Entice Customers With Festive Seasonal Digital Menu Design

Yes, it’s November and we’ve already been seeing festive digital menu designs and seasonal menu items promoted in stores, drive-thrus and restaurants since September. If you haven’t changed up your menu design or items, it’s not too late to make some quick tweaks to entice customers to try new items and make the most of the season. Whether you’re designing digital menu boards for one location or one hundred, read on for quick “hacks” to spice up your digital menus for the fall and winter seasons.

When customers have a tempting deal, like a limited time offer tied to a season or holiday, displayed in front of them at just the right time (ahem, a steaming pumpkin spice latte as soon as there is a chill in the air), their total order suddenly grows. Even if you don’t have a specific seasonal product to promote, you can create a special, stand-out experience in line with the season for your quick service restaurant (QSR) customers and dining patrons. Yes, I’d like a bowl of hot chili, please, and a maple flavored coffee with pumpkin pie for dessert. Whether or not these are items your location offers year round, you can put a seasonal twist on the design and messaging by tying it to the weather (i.e., “Warm up with our hearty chili.”), colors of the local season, and images that evoke emotions or memories about the time of year.

Simple, bold designs or well-timed promotional takeovers can draw customers’ attention to the most highly profitable areas of the menu and educate your customers about new and featured menu items. If you are promoting a limited time offer or seasonal menu items, keep the design and message simple. Just hit on the key elements that will get your customers’ attention. Your customers do not need to know every detail about the item based on the digital menu design. Give them enough understanding to be intrigued but not overwhelmed. For example, a simple message might be, “Add a peppermint flavor shot to your latte for a seasonal pick me up.” This, paired with an image of a peppermint candy, can be enough information to sway customers to indulge in the season. 

Quality food photography goes a long way. And these days, with stock images being very affordable (sometimes free), there are endless options to meet your needs. If you can’t find an image that matches your seasonal item exactly, say, butternut squash soup, it is okay to use stock images to represent ingredients like spices, herbs, or a whole squash.

If this is too much to fit in this year or you want to get ahead for next year, start considering how a digital menu board solution like WAND’s can help you easily and quickly swap up menu items and design, and manage seasonal and limited time offers. WAND’s digital menu board platform enables you to schedule out your design assets to hit your digital menus at the right time, no matter how many locations you are running. If you are already using WAND’s digital menu board software, give us a call, and we can help you make some design tweaks or strategize for next year.