Restaurant billboards: cost, next-exit signs, and what else works on the street

Do billboards work for restaurants?

There's no public dataset of restaurant billboard results, so nobody can promise you a number. What we can say is which jobs a billboard does well for a restaurant, and how to tell whether yours is doing its job.

Restaurants buy boards for three reasons:

• Point the way. A driver who's already hungry needs to know you're at the next exit, or that the turn is coming up on the right. This is the job billboards do best for food.
• Keep the name familiar. A board on a road your regulars drive every day keeps you in mind for the next time someone asks where to eat.
• Push an offer. A new item, a lunch special or catering for the holidays. Offers change, so this job usually suits a digital board.

Distance matters more for food than for most businesses. One seller's guide puts a static restaurant board within two to five miles of the location, near a decision point like an intersection or a highway exit. That matches how people pick a place to eat: close by, and often on the way somewhere else.

For the wider question, read are billboards worth it. If you're weighing a digital board for offers, read are digital billboards effective.

How much does a restaurant billboard cost?

Restaurants pay the same rates as anyone else on the same board. The market, the size of the board and the length of the run set the price. Static boards are usually sold in four-week periods; digital boards sell slots, often by the week or the day.

Read the fine print on two things. First, minimums: Blue Line Media lists a $5,000 or higher minimum per market, which can be spread over boards and periods. Second, production: Blindspot notes that design, printing and installation come on top of the rent for a static board. Self-serve digital skips the printing, but your ad shares the screen with other advertisers.

For the full price picture, read billboard advertising. For ways to spend less, read cheap billboard advertising, and for how the rental itself works, billboard rental.

Next exit billboards and highway FOOD signs

"Next exit" is the classic restaurant board. It tells a driver what's ahead, how far, and which way to turn. Keep it to the name, the food, and the direction: "Exit 12, turn right" does more work here than a slogan.

Big chains treat direction as the whole message. McDonald's Canada ran "Follow the Arches" in February 2018: boards built on the arches logo, with drivers told to follow the curves of the "M" in whichever direction they needed to go. Most local restaurants don't have a logo that famous, so spell out the name.

The blue FOOD signs at rural exits

There's a second, much cheaper way onto the highway. The blue "FOOD" signs at freeway exits are a state program. In California it's Caltrans's Business Logo Sign Program, and it's built for drivers who don't know the area.

• Where: at or near rural freeway interchanges. Caltrans defines rural as a Census area with fewer than 5,000 people.
• Who: a business whose primary source of revenue falls in the program's categories, which include FOOD, and that qualifies under the program's regulations.
• What you supply: the logo sign itself. Caltrans installs it on the blue sign. Mainline logos are 48 inches wide by 36 inches high; ramp and trailblazer logos are 18 by 12.
• Annual fees, per sign: a $160 permit fee and a $310 rental fee.
• As-needed fees: $285 to install, cover or replace a mainline logo, $235 for an off-ramp logo, and $175 to transfer a permit after a change in ownership.

Fees are charged per sign, and every direction counts. Caltrans's own example: a mainline sign and an off-ramp sign in both directions is four signs, so by its formula the yearly cost is 4 x ($160 + $310), or $1,880, before the cost of making the logos. To check whether your restaurant qualifies, call the logo coordinator in your district.

If your restaurant sits near a city interchange rather than a rural one, the logo program won't cover it. A rented billboard, or a sign on your own lot, is the route there.

What should a restaurant billboard say?

One thing. A driver gets a few seconds with your board, so pick the one item or offer you want them to remember and build the board around it.

• The food. One dish, shown big and well lit. Food photos do the selling on a restaurant board.
• The name. Large enough to read from the road. Unless you're a national chain, people need it spelled out.
• The direction or the order path. "Next exit," "2 miles, on the right," or the name people should search to order.
• Nothing else. Hours, a full menu and three phone numbers won't be read at highway speed.

A memorable idea can last for decades. Chick-fil-A says its cows first painted "Eat Mor Chikin" on a billboard in Atlanta in 1995, and the cows are still part of the brand. The lesson for a local place isn't to copy the cows. It's that one simple, repeatable idea can do more work than a busy board.

Digital boards add one restaurant-friendly trick: day-parting. One seller describes showing a breakfast offer in the morning and a dinner special in the evening on the same board, which a printed board can't do. For design rules that work on any board, read billboard design, and for board sizes, types of billboards.

Billboards for delivery and catering

Delivery and catering change what the board has to do. Nobody's turning off the road; they're ordering later, from a phone or an office. So the board's job is to make the order easy to find.

For delivery, put the name people should search, or the one short web address, on the board. Skip the long URL and the QR code; neither works at 50 miles an hour. If you're on several delivery apps, the board can't list them all, so send people to your own name and let them find you where they already order.

Catering is a different buyer. The person ordering lunch for 40 is often an office manager or an event planner, and they plan days or weeks ahead. A board near an office park or a business corridor, with the word "catering" big and one phone number, speaks to that buyer better than a burger close-up. Run it ahead of the busy seasons you already know from your own books.

A caterer can put the same message on its own vans. A full wrap on a van runs $3,500 to $6,500 at one wrap shop (seller), and you pay once, not every four weeks. Read more about vehicle wrap advertising.

Food and alcohol ad rules in California

When you rent a billboard face, the state paperwork belongs to the billboard company: in California, the business of outdoor advertising needs a Caltrans outdoor advertising license, and displays next to interstate and primary highways need permits. Three more things are worth knowing.

Signs on your own lot

California's Outdoor Advertising Act exempts most of its rules for a sign that advertises the business on the property where the sign stands, if it's on the same side of the highway and within 1,000 feet of the point on the property, or of the entrance to the site, where the business is conducted (section 5272(a)(4)). Some parts of the Act still apply, and your city's sign code always does.

If your board mentions beer, wine or spirits

• No ads aimed at minors. Section 25664 bars any alcohol ad using subject matter, language or a slogan "addressed to and intended to encourage minors to drink." The same section says it doesn't restrict ads aimed at adults of legal drinking age.
• Signs tied to a licensed premises. Section 25612 says signs used in connection with a licensed retailer's premises can't be "obnoxious, gaudy, blatant, or offensive" or block the view into the premises from the street, contrary to ABC's rules.
• The 33% window rule is for off-sale stores. Section 25612.5 limits advertising and signs to 33% of the square footage of the windows and clear doors of an off-sale premises, like a liquor store. It doesn't apply to an on-sale licensee that operates as a bona fide public eating place.

City limits on alcohol billboards

Cities can go further. Lancaster's Ordinance 1045, adopted in July 2018, bars alcohol ads on off-premises billboards within 200 feet of a residential zone or 1,000 feet of a school, park, youth center, child care center or church, with an exception for boards aimed mainly at freeway traffic. Other cities have their own rules, so check yours before a board mentions a drink.

How to track what a billboard brings in

A restaurant can't ask every diner how they heard about it. Build the tracking into the board instead.

1. Give each board its own offer. A dish, a code or a word to mention at the counter that appears nowhere else.
2. Use a tracking number for catering. One number per board, ringing your catering line.
3. Tag it at the register. Add a button or a code in your point-of-sale system so staff can log the offer.
4. Compare periods. Look at the same weeks before and during the run, and at more than one four-week period before you decide.

Expect leakage. Plenty of people will see the board and never mention it. The offer count is a floor, not the full total.

What other street-level ads do restaurants use?

A billboard isn't the only way to be seen near your door. These formats cost less per face or sit closer to the street, and you can mix two or three.

• Your own signs. The sign on your building, a lit menu board or a sidewalk sign. Your city's sign code sets the limits.
• Bus benches. Close to neighborhoods and cheaper per face. Blue Line Media (seller) lists $400 to $750 per bench, with a $5,000 or higher market minimum. Read bus bench advertising.
• Buses. Panels that move through town all day, sold off public rate cards. Read advertising on buses.
• Mobile billboard trucks. Good for an opening week or an event. One operator (seller) lists static trucks at $500 to $900 per day for 8 hours. Read billboard truck rental.
• Garbage truck panels. A framed sign on the side of a city refuse truck, not a wrap. Trucks rotate through the city's collection routes, with no route guarantee.

Menus and specials change, and that's where a panel helps. The printed panel slides out of the frame and swaps in under 30 seconds. A new message still goes through design, review and printing first. In each city, every ad will be checked against that city's written ad policy before it runs; you can read how ads will be reviewed.

There is no Roadway advertiser case study yet, and no city is open yet. Refuse trucks are not part of the industry's audited audience ratings, so any reach figure we show will be labeled as an estimate. Give the panel its own offer or tracking number and count your own orders, the same way you would on a billboard.

Other trades use outdoor ads with their own rules: see law firm billboards, real estate billboards and roofing company billboards. To see a panel with your food on it, learn how garbage truck advertising works, see your ad on a garbage truck, or tell us your city.