Menuboard Matters

Instructor: Fred Exum, CEO, Krystal

Credentials: 100% of Menuboards Clean & Well-Maintained

Most of the menuboards we have in our company are over 25 years old. We came up with a way to make them look new. It’s actually just a refurbishment of something that’s very, very old. We are replacing them as we build new restaurants, but we’ve had good life out of them. We are delaying the process to see how long it takes for drive-thru menuboards to become affordable in the electric format. We’re trying to buy time.

[The refurbishment] was actually one of the quicker initiatives we’ve had … a little less cajoling was necessary to get franchisees on board with that. The change was pretty remarkable—for not a very large amount of money. I want to say it was like $1,500, which was the real benefit to the franchise organization. “Hey, we’re going to upgrade your menuboards without you having to invest in a brand new system.”

What we were able to achieve there was very startling. If you look at before-and-after pictures, you’ll actually look at them and say, “I can’t believe that’s the same board.”

Consumers, at least our consumers anyway, order the same things over and over again. We have this idea that everything has to be on the menuboard. I’m not sure that’s really true. I’m not sure the vast majority of consumers using the drive-thru care about that little one off item you’ve got stuck down in the corner. The cashier should be able to sell it if somebody asks for it, but the people who use pick-up windows are generally interested in convenience. The menuboard needs to say that and feel that way.

The switch to larger pictures of combos is an example. You’re really looking at pictures instead of a bunch of line items that most people have trouble reading anyway.

The prime area of real estate on a menuboard is immediately in front of the driver’s face. Static boards don’t have the ability to move things during different dayparts, to put it right down there in front of your face. Our experiment with drive-thru boards at this point in time has been aimed right at that. We see that as one of the primary advantages [of electronic boards], the flexibility that comes with daypart-menu focus.

The problem isn’t so much the price of electronic menuboards, though the price can always come down. We still have questions about the durability. And then there is something that’s pretty basic but doesn’t present itself too much with static boards—and that’s glare. Glare is actually a very, very large problem. The menuboards are bright most of the time, but certain times of the day they become not functional.

Those are some of the things we need to sort through. We’re actually working on it because we see electronic boards as … not the long-term future; this is getting to be near-term with us. We’re pretty excited about that.