America has quite the love affair with quickly grabbing breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon drinks/snacks and fourth meal at the drive-thru.
In fact, it is estimated that 60-70% (some chains claim 85%) of all Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) business comes directly through the convenient drive-thru. That is over two-thirds of all quick service restaurant sales! According to QSR Magazine, “Visits to quick-service drive-thru’s were up 2 percent to 12.4 billion in 2014, according to research from The NPD Group, with drive thru representing a larger share of business than either carry-out or dine-in.” Precisely why QSRs should constantly be spending time and money improving the overall drive-thru experience.
The latest crazes are outdoor digital menu boards and mobile app ordering/paying. With the combination of both, a QSR can really stay ahead of the competition and provide faster service and a more convenient experience. How can QSRs take advantage of the latest and greatest technology?
Three Ways to Combine Mobile Apps and Outdoor Digital Menu Boards:
1. Welcome Board:
Using Bluetooth or GPS technology, as soon as a car pulls up with a mobile app order, the restaurant will know that a customer has arrived and can welcome them, by name, right on the lcd digital screen. The restaurant can even give them a personal countdown clock (Tim Hortons has done this with cookies coming out of the oven) on when the customer’s chicken wrap and onion rings will be ready. In fact, technology is advancing so quickly that the restaurant might even know, in advance, how far away the customer is from the restaurant, “According to The Washington Post, Taco Bell’s app reportedly includes a feature that uses your phone’s GPS to tell how close you are to the pickup location and when the restaurant should start cooking.” In reality, the customer will never have to talk to anyone and can simply wait for the food to arrive. As Jillian Berman explained in the Huffington Post, “Thanks to tech, you now have the luxury of never having to place a fast-food order with a human again.”
2. Order Confirmation:
A car pulls up, welcomes the customer, and within seconds the restaurant has the entire food order displayed on the LCD. Fast, accuracy, and convenience are the names of the game. A restaurant could never achieve this without outdoor digital boards. Taco Bell’s chief operating officer Mike Grams told QSR. “The stress of finding it on the menu board or remembering what your friend told you that they wanted from Taco Bell is a huge piece to the consumer that we can relieve with mobile ordering. So our ability to get that out to market and have consumers go through our drive-thru, place their order in advance, and simply roll through and pick it up is pretty cool...Mobile will change drive-through.” Mobile and outdoor digital menu boards can work great together and, again, create a unique and memorable experience. Jack in the Box chief marketing officer Keith Guilbault said that they are always looking for the next best thing, “Every single day we are looking at delivering a great experience for the customer because expectations are increasing.”
3. Target Marketing:
Although the wait will be shorter than normal, a small chunk of time will be spent waiting for the food to arrive. This is precisely the perfect time to use outdoor digital menu boards to directly market to the customer. Marketing messages can be specific to the person waiting, because the restaurant will know (from the mobile ordering app) the sex, age, and other details (income bracket and address) about the person that would normally be unknown. What a chance to market to customers! Commercials or Limited Time Offers (LTOs) can be played or displayed for a few minutes (or seconds), while the customer waits for the order to arrive. Obviously, restaurants are hoping to keep this wait time to an absolute minimum, but even a 30 second-commercial can be very beneficial. Fast Casual's Travis Waggoner describes how Cousin's Subs is using mobile and location tracking technology to market to its customers, "By using location data, Cousins Subs has been able to target its customers through niche interests, behaviors and demographics. It delivers restaurant-specific, localized advertising content during peak and off-peak hours to drive local awareness and in-store traffic and convert online orders."
“At Starbucks, which is widely acknowledged to have one of the most successful mobile payment apps, phone transactions are growing at a rate of nearly 50 percent annually.”
Mobile ordering is here to stay!
Jeff Jenkins, Taco Bell's mobile lead, told the Los Angeles Times that, "mobile is going to be the biggest sort of innovator, shake-up in the quick service industry since the drive-thru." With the addition of digital menu boards in the drive-thru, a QSR can take advantage of utilizing the latest technology to market to customers and provide a distinctive experience.
More Info:
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