Running happy hours and time-limited offers on screen

To run a happy hour or a limited offer on screen, make the offer its own layout and schedule it for the days and times it runs, with an end date, so the screens start and stop it without anyone having to remember. In Casty that's an event with custom times (17:00 to 19:00, say) that repeats weekly on the days you pick and stops on its Until date. Before you advertise a drinks deal, check the licensing rules where you are. Some kinds of drinks promotion are banned, and in Scotland a happy hour on alcohol isn't allowed at all.

Schedule it once

Build the offer as a layout first. Then, in Schedule, open Events and click Add Event, choose the layout and pick the screens, or a display group if it should run across the whole venue. On the Time step choose Custom and set the start and end times on the first day it runs. On the Repeats tab choose Week, click the days (Monday to Thursday, for example), and set Until to the date the offer finishes.

That's all the screens need. Each day the offer comes on at five and goes off at seven, and after the Until date it stops for good, with nothing to delete. Scheduling content on your screens has the step-by-step version.

If the offer runs to slightly different hours on some days (later on a Friday, say), set it up as a daypart called Happy hour instead, with an exception for Friday. Then every event that uses the daypart follows its hours, and changing them later is one edit. Dayparting explains how dayparts work.

How much of the screen it gets

Next, decide how the offer shares the screen with everything else. The simplest way is an ordinary event at the same time as your usual content. Two everyday events that overlap on the same screen both play, in turn, so the offer slots into the rotation alongside the menu and the fixtures.

If you want it to get a set amount of airtime, use an interrupt layout. You give it a Share of Voice in seconds per hour (300 seconds is five minutes in every hour), and it plays for that long on top of the screen's normal content. In the Casty demo, The Crown gives its quiz night promotion five minutes an hour this way, and it works just as well for an offer.

For an offer that should stay visible the whole time, an overlay layout sits on top of whatever is already playing. A strip along the bottom saying "Happy hour until 7pm" can run over the food menu for two hours without replacing it.

There's also priority, which takes the screens over completely while it runs. That's usually too much for a drinks offer and better kept for a big match. Priority, interrupts and overlays covers all three tools.

Offers that end on a date

Some offers run for a weekend or a month, and the risk with those is they outstay their welcome. A few things help:

• Media in the library can have an expiry date. When it passes, the picture drops out of every layout and playlist it's in.
• A layout can be published with a future date, so a new design goes live on the morning the offer starts.
• The Countdown widget can count down to a set date and time, which suits a one-off offer ending on Sunday night. For a daily happy hour, a plain "until 7pm" is simpler.
• If you use Casty's menu boards, each product can carry extra options with their own prices, which is handy for a limited deal that sits on the menu itself.

Writing the offer

Say what it is, when it runs and what it costs, with the biggest text on whatever matters most to the customer. "Half-price cakes after 3pm" says all of it in four words. If there are conditions, such as selected drinks only or eat-in only, put them on the same slide in readable text. A condition the customer only discovers at the till turns a good offer into an argument.

Make sure the till matches the screen before the offer starts, and that the staff know it's on, because customers will quote the screen at them.

The licensing rules on drinks promotions

This is a short outline, so check the official guidance and talk to your licensing authority if you're unsure.

In England and Wales, the mandatory licensing conditions ban irresponsible promotions. The government's guidance on mandatory licensing conditions lists them. Drinking games are banned outright. Unlimited or unspecified amounts of alcohol for a fixed or discounted price, and prizes or rewards for drinking over a period of 24 hours or less, are banned where there's a significant risk to the licensing objectives. The same conditions cover promotional material that encourages antisocial behaviour or refers to drunkenness favourably, so the wording on a screen needs the same care as a poster. Alcohol also can't be sold below the cost of duty plus VAT.

In Scotland the rules are stricter. Under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, alcohol prices can only change at the start of a period of licensed hours and then have to stay the same for at least 72 hours, which rules out happy hours on alcohol. Deals such as a free or cheaper drink when you buy another one are banned too.

Scotland also has minimum unit pricing, so a discount can't take a drink below the minimum price, and Northern Ireland has its own licensing law. Offers on food, coffee and soft drinks don't come under any of this.

Check it ran

If a brewery or supplier is paying towards a promotion, they'll want to know it ran. Switch on proof of play for the layout before the offer starts (tick Enable Stats Collections when you edit the layout), and Casty records every time it plays. Afterwards, the proof of play report shows the number of plays and total time on each screen, and you can download it as a CSV file to send on. Proof of play explains the reports.