Subway is an American fast-food franchise renowned for its submarine sandwiches and salads. Having successfully expanded from Western countries into the Asian market, Subway now boasts a market presence in at least 111 countries, making it one of the fastest growing franchises in the world.
Challenge
Mr.Vichit, a Thai businessman, successfully established 16 Subway franchise stores in Thailand. For all these stores, the menu was initially presented on a paperboard. However, Mr. Vichit found that the paperboards made updating the menu and discount promotions fairly time consuming and challenging. Consequently, Mr. Vichit decided to replace the traditional paperboards with digital signage boards that featured a USB port for uploading content. Although the digital signage boards provided some improvement, Mr. Vichit still required a more efficient and flexible solution for his Subway franchise stores. Additionally, faced with strong competition from nearby businesses, Mr. Vichit was keen to enhance the promotional marketing and management efficiency at each of his stores. Moreover, restaurants also need to ensure that their hardware will support future needs and functionality. No one wants to go through an expensive upgrade one year after a massive deployment. With this objective, he contacted Advantech for advice on how to optimize operations. As a result, Advantech provided a hardware and software integrated digital menu board solution which allows store owners to connect the client devices at multiple stores together, and then simultaneously upload, edit, and dispatch to update the menu information and product promotions at every store through data synchronization.
Solutions
Advantech DS-570 together with WebAccess/IMM, an interactive multimedia software were adopted at each of Mr. Vichit’s Subway franchise stores. DS-570 supports four 1080 FHD displays simultaneously powered by an Intel Celeron J1900 processor and discrete graphics chip. The high performance DS-570 can play real-time high definition of videos and vivid images of the latest dishes and the freshest ingredients of the season. With fanless, compact and industrial grade design, it lowers maintenance costs and prolongs 24/7 operation. What's more, DS-570 comes bundled with dedicated signage software, WebAccess/IMM, allowing the customer to manage digital signage networks installed in multiple locations with less effort. Using this solution, Mr. Vichit can easily edit and update the menu content remotely. The menu displays can also be configured to present special lunch/dinner promotions and offers based on the time of day. Furthermore, in addition to increasing revenue by promoting menu items with dynamic attention-grabbing displays, eMenu boards can decrease operational expenses by reducing staff and printing costs.
