Restaurant-goers have let the market know that they want healthier, farm-fresh and responsible sourced ingredients for years. Consumer behaviors and food sourcing trends are inspiring many brands to seek out hyper-local partnerships with local growers. With individual, local farm relationships, large-buy procurement contracts are more difficult to come by. Smaller chains also face challenges with contract food pricing since they tend to have lower-volume buys.
Customers are willing to pay more for menu items with higher-quality ingredients.Are they willing to absorb the demand-based pricing and slight pricing changes?
Consumer purchase data says yes. Customers aren’t focused on cents. Slight menu price changes at restaurants are considered reasonable, just as they are at the fuel pump. There’s a general understanding that higher quality foods and experiences lead to minor cost variances from time to time, or even daily.
(Check out Customer Expectations and Perceptions on Menu Pricing)
By strategically managing digital menus, operators stop eating the volatile food costs. Here’s how:
- Updating pricing and attributes in real time
Hourly employees can easily update pricing, item order, descriptions, allergy information and nutritional values. They can even mark items as sold without ever touching graphic design software.
With a simple web-based controller, pricing and other menu item info can instantly be updated to reflect slight increases or decreases in the brand’s food cost.
- Multi-location menu management from a single device
From a mobile phone, tablet or computer, operators can manage pricing and other attributes, either pushing price updates to all locations or changing a single menu pricing at select locations where the cost of locally sourced food items may be on the rise.
- Empowering local managers and staff
Operators can grant employees access to easy-to-use digital menu control software. The intuitive interface is designed for instantaneous updating and can be handed off to members of local management teams and hourly employees.
These staff members can play a key role in maintaining operational and cost-control excellence. Ultimately, restaurant operators can decide who should be granted access and can update user preferences instantly.
Beautifully designed menu board content doesn’t require a loss of control or difficult-to-update menus. With the right access and controls, operators can manage attributes without affecting the professionally-designed content.
Learn more about the Dynamic Menu Manager and menu attribute controls.
This post is sponsored by Embed Digital