as they consider the switch to a more integrated system. Digital signage provides far greater opportunities than static signage for fast food establishments to capitalize on constantly changing consumer behavior and nutrition regulations. Weather conditions and vandalism also have restaurant owners considering enhanced options for their outdoor displays.
Quick Serve Restaurants (QSRs) need reliable, integrated drive-thru solutions that improve efficiency, increase speed of service, reduce waste and enable strong brand promotion to boost profitability and drive better business outcomes with their investment. Digital signage is a foundation piece when starting to build up a larger drive thru system.
According to a Networld Media Group report, “Digital Menu Boards and ROI,” restaurants typically see a 3-5 percent increase in any digitally promoted item on menu boards, suggesting that the digital signage system usually pays for itself in one year or less. Upselling items based on promotional events or high inventory is another benefit of digital signage that can increase sales and reduce waste, and in turn increase the overall bottom line.
To answer that need, Panasonic has unveiled a fully-integrated digital drive-thru solution that brings the power of digital menu boards and integrated audio/video to the drive-thru.
Jeff Pinc, Panasonic's director of Food Services, said the turnkey solution has been in development for several years. He said he thinks Panasonic is the first to market with today's announcement, which coincided with FSTEC in New Orleans.
"With this release, we solved a few challenges that some early adopters had experienced with outdoor digital displays," he added. "We're at the beginning stages of having wide adoption of outdoor digital displays. I'm excited to see people get excited about this."
Panasonic is currently testing this new solution, and expects to pilot it with three to five within the next several months. Once those pilots are able to report analytics and data, Pinc anticipates that other QSRs will quickly adopt the new system.
"I suspect once the pilot sites prove that the ROI is there, there will be adoption. It's not going to be overnight, though; we have to prove this story," he said. "Indoor has been widely accepted. I scratch my head sometimes as to why outdoor isn't done first, with 70 percent of business coming from the drive-thru."
From necessity, outdoor digital displays remain more expensive than indoor digital signage solutions, although Pinc said the cost has and will continue to come down as the technology becomes more common. Panasonic's solution is available both as a turnkey solution and a la carte (customers can also choose from one to four panels and different mounts), so the cost ranges from about $10,000 to $40,000.
With the high drive-thru volume and the individualized marketing potential, however, Pinc also expects a quicker return.
"Everything's naturally going to come down in price, but the uplift will maybe be better because you have that one-one-one interaction and the opportunity to influence the purchase in a more personal manner in the drive-thru is going to open up avenues that indoor digital dining displays don't have today," Pinc said.