Drive-Thru: Signed and Delivered

Digital signs at the drive-thru entertain and inform customers while helping to sell specials.

By Mary Boltz Chapman, Editor-in-Chief -- Chain Leader, 10/1/2007

Many of Tim Horton’s most loyal customers never set foot in the store. To communicate better with those guests and build loyalty, the 3,078-unit chain based in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, installed digital screens on posts prior to the menu board at the drive-thru.

Custom Messaging

The messages highlight new products or specials, and communicate Tim Horton’s work within the local communities. For example, the chain sponsors free swimming in the summer. The screen will not only tell customers about the free swim, it will name the local pool nearest to the individual unit.

"The advantage is to be able to customize that across the chain," says Director of Public Affairs Rachel Douglas.

Corporate controls the messages, sharing national programs and facts about the chain. Regional marketing managers can customize or add elements.

Douglas says successful messages include Tim Horton’s feature of the month. She is unable to quantify the success but says, "We have measurements in place, but we can’t narrow down exactly if it has to do with the digital menu board. But what I can tell you is that, especially in the drive-thru—people aren’t in the stores, they’re not seeing the product, they’re not reading the POP and the posters that are in store—we do know that it does change behavior."

Passenger Comfort

Douglas also says it makes people feel like their wait is shorter: "By having something that they can look at, it feels less like waiting."

Nick Prigioniero, president and CEO of EK3 Technologies, the London, Ontario-based company that supplies Tim Horton’s digital display equipment, says his company’s tests with customers come to the same conclusion.

He also says the technology helps reduce drive-thru times because customers make up their minds about their orders before reaching the speaker. And it eases the order-takers’ "you want fries with that" upselling, because the screen suggests it for them.

Finally, Prigioniero says, "If you can measure the fact that you are moving particular combos during a particular daypart that are reflected on the merchandising screen, what it does is it creates efficiencies in inventory, efficiencies in work flow."

Use of the technology is growing. In 2007, 110 companies exhibited at the Digital Signage Expo, 20 percent more than the prior year. Technology research firm Forrester International’s study of high-definition video technology at retail point of sale found increased sales of 15 percent to 60 percent. Forrester predicted that as the messages get more sophisticated, sales would grow.