How A Digital Menuboard Fueled One Coffee Shop's Impressive Growth – CoffeeTalk

The coffee category has experienced continuous growth since the COVID-19 pandemic, with chains like Black Rock Coffee Bar, Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, PJ’s Coffee, and Ziggi’s Coffee leading the way. To capitalize on this trend and better compete against competitors, Black Rock Coffee Bar’s leadership team realized the need to optimize its digital menuboard communications. A comprehensive, multi-phase strategic plan was developed and implemented, which led to the launch of new menuboard communications across the entire system in late-2024.

The process involved conducting a Menu Strategy Development Workshop, which aimed to obtain management’s vision, insights, strengths, and weaknesses regarding Black Rock Coffee Bar’s current and future menu strategies and menuboard communications. The workshop objectives included obtaining management’s vision, insights, strengths, and weaknesses regarding Black Rock Coffee Bar’s current and future menu strategies and menuboard communications.

The team then assessed Black Rock Coffee Bar’s current and historical menuboards, discussing strengths and weaknesses and identifying specific opportunities for improvement. They established business objectives for the optimized digital menuboard communications, which were against these objectives. The new menu communications must grow the percentage of food sales and the fuel energy category.

Prioritizing categories and menu items was crucial, as not all menu categories and individual menu items are of equal importance. The Black Rock team prioritized menu categories and items within each category to guide the organization and architecture of the new menuboards. A TURF analysis was conducted to simplify the menu, streamline the order process, speed throughput, and improve operational efficiencies.

The team developed numerous alternative strategies for Black Rock Coffee Bar’s new, optimized digital menuboards, which were then developed into black-and-white wireframe schematic layouts. Visual strategies for an evaluation survey were created, with the two most strategically on-target wireframe schematics developed into color renderings visually illustrating each new menuboard strategy.

Hundreds of surveys were conducted online, showing consumers in Black Rock Coffee Bar’s existing and target growth markets a rendering of one of the new digital communication strategies or a rendering of the current digital menuboard (the control). Respondents were asked a battery of questions about the visual strategy they were shown and asked to place an order from the menuboard. The data gathered clearly indicated that both new strategies outperformed the current digital menuboard on a number of critical KPIs.

The design development of the most promising digital menuboard communications strategy was finalized, and the resulting digital menuboard was produced and rolled out to the Black Rock Coffee Bar system.

Optimized menuboard performance has been achieved, with the optimized menuboards growing the percentage of food sales (+300 BPS) and the fuel energy category (+300 BPS). This success can be attributed to the structured, data-driven approach used by Black Rock Coffee Bar, which ensures proper products are highlighted to align with growth initiatives.

Tom Cook and Howland Blackiston are co-principals of King-Casey, a restaurant and foodservice business improvement firm that provides strategic menu optimization advice and services to help clients manage overall food and beverage offerings, affecting their positioning, reputation, and business growth.

Read More @ QSR