Stop Treating Digital Menu Boards Like Expensive TVs

Your digital menu boards can increase sales. They can also quietly hurt them. Dan McAllister and Amanda Starr of Creative Realities join Michael Beck and Chad Horn on the ChatGTM Podcast to explain why restaurant brands need to stop thinking about screens as hardware and start measuring what those screens actually cause customers to do. The problem is simple: brands can invest heavily in digital signage, change their menus, launch new creative, and still have no idea whether those decisions increased basket size, improved speed of service, or unintentionally pushed customers toward lower-value purchases. Dan shares one example where prominently featuring kids meals had an unexpected result: adults started buying the cheaper meals because they saw value. The intention was one thing. Customer behavior was another. That’s where Creative Realities believes testing, measurement, strategy, creative, and attribution become critical. The conversation gets into: • Why every screen should have a purpose • How menu design can unintentionally hurt sales • Why installing digital signage is only the beginning • Measuring what customers actually do after seeing content • How Creative Realities approaches testing and optimization • Why restaurants should treat their stores like test-and-learn labs • Using menu boards to improve basket size and speed of service • Why more animation and movement isn't necessarily better • What consumers actually want from digital menus • Testing loyalty, personalization, value, and menu design • Connecting digital content to POS data and measurable outcomes • How optimized menus can reduce friction for restaurant employees • Why technology investments need a clear outcome before deployment • The importance of trust and transparency when implementing restaurant technology Amanda puts the opportunity simply: “Every screen should have a purpose.” Dan takes that idea one step further. Think about a screen like an employee you’ve hired. What job do you want it to perform? How are you measuring whether it does that job? And how are you improving its performance over time? Because putting a screen in a restaurant isn’t the objective. Getting a measurable result from it is. Subscribe to ChatGTM for more conversations with restaurant operators, strategists, and technology leaders shaping the future of hospitality, marketing, and GTM. Hosts: Michael Beck, Primary Host Chad Horn, Co-Host Guests: Dan McAllister, Chief Revenue Officer, Creative Realities Amanda Starr, Senior Vice President of Strategy, Creative Realities Restaurant Industry - Join us October 28-30 at the Prosper Accelerate Conference in Dallas https://prosperaccelerate.com/ Save $250 w/ code: IncTankAccSav250 CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome 02:23 Dan McAllister and Amanda Starr join ChatGTM 04:03 What is Creative Realities? 05:22 Investing in the next generation of leaders 07:29 Amanda’s first experience at Prosper 10:02 Learning directly from restaurant operators 10:38 Why big technology deployments require conviction 11:11 Trust and transparency before technology 12:20 Why restaurant technology investments fail 13:18 Creative Realities beyond hardware and screens 14:38 Strategy, creative, analytics, and optimization 15:14 Optimizing basket size and speed of service 16:30 Connecting digital experiences to revenue 17:24 Turning restaurants into test-and-learn labs 18:01 How consumer behavior is changing digital signage 18:45 Is loyalty everything we think it is? 18:59 Why more movement isn't always better 19:36 When should a restaurant call Creative Realities? 20:45 How a menu board accidentally pushed adults toward kids meals 21:40 Why a screen should be treated like an employee 22:04 Amanda flips the screen analogy 22:40 Every screen should have a purpose 22:50 What kind of sales lift can optimization create? 24:21 How Creative Realities measures results 25:17 Using restaurant data to predict what comes next 26:58 How better menus improve the employee experience 28:04 Amanda on leadership, growth, and mentorship 29:00 Closing thoughts #ChatGTM #CreativeRealities #DigitalSignage #DigitalMenuBoards #RestaurantTech #RestaurantMarketing #HospitalityTech #MenuDesign #RestaurantIndustry #customerexperience