City BBQ
The Situation
CityBBQ had an opportunity to rethink how its digital menu boards could work harder for both the brand and the guest. Their existing signage primarily functioned as a static menu, limiting their ability to merchandise products, promote limited-time offers, adapt messaging by daypart, and communicate the personality of the brand.
Our task was to reimagine the indoor and outdoor drive-thru menu experience as a more dynamic, strategic digital ecosystem—one that could showcase the sensory appeal of CityBBQ’s food, make better use of available screen real estate, and create a foundation for data-driven optimization. The broader vision was to move CityBBQ from simply having digital menu boards to using digital as an active tool for merchandising, engagement, and customer insight.
The Action
Our team conducted a strategic review of the existing menu experience and developed a “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach for evolving CityBBQ’s digital ecosystem. We reimagined the layout and information hierarchy of both indoor and drive-thru menu boards, creating more opportunities to feature the full menu, daypart offerings, higher-margin items, and limited-time promotions. We introduced motion and animation as a way to make the food more visually compelling while staying within the brand’s authentic, delicious visual language.
We also explored extending digital beyond the primary menu boards—using smaller displays, promotional screens, queueing content, and previously underutilized wall space to create a more connected guest journey. Underlying the creative strategy was a plan to incorporate POS, first- and third-party customer data, sensors, A/B testing, and analytics, giving CityBBQ the ability to continuously learn what customers responded to and optimize the experience over time.
The Results
The work established a new vision for CityBBQ’s digital guest experience, transforming the menu boards from primarily informational displays into a more flexible and engaging merchandising platform. The redesigned approach created significantly more opportunities to promote products, highlight LTOs, leverage dayparting, showcase the sensory appeal of the food, and communicate the CityBBQ brand throughout the customer journey.
Just as importantly, the strategy established a framework for ongoing optimization—connecting creative, content, POS data, customer behavior, and testing so the experience could evolve based on what actually worked. The result was a scalable digital signage strategy designed not simply to display the menu, but to actively influence the guest experience and support the business.
