The Howard Company's Blog

We recently hosted a webcast during which we spoke with industry leaders about their operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dana Abood from Rego Restaurant Group (Quiznos), Sean Sylvester from Black Gold Group (multiple concepts) and Scott Redler from Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers. Interestingly, their ideas are absolutely applicable for any business climate.

The webcast was moderated by Tim Hagen from Progress Coaching, and hosted by Gary Kurtz, our Vice President of Sales and Marketing. 

As consumers, we see digital menu displays everywhere. It is all restaurant chains talk about – getting their franchisees into the digital menu board game. Local restaurants are dipping their toes into digital displays too. Menu board companies all seem to have their version of digital boards in their product lines. But once a user has installed their board, what happens then? Let's examine the four "T"s you should think about once you have invested in updating your restaurant with your new digital menu board.

You have decided to invest in installing drive-thru systems for your restaurants. Great! Having a drive-thru has many benefits. 

Something that we see all too often at The Howard Company is restaurants using digital signage to display static images. Imagine going out to eat and the digital menu board displays the exact same products, prices, and images day after day and week after week, without moving or changing. This, to put it bluntly, is a tremendous waste.

In the “old days”, fast food restaurants didn’t do much more than hang simple chalkboards on the wall with the day’s list of menu items they cooked up based on their niche; they’d be satisfied with doing a basic job, and dining guests would be happy they didn’t have to cook dinner.