Digital menu, marketing 'infotainment' yields upbeat results

Nation's Restaurant News,  Nov 6, 2006  by Julie Ritzer Ross

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FoodService operators are exploring the use of digital content-management and display technologies in efforts to boost average checks and better convey promotional messages that sharpen an eatery's competitive edge by providing "infotainment" to its customers.

Some restaurants, including about 28 New York-area diners, Subway franchises in two major markets and a Chicago-based McDonald's franchise, are embracing digital broadcast marketing methods. Others, among them the quick-service arm of the Sheetz convenience store chain of Altoona, Pa., and another McDonald's franchisee, also are rolling out sophisticated digital-signage solutions.

Dennis Pavlatos, proprietor of the East Bay Diner in Merrick, N.Y., had enhanced marketing in mind when he deployed Diner Vision, offered by OOH Vision Networks, or OVN, of Hazlet, N.J. For that offering, OVN is teaming with Helius, a Linden, Utah-based developer of Internet protocol-based broadcast technologies, and Microspace Communications Corp., a provider of point-to-multipoint satellite services based in Raleigh, N.C.

In deploying the technology, Pavlatos said, he was following a hunch that seeing specials presented in "active" fashion rather than on a blackboard alone would encourage more customers to try them. That hunch proved correct, he said, citing sales of daily specials that have risen by about 25 percent since Diner Vision was introduced at East Bay Diner about 18 months ago.

The restaurant is among 28 diners in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut with Diner Vision in place. Diner Vision broadcasts combine restaurant-specific messages--Pavlatos uses the service to display a "digital blackboard" list of daily specials, as well as to hawk new menu items--with advertisements for local businesses. Also part of the programming package are localized news, sports, weather and traffic bulletins and stock quote updates on a scrolling ticker obtained via a direct feed from Westwood One.

OVN splits an undisclosed portion of revenues received from advertisers with its restaurant clients. Pavlatos said that arrangement allowed him to recoup his investment in the OVN hardware just a few months after it was installed. The operator declined to specify that investment, but Nate Hatch, Helius' senior vice president of corporate development, pegged the general price of two 42-inch LCD displays at $1,800 to $2,000 each. The router, software and other components needed to implement a system like Diner Vision run another $2,000, Hatch estimated.

At East Bay, the satellite-based content distribution system comprises three LCD screens: one at the entrance to the restaurant and one each in the front and back dining rooms. A small satellite dish collects the satellite signal, and a Helius MediaGate router disseminates content to the display screens.

Content for the entire network is centrally managed and aggregated using Helius' MediaWrite content distribution and management system. MediaWrite determines the broadcast content to be displayed at each diner's location and aggregates it with content transmitted by individual diners via fax or the Internet. Content is then sent to specific restaurant locations over Microspace's Velocity satellite service and presented at each one via the MediaGate router.

Pavlatos said customer response to the system has been quite positive. "We still have the blackboards, because people do like to look at them, but a majority of our customers watch the screens," he said. Now, he added, many diners linger longer to watch the broadcasts and in turn order more food to "compensate" for extra time spent at the table. A substantial number have told Pavlatos that they appreciate opportunities to learn from advertisements more about services available in the Merrick area, and he has received minimal complaints about noise from the screens.

Craig Presser, OVN's founder and chairman, claimed the benefits East Bay Diner is reaping from OOH Vision are typical. He said OVN captures a minimum of 80 percent of diner customers. At presstime, OVN was preparing for a "soft" launch of Subway Vision, a nondiner version of OOH Vision, in about 50 franchised Subways in the New York City area and another 50 in the Chicago market.

Meanwhile, in a move to build patron loyalty and enhance the in-store experience, JDD Investments Inc., an 11-unit McDonald's franchisee based in Chicago, has rolled out a content delivery system at its flagship store on Chicago's West Archer Avenue. The system, from TAP.TV of Burr Ridge, Ill., will be implemented in JDD's other McDonald's units in the near future, said John Dakajos, chief executive of JDD.

The McDonald's installation features an 8-foot, multiscreen "VideoBar" mounted above the ordering counter. It serves up messages that support store marketing events, menu suggestions and promotion offers. A 50-inch "KidVid" display located in the children's play area broadcasts kid-oriented content, while 42-inch plasma screens stationed throughout the dining area broadcast such content as McDonald's commercials, news and sporting events.