Solving Menu Board Challenges … With Print???

May 6, 2016 by Dave Haynes

Photo: Retail Touchpoints

Photo: Retail Touchpoints

Here’s something odd to end the week – a fast food chain and its marketing services vendor touting how it uses on-demand printing to get menus localized to each of 900 sites.

From Retail Touchpoints:

Bakery franchise Auntie Anne’s is leveraging Print On Demand technology from retail marketing services provider GSP to print customizable menu boards that can contain content specific to each of its 900 locations.

With the Print On Demand solution, Auntie Anne’s can:

  • Process all menu board requests through a single system;

  • Make it easy for users to select products sold at individual locations;

  • Space product text correctly and maximize images for design purposes; and

  • Adjust pricing for local variations and test new items without compromising brand consistency.

“We needed a more convenient solution for ordering menu boards to help us stay competitive,” said Meredith Wenz, Director of Marketing for Auntie Anne’s. “The existing process did not allow for all of the product variations and the numerous franchise requests that could overload our marketing and creative teams.”

Or you put in screens, set up with a CMS, and this stuff happens without the cost, time lag, paper usage or carbon footprint of delivery trucks and cars getting those menus to shopping malls and other spots – maybe multiple times a year.

Maybe it’s just me, but this just seems so weird to read how print is sold as the solution to a problem resolved far better and more efficiently by digital. Particularly when a lot of the QSR industry has already cut over to digital menu displays.

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