Overview
Based in the U.S. state of North Carolina, Krispy Kreme is one of the most beloved and well-known sweet treat brands in the world. The doughnut and coffeehouse chain, most famous for its iconic, melt-in-your-mouth Original Glazed doughnuts, operates in 30 countries.
Challenge
The Australian operations of Krispy Kreme were already taking advantage of Digital Signage to manage its menu displays at store counters, to outline options and influence purchases. But the company wanted to wrest day-to-day management and control back from the services provider and have internal staff handle updates and changes to menus and promotions.
Outsourcing content management to the third-party service provider caused unwanted delays in making important changes on variables like pricing, special offers and new products.
Krispy Kreme wanted a content management platform that was easy to use, reliable, ready to scale up with growth, and malleable enough to adapt to changes and integrate with other business systems. Krispy Kreme managers also wanted to reduce management costs and the month-to-month expenses for software licensing and infrastructure.
The company also wanted to introduce outdoor drive-thru menu displays in key locations – both as a new customer option but also as a tactical measure to counteract indoor ordering and dining restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Krispy Kreme wanted to convert to a new services provider, but wanted to do so quickly and with minimal disruption. Any transition from one platform to a new one had to be largely seamless and invisible to customers.
The Australian Digital Signage integrator Amped Digital won a tendered bid for the project at the end of 2020, working with partner Signagelive on a CMS software solution.
“We were up amongst some very strong and well-known system integrators and software suppliers,” recalls Dylan Holtzhausen of Amped Digital. “So when we received the call that we were successful for the project, it was an important milestone for the team and company.”
The existing digital menu displays deployed in Krispy Kreme’s Australian and New Zealand stores were aging and due for replacement, enabling Amped and Signagelive to take advantage of the reduced costs and streamlined installation of Samsung’s smart signage displays – all-in-one commercial flat panel displays that build the media storage and playout capabilities into the screen, using System On Chip (SOC) technology.
Creating a network on the cloud-based Signagelive Digital Signage platform realised several advantages for Krispy Kreme:
- A simple but powerful software user experience that can be fully managed in-house;
- Secure cloud-hosting with high availability that removes the day-to-day management burden for Krispy Kreme’s regional IT services team;
- An agnostic, web-centric platform that uses tools such as data-tagging of players, locations and media assets to maximise accuracy of content targeting and scheduling, but minimise the work needed day to day to refresh and distribute new material.
“If the various elements of a Digital Signage network are described and tagged within Signagelive, a content targeting and scheduling job that would take hours on other platforms can be done in a matter of minutes,” explains Jason Cremins, CEO of UK-based Signagelive. “It means minimal management time to run the network, but provides maximum control over how things look and work.”
Inside the stores – more than two-dozen across Australia and New Zealand – the set-up involves a minimum of four screens tiled in a row, behind the order counter. Promotional content can also be synchronised across all four screens, on demand, for can’t miss promotional campaigns.
Commonplace in the U.S. and Canada, digital menu boards in the drive-thru lanes are rare in Australia. But the pandemic and the restrictions it triggered in QSR environments prompted Krispy Kreme to introduce them in 2021, as tests, in Australia and New Zealand.
Flagship locations in Cannington, Western Australia and Penrith, New South Wales were installed with a three-display outdoor menu board unit, along with a single-screen “pre-sell” promotional display in the lane approaching the order station. Those positions use Samsung’s OHF daylight-readable, outdoor-ready smart LCD displays.
The two stores were the first in the entire Krispy Kreme APAC region portfolio to adopt drive-thru menu technology.
Despite the many unusual restrictions posed by COVID-19 health safety measures, Amped Digital was able to complete the conversion of all sites – including three in New Zealand – in three months, and on budget.
Outcomes
Amped’s team facilitated the training and set-up of the new system for the Krispy Kreme team, tuning it to their processes and management style. “We provided a highly effective implementation of the new solution and ongoing support services,” says Dylan Holtzhausen of Amped.
Krispy Kreme is now managing its full digital menu and promotional display network, across two countries and multiple time zones, off Signagelive’s cloud-based, browser-centric content management platform.
The QSR chain’s team now has full control of its marketing initiatives, and the ability to push out content to their network of displays without relying on a third-party service provider – a situation that was resulting in delays and unnecessary stress.
Along with speedier turnarounds on price and promotion changes, operating costs have also been lowered and Signagelive’s remote management software gives all stakeholders full visibility on the state of the screens and players, maximising uptime on displays that are mission-critical to the business.
Field outages have dropped dramatically by switching off a standalone, PC-based media playout device to the zero-moving-parts, embedded playback solution built into Samsung’s smart displays. Because there is no need for external signal cables, outages caused by simple issues like loose connectors have also been minimised.
Krispy Kreme is now accelerating its roll-out of outdoor menu displays to existing and new-build stores in the region. “Amped Digital continues to grow our relationship with the Krispy Kreme team, supporting day-to-day operations with new initiatives and store openings, with tremendous support from Signagelive,” adds Dylan Holtzhausen.
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