New York City is a great barometer of established and emerging trends. A walk around Time Square and then towards the Empire State Building reveals that Digital Signage in foodservice has taken hold. Flat panel displays can be found in many restaurants as enitre menu boards, in hybrid menu boards (combining static menus with a flat panel display), or as promotional signage in portrait mode advertising daily specials. The entire menu board array is quite impressive and in some cases incorporates automatic changes based on inventory, environmental or price control triggers. Still pretty much state-of-theart stuff. Short term however a simple mpg/jpg player and inexpensive flat panel display is a way to benefit from some of the same advantages the state-of-the-art solution offers (improved efficiency, sales revenue, customer experience, brand impression, etc) but a much less cost.
