iPad Menu's

They say that a picture can speak a 1000 words!

The humble restaurant menus first began their lives as writing on simple chalkboards, moving to imageless print, then through to today’s detailed, colourful displays.

With the emergence of digital tablets and user-friendly, touch screen technology, menus can now be brought to life like never before. I can see that its only a matter of time that this new and fancy way of customers viewing menus becomes the norm.

And why not? Most people are now perfectly at home with the technology of iPads and such like so it seem a natural progression.

So where are the benefits?

1. You would certainly stand out from the crowd. I'm a great advocate for venues to be different, quirky and to create talking points, so whist iPad menus are still not the norm, it would certainly be a USP above most of your competitors.
2. The biggest difference for sure it the depth of content that you pad menu will have. Most of the menu apps available come fully customisable so branding and menu imaging can be changed very easily. Images can be enlarged by the customer so mouth watering dishes can easily come to life.
3. Restaurants can add information about dishes. Gluten free, contains nuts, calorie counts etc.
4. Chefs recommendations and side order recommendations can be added and a whole host of other interactions.
5. And wine. Customers could see the best wines for certain foods, view the origin and regions of the wines and view by price type and colour.
6. In a world where it seems facebook interaction is essential, menus can even have facebook like's added to dishes which can only gives you marketing directly from customers tables! Word of mouth is the best advertising we have . Imagine only 20 people eating in your restaurant today, and they just recommended your restaurant online through facebook and twitter to all of their online friends! Talk about free and amazing exposure.

There are of course always downsides. Cost for one. The cost for 25 i-Pads for you restaurant would run into thousands. And then there's the app licence. But weigh that up against no more printing costs, marketing benefits and the unique USP it seems to me like a good investment.

Here are some apps you might find useful

http://www.aptito.com/

http://www.emenu-international.com/ipadmenu/

http://www.irisvalet.com/products/iris-f-and-b/

http://www.menupad.com/