Digital menu boards: a practical guide for cafes and restaurants
· 6 min read
A digital menu board is a screen behind the counter that shows your menu, with the dishes and prices kept in one place online. When a price changes you edit it from a laptop or your phone and the screen follows, so there's no reprinting and no redesign. You need a screen, a small player to run it and an internet connection, and the board can switch itself from breakfast to lunch at whatever time you choose.
What goes on the wall
Start with the screen. A TV you already own is fine for a first go, as long as it has a spare HDMI port for a player such as an Amazon Signage Stick or an Android box. If the board is going to run from opening to close every day, a commercial display is worth a look: they're built for long hours, and many have the player built in, so there's no box to hide and only one power lead. Consumer TV or commercial display goes through that choice, and the devices page lists every player Casty runs on.
Then look at the wall. A tall, narrow space beside the coffee machine suits a portrait screen. The long wall above the counter suits a wide one, or two screens side by side with drinks on one and food on the other, so nobody has to wait for a slide to come round before they can see the price of a flat white.
The player downloads the menu and keeps a copy, so a dropped connection won't blank the board. It does need the internet to pick up changes, though.
How the menu is kept
In Casty the menu lives in a menu board, which is kept separate from the screen design. You set up categories (Breakfast, Drinks and so on) and add each product with its name and price. A product can also carry a description, a photo, allergy information, calories and extras such as "add bacon" with their own price.
The design is done once. In the layout editor you place the Menu Board: Products widget where each part of a dish should sit: the name here, the price lined up on the right, the description underneath in a smaller size. Each position is a numbered slot, so slot 1 is the first dish in the category and slot 2 the second. From then on the layout reads whatever is in the menu board, and you don't open the editor to change a dish.
The menu board guide in our help pages walks through it step by step, building a weekend brunch menu for Harbour Cafe (one of the venues in the Casty demo). Menu boards are switched on per account, so if you can't see them under Library, get in touch and we'll turn them on.
What to put on it
Less than you'd think. A paper menu gets read at the table with plenty of time. A screen gets read from the queue, often over someone's shoulder, in the half a minute before they reach the till.
A few things hold true in most cafes and restaurants:
- Give each screen one category, or two short ones. If you can't read it from the door, there's too much on it.
- Line the prices up in one column so people can run their eye down them.
- Save photos for the few dishes you most want to sell. A photo on every line just makes the board busy.
- Make the text bigger than feels right in the editor. You're designing at arm's length on a laptop; the customer is several metres away.
- Go for dark text on a light background, or light on dark, with nothing fussy behind the words.
Movement catches the eye, which is exactly the trouble with it on a menu. If the whole board rotates through slides, someone halfway down the paninis loses their place when it flips to coffee. Keep the menu itself still and put anything that moves (a short clip of a toastie being cut, this week's cake) in its own area of the screen. A playlist in one corner of the layout does this well, and you can swap the specials in it without going near the menu.
Designing for screens has more on text sizes, contrast and viewing distance.
Keeping prices right
This is where a screen earns its keep over a printed board. When a price goes up, open the menu board, click the pencil icon on the dish, type the new price and save. In the Casty demo, Harbour Cafe's buttermilk pancakes go from £8.50 to £8.95 like this, and the brunch screen shows the new price with nobody opening the layout.
It isn't instant, mind. Screens pick up changes when they next check in with the CMS. If you've fixed something and want it up before the lunch queue arrives, the Displays page has Collect Now, which asks a screen to check in straight away.
Running out of a dish works the same way. Switch its Availability off and it comes off the screen; switch it back on in the morning. You'll do this more than anything else, so it has its own post on marking dishes as sold out.
Whatever's on the board should match the till. Change both at the same time, and get into the habit of glancing up at the screen after an update.
Breakfast, lunch and the rest of the day
Most cafes don't sell the same things at 8am and 2pm, and a breakfast menu still up at lunchtime looks careless. Casty handles this with dayparts. You name a slot once (Breakfast, 07:00 to 11:30, say) and schedule the breakfast layout into it every day, with the lunch layout in the slot after. At 11:30 the screens change over and nobody has to remember.
The cafe breakfast and lunch tutorial sets this up for Harbour Cafe's counter and window screens together, using a display group so both switch at once. The post on dayparting covers the wider picture, including different hours at weekends.
Who updates it
Sort this out before you go live. If the only person who can change a price is the owner, and the owner is on holiday, the board is wrong for a fortnight.
Staff can have their own logins with access to just what they need. A shift manager can be given the menu board without the layout designer, so they can switch a dish off or correct a price but can't knock the design about by accident. We set those logins up for you, and giving staff access explains the options.
Mistakes worth avoiding
- A screen facing a window can catch glare for half the day. Stand where your customers stand, at different times of day, before you fix the bracket.
- Text laid over a busy food photo is hard to read. Put a solid panel behind it.
- Specials from last month are worse than no specials. Give promotional pictures an expiry date in the media library and they drop out on the right day.
- Too many fonts. One for headings and one for everything else is plenty.
Questions people ask
Can I use the TV I already have for a menu board?
Usually, yes. Any TV with an HDMI port can take an Amazon Signage Stick or an Android media player running Casty. A commercial display copes better with being on all day, every day, but an existing TV is a sensible way to start.
How quickly does a price change show on the screen?
The screen picks it up the next time it checks in with the CMS. To get it there straight away, use Collect Now on the Displays page, which asks that screen to check in immediately.
What happens to the menu if the internet goes down?
It stays on the screen. Players store their content locally, so the menu keeps showing, and any changes you made in the meantime appear once the connection is back.
Do I need a designer to make a menu board?
No. You can start from a template or build the layout yourself in the browser, and after that you only edit the menu. If a printer or designer has already done your menu, you can upload it as an image, but then every price change means a new image.