We are very proud to announce we have agreed a partnership with the Institute of Hospitality. The Institute of Hospitality is the professional body for individual managers and aspiring managers working and studying in the hospitality, leisure and tourism (HLT) industry.
The aim of this new twelve-month partnership is to educate the Institute of Hospitality’s members about the digital signage solutions available to help deliver core information to clients and also to showcase how digital signage can be used to help improve operational workflow and raise profits for hospitality businesses.
Colin Thody, Eclipse Digital Media Director, said:
“It seems like a perfect partnership. We have the technical expertise and digital solutions along with many years experience in the industry. We understand the challenges hospitality businesses face and have developed a range of products and services to help tackle many of these.”
Peter Ducker, Chief Executive of the Institute of Hospitality, said:
“Digital signage is playing an increasingly important role within hotels and restaurants, and it is a role that is continually evolving. We are therefore delighted to be working closely with Eclipse Digital Media in order to keep our members informed of the latest benefits and applications of this relatively new technology.”
Members of the Institute of Hospitality will benefit from a variety of educational pieces including digital signage specific webinars and publication of editorial pieces in the Institute of Hospitality’s magazine; Hospitality.
The Institute of Hospitality is managed as an educational charity whose primary purpose is to promote the highest standards of management and education and to assist its members in their professional development.
13th December 2014 – if you’re in the food industry this is a date you should have firmly in your diary! For those that aren’t sure as to the significance of that date, it’s the date that the new food information for consumer laws (EU FIC) will be introduced into the UK that will require food businesses to provide allergy information on any food sold unpackaged, for example in catering outlets, deli counters, bakeries and sandwich bars.
These new Food Allergy law changes will be enforced in 2014 to comply with the new EU FIR 1169/2011 law on the provision of food information to consumers. Evidence suggests that most food allergy incidents can be traced back to non-prepacked food, therefore information on potential allergens should always be provided to the consumer and as such businesses now need to comply with the regulation changes by December 2014.
So what’s changing in 2014?
To comply with the new Food Information for Consumers Regulation (EU FIC) legislation, food businesses will need to provide information to consumers about the allergenic ingredients in the foods they sell. This means that if there is a food product which contains or uses an ingredient or processing aid derived from one of the 14 substances or products listed below, regardless of the level of use, businesses will need to provide this information to consumers unless the ingredient or processing aid is no longer present in the food in neither its original or altered form.
These 14 substances or products are:
Cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut or their hybridised strains)
Crustaceans
Peanut
Egg
Fish
Lupin
Milk
Molluscs
Nuts (almond, hazelnut, walnut, cashew, pecan nut, Brazil nut, pistachio nut and Macadamia nut
Soybean
Sesame
Celery
Mustard
Sulphur dioxide (>10mg/kg or 10mL/L in ready to eat or reconstituted products)
All mandatory allergen ingredients information (Article 9 (1) (c)) should be available and easily accessible for the consumer. It is NOT acceptable to simply say “all of our dishes contain / may contain traces of allergens”, you MUST detail every allergen for each menu item individually. Read more about the technical requirements of the Food Information Regulations.
Advice from the Food Standards Agency suggests that “All mandatory allergen information should be available and be easily accessible to the consumer.”
This has already and will continue to cause, many food business owners headache’s with yet more food information needing to be declared to the customer. In a fast paced environment it can be very difficult to ensure this information will be communicated effectively and not to break the law but thankfully there are some tools that can help alleviated some of this stress and concern as well actually improve other areas the business too – and one of those tools is Digital Menu Boards.
Why Digital Menu Boards?
Speed
The speed at which businesses can update menu information using digital menu boards is a substantial advantage. Depending on the digital menu board solution, changes can be made almost instantly.
Variation
Displaying different menu content at different times of day can be achieved easily using scheduling functionalities for various digital menu board solutions. This provides creative flexibility to not overcrowd your menus with all of your items and their information but segment them into different periods.
Adaptive
The new regulation requires a large amount of information to be declared to the customer. By using digital menu boards, it is possible to restructure your menu designs an unlimited number of times to incorporate all of this information.
Future Proof
This is the latest round of food information declaration law changes but who’s to say that it is not going to change again? By using digital menu boards, your hardware or “real estate” is installed and all you need to do is update the content meaning, no matter what information your business will be required to declare in future, you can meet those requirements much more effectively, both in terms of time and money.
There are many more benefits to implementing digital menu boards for your food business away, from the food information side, for example, digital menu boards can also help to reduced perceived customer waiting times, increase average order values, reduce menu printing costs and increase customer satisfaction amongst others.
How to use Digital Menu Boards to comply with food labelling laws:
There are several ways businesses can communicate nutritional and allergen information to customers using digital menu boards and below we have highlighted a couple of areas to help provide inspiration:
Touch screen
Listing your items in an ‘overview’ format and then touch each item to expand into more detailed information about the item including nutritional and allergen content. Here is a quick example of how this could potentially be applied:
Video content
Create animated video content using programs like After Effects, Final Cut and Windows Movie Maker to highlight products and their labelling detail. This will keep customers engaged, watching the content animate but also communicate the labelling information required by law.
Static Image or Text
Generate your menu board information by layering images and/or text fields to display the full labelling information required for each item. This would work well for menus with low number of items. If your business needs to reduce the number of items on a menu due to the amount of information needed to display, then use scheduling functions and playlisting to rotate content. This will help retain a creative impact and still deliver the important information.
Scrolling Text
Introduce a scrolling text bar at the top or bottom of your digital menu layout to scroll through the list of allergen information related to specific products. Make sure that you identify the products with allergenic information are clearly marked (perhaps graphically with icons) to draw customers’ attention to the allergen information scrolling.
What Types of Digital Menu Board are there?
There are several types of digital menu boards and it is certainly not a “one size fits all” product. Below we have outlined some of the varieties available however you can also download the Eclipse Digital Media Guide to Digital Menu Boards 2013. Look out for the 2014 guide due for release in the coming months and will include further digital menu board products.
Online / Cloud Based Digital Signage Content Management Systems:
Using the embed signage online digital signage platform you can easily create and distribute menu board content to wide variety of connected media players including touch content to tablets and smartphones. The online cloud solution provides great creative flexibility to create various content types and schedule them to appear on specific devices at specific times.
USB Updated All In One Digital Displays:
Built in media players, capable of playing looped full screen content of images or movies. Sizes range from 7” to 55” displays. See embed signage usb digital menu boards for more information.
Need some Digital Menu Board advice?
With the new changes, now is the right time to act! Discover how digital menu boards can help your food business, not only meet the ever increasing demands of legislation, but also help to improve your operational efficiency, brand perception and sales.
If your business needs some advice on what digital menu board solution is right for you, please get in touch with your questions or leave a comment below and we’ll be happy to help where we can.
Don’t leave it too late… remember – 13th December 2014
Eclipse Digital Media are proud to announce the new appointed of Iain Ramsay as our new Chairman to deliver our aggressive short term plans and to help build the foundations for long term growth and stability.
Ramsay boasts an outstanding career spanning more than 40 years. Throughout this time he held senior positions such as CEO, Chairman and Director at the likes of Rowntree’s, Multitone Electronics Company, Crest Nicholson and Antler Property Corporation. Utilising Iain Ramsay’s experience was a mouthwatering prospect for Eclipse Digital, which led them to make the decision to appoint him.
Ramsay said:
“I’ve been offered many positions like this in the past but none of them have really excited me like this one. The company is on the verge of substantial growth and about to launch a series of new product lines… they have an impressive management team which I’m proud to help build upon”
“we are delighted to bring Iain on board and use his years of business experience to help provide clear direction and strategy as we aim to build the company over the coming years”
Ramsay continued;
“Eclipse Digital have impressed me with their determined, dedicated and ambitious staff… paired with my years of experience and business vision I want to harness their potential and help them to become the market leader in the field of digital signage, ensuring they continue to be reliable, secure and successful for many years to come”
After an impressive 2013, 2014 has already begun in spectacular style with digital signage projects for Marwell Zoo and Siemens amongst others. This year is set to be a year of growth at Eclipse Digital and the appointment of Iain Ramsay as Chairman is the first step. Watch this space for future business developments!
Gallery Images from appointment of Eclipse Digital Media’s new Chairman:
Eclipse Digital Media had the pleasure of attending ISE 2014 and joined digital signage hardware manufacturers ONELAN on their stand. Eclipse were invited to showcase their latest digital signage content and demonstrate the various ways they can integrate devices to create interactive digital signage solutions.
First up to showcase was a restaurant digital signage concept that integrates:
Android tablet touch order application
Ticket / receipt printer
Front of house, advertising display
Kitchen area, current order display
Back of house marketing / sales statistics
The process for the concept is: User places an order on the tablet, this order prints a receipt / ticket for them. The order is displayed on the kitchen monitor and also automatically updates the back office latest statistics table. The lowest selling item in the sales table automatically triggers an advert front of house to try and up-sell the item. This set up can be completely customised to the customer requirements but as a showcase of integration and interactivity, this piece shows how Eclipse Digital Media can bring together various devices and data to deliver solutions based on customer specific requirements. Take a look at ONELAN’s pre-sales engineer, Łukasz Górasiński, demonstrating this proof of concept on ONELAN’s stand at ISE 2014:
The second piece being showcased on the ONELAN stand was an interactive touch application that changes content on various displays based on IP commands to ONELAN digital signage media players. This solution can be used to create a variety of interactive discover points in many environments including museums, exhibitions and schools.
It’s a new year and with that normally comes a fresh wave of changes – join the gym, eat healthier, carry out a random act of kindness every day, improve those processes at work that have been bugging you, making the tea at least once a day (Ty, take note of that one) and so on. It is an opportunity to embark on the year ahead with a beaming freshness to achieve a better you, both at home and at work, so why settle for just ‘alright’, why not strive for ‘excellence’? As with everything, you have a choice and here’s one simple process to help you make your choices… answer the following question: Are you happy? If you are – keep doing what you’re doing… If you’re not – change something! A simple question that can make a big impact. Now we want to ask you another question:
Are you happy with your digital signage?
Yes! Great news, keep doing what you’re doing.
No? Maybe it’s time to change something?
There is no doubt that digital signage is an effective way to communicate, be it internally to employees about corporate messages or externally to pupils and parents at a school for example, but often individuals fail to take ownership of the day to day operation and sadly, the business digital signage falls victim to neglect. Now being a new year, you might be thinking “let’s sort out our digital signage once and for all, I want to get it working exactly how I want it” but alas, the person who originally took care of the project has left the business or now has too much on their plate to even begin looking at helping you… So what do you do? Well, as you’d expect by reading this, we can help you.
It’s true, we are an approved ONELAN reseller and advanced content design partnerbut we are much more than that… We don’t simply sell digital signage media players to our new and existing customers and leave them to it, we also provide a range of support including training sessions, digital signage network configuration, content creation and integration, advanced monitoring and maintenance services and much more for ONELAN digital signage systems. We’ve already helped the likes of Hounslow County Council and The Dock, Southampton Solent University transform their existing ONELAN digital signage into a fully operation solution that now exceeds their expectations, allowing them to utilise the abundance of features to communicate their messages.
Forgive us for being bold, but we believe that we can help any ONELAN digital signage user maximise their digital signage and we are inviting those people to have a completely free digital signage consultation to explore the ways that we can enable you to get exactly what you need from your digital signage.
Here’s just some of the ways in which we can help: Overview
Training sessions to enable you to understand and competently use the system in house
So, what’s your answer? Are you happy with your digital signage? Is it time for a digital signage refresh? If the time is now, we encourage you to contact us to see if our expert knowledge can help you optimise your ONELAN digital signage for the years ahead.
Online / Cloud Based Digital Signage Content Management Systems:
