Each year, Boost redesigns their menus and updates pricing nationally. What appears to be a simple objective, is far from lemon squeezy. The project involves the coordination of multiple key stakeholders across company departments, the franchise network and external suppliers.
The creative outcomes require a complex balance of customer, staff and franchisee needs, while incorporating marketing and business strategies, combined with the legal requirements of Australian food advertising and nutrition regulations. In addition, the menus must also be visually engaging and align with brand guidelines, market trends and translate from printed menus to digital. In my case I worked across the initial research stages, translating the finished print menus to digital and then animation and adapting for app and kiosk.
Each year we look at the percentage of sales of each drink and evaluate whether it is earning it’s place on the menuboard. We also use this process to determine the order in which drink are displayed as well as the order in which categories appear on the menu.
As well as looking at sales, each year Boost invests in consumer research externally. Here we are able to test multiple menu prototypes and use customer behviour as a way of decision making.
In this prototype we found by adding ‘Snacks’ to the menu board almost half of respondents indicated they would purchase a snack. From this, with the implementation of AM and PM menus for digital… we were able to update the final design to add banana bread to the brekkie category and see an increase in sales.
DIGITAL MENUS & ANIMATION
Here are some examples of the animation implemented to highlight and draw attention to particular products and categories. Specifically Boosters and Create Your Own Juice were areas of the menu that customer feedback revealed opportunities to improve the customer experience.
We promised franchisee partners as part of upgrading to digital menuboards that we would update animations at least every 6 months.
FUTURE PLANS
For next years menu boards we plan to design digital first as the number of digital menu boards to printed have now overtaken across our 350 stores nationally. I hope to look at menus in a 3-dimensional form with multiple panels that slide in and out. This would mean that all drinks would not be on the menu at once which is a learning curve with business stakeholders but will ultimately give a better overall experience for customers.
As part of the product development plan we also hope to create a CMS to create the menu boards on a store by store basis rather than template portrait/landscape basis. This is due to the vast requirements differing by location. ie. our Ampol stores don’t have a juicer thus they cannot offer the same drinks on the menu board.