Digital menu boards are screens that show your menu, driven by software you edit from a laptop or phone instead of a printer. You need three things: a TV or commercial display, a small player behind it (usually an Android box), and menu board software. What you get for it is practical rather than flashy. A price change reaches the wall in seconds, going from the breakfast menu to the lunch menu takes two taps on your phone, and a dish that has sold out comes off the board before the next customer asks for it.
This guide is for restaurants, cafés, bakeries and takeaway counters weighing a screen against print: when the switch is worth it, what to buy, how to lay out a menu for a screen, dayparting, photos, the labelling rules that still apply, and what happens when the internet drops mid-service.
When is a digital menu board worth it?
Print is not the enemy. A menu that changes once a year, in a room where the chalkboard is part of the charm, does not need a screen. The case for a digital menu board gets stronger with each of these:
- Prices move. If supplier prices force a reprint more than a couple of times a year, the print bills and hours add up.
- The menu changes during the day. Breakfast until 11:00, lunch after, a shorter list in the evening. On print that means two boards, or a slide-in panel someone forgets to swap.
- Things sell out. A screen can drop the soup at 12:40, not after the tenth person has asked for it.
- You have more than one counter or site. One edit reaches every screen showing that board.
- You want photos. On a screen they cost nothing extra; on print they mean a new board with every menu change.
The honest downsides: you pay up front for hardware, you need a socket and ideally a network cable where the screen hangs, and someone has to own the menu in the software, the same way someone owns the printed one today.
| Printed board | Digital menu board |
|---|---|---|
Changing a price | Reprint, or a sticker | Edit and publish, on screen in seconds |
Breakfast to lunch | Swap panels by hand | Switched from a phone, on screen in seconds |
A sold-out dish | Stays up, or gets crossed out | Taken off in the dashboard |
Upfront cost | Design and printing | Screen and player |
Running cost | Every reprint | A software subscription per screen |
Power cut | Unaffected | Dark until the power returns |
What you need for a digital menu board
A screen sized for the queue
The rule of thumb from our hardware guide: for a menu people read line by line, the furthest reader should be no more than four screen heights away. A 55-inch screen hung landscape is about 68 cm tall, so it serves a queue up to roughly 2.7 metres back; a 65-inch, about 81 cm tall, reaches roughly 3.2 metres. Measure from where people stand when they decide, which is usually further back than the counter. There is more on this in how big a digital signage screen should be.
Two more choices matter more than they look:
- Consumer TV or commercial display. A consumer TV is built for a few hours a day. A menu board runs from opening to close, which is where a commercial panel rated for 12 to 24 hours a day earns its price. A TV you already own is fine to start with; the trade-offs are laid out in professional display vs TV.
- Landscape or portrait. Landscape above the counter, portrait by the door or along the queue. Decide before the screen goes up, because the mount and the cable lengths follow from it.
If the board faces a street window, brightness beats size. A bright panel reads through glass in the afternoon sun; a larger, dimmer TV washes out.
A player behind it
The player is the small computer that runs the board. For most menu boards it is an Android TV box tucked behind the screen: Android 8 or newer, 2 GB of RAM or more, wired ethernet if you can get it, and a box that switches itself back on after a power cut. That last point matters in a kitchen where the breaker trips now and then. A box that does the job typically costs somewhere between €40 and €120, and what to look for in an Android box goes through the details.
A TV that runs Android TV or Google TV can take the SignageStack app directly, with no box. Samsung (Tizen) and LG (webOS) TVs have no SignageStack app. Their built-in browser can open the web player, but it will not bring the board back by itself after a power cut or keep itself locked full-screen, so for a board nobody looks after, put a small Android box behind them. Fire TV sticks and the Raspberry Pi are not qualified platforms, and we do not promise them.
Menu board software
The software is where the day-to-day difference lies. Four questions are worth asking of any product:
- Do you type the menu as items with prices, or redesign an image every time something changes?
- When the menu is longer than the screen, does the type shrink, or does the board add pages?
- Can it switch menus by time of day, and does that switch happen on the screen or depend on the internet?
- Does it keep playing when the network drops?
The SignageStack Menu board app answers them this way: items typed in or imported from a CSV, each with an optional price, description, category and photo; eleven designs, landscape or portrait, that draw the same items, so a new look is one click; categories that become pages; no switch by the clock, but a menu change is two taps on your phone and reaches the screen in seconds; and a menu stored on the screen itself, so it plays without the network. It costs €11 per screen per month, with every design and every other app included.
How to structure a menu for a screen
A printed menu can hold everything because people hold it as long as they like. A board above a counter is read in a few seconds, from a distance, often over someone's shoulder.
Group by category, and give each category its own page. Coffee, Breakfast, Sandwiches, Cakes. The Menu board shows one category at a time, over as many pages as it needs, so a longer menu makes more pages instead of smaller type. If one category is much longer than the rest, split it: "Espresso drinks" and "Tea and filter" read better than one long "Drinks" page.
Write names the way people order. "Flat white", not "double ristretto with textured milk". Use the description line for what someone needs to decide: oat milk on request, vegan, spicy.
Leave each page up long enough to read. Stand at the back of the queue and read one page aloud at an unhurried pace. That is the minimum a page should stay on screen. Leave Seconds per page blank and the board splits the time the playlist gives it evenly between its pages, so more pages need a longer slot.
Layout, photo choices, light or dark boards and where prices sit have their own article: digital menu board design.
Dayparting: breakfast, lunch and evening menus
Dayparting means showing a different menu at different times of day. SignageStack does not switch menus by the clock on its own; you make the switch, and on a screen it is two taps, not a person with a step ladder. Make one board per menu and add both to the screen. At 11:00, whoever is on the counter opens the dashboard on their phone, switches the breakfast board off and the lunch board on, and the screen shows lunch within seconds. Nothing is deleted, so tomorrow morning it is the same two taps the other way. A brunch board for weekends works the same way: switched on for Saturday morning, off again on Monday. For a seasonal list such as winter drinks, put the last day in your own calendar and switch the board off then.
If both menus are valid all day, there is nothing to switch: let both boards run in the screen's loop, or side by side with the Zones app.
Set the screen's working hours as well. They are the part that does run by the clock: outside them the screen goes dark after closing instead of showing the menu to an empty room all night. The rule is held on the screen, not in the cloud, so it goes dark and comes back on time even if the internet is down.
Photos: when they help, and cut-outs
Photos earn their place when a dish is unfamiliar or visual: a poke bowl, a burger, the cake counter. A list of coffees gains little from ten photos of brown liquid. Several Menu board designs are built around photos; turn Show photos off and those designs fit more items on a page instead.
Two things make photos work:
- Shoot what you serve. A picture that does not match what arrives on the tray sets up a small disappointment at the counter. Shoot every dish in one session, with the same angle and the same light. Daylight from a window and a recent phone are usually enough.
- Use cut-outs where the design calls for them. Designs such as Carte and Spectrum stand dishes on the board without a frame. Upload PNG cut-outs with a transparent background; the board trims empty transparent borders automatically, so every dish comes out the same size. Many phones and photo apps can now remove a background in a tap.
Changing prices in seconds
Edit an item in the dashboard, publish, and every screen showing that board updates within seconds. No USB stick, no reprint, nobody on a ladder. The same goes for taking a sold-out dish off or adding today's special.
A menu that already lives in a spreadsheet comes into the Menu board as a CSV in one step. Be clear about what that is: an import, not a live link. The Menu board does not sync from Google Sheets. After the import, you edit the items in the dashboard. If your prices really must come live from a spreadsheet, the separate Google Sheets app shows a sheet as a plain table and picks up edits within about a minute, but it is a table, not a designed board.
The board does not read prices from your till either. It is a display, and the prices on it are the ones you enter.
If your menu exists only as a PDF from a designer, the PDF app shows it full-screen and turns the pages on its own. That is a reasonable way to start; the next price change is a good moment to move to the Menu board.
What happens when the internet goes down?
Nothing on the wall changes. The menu, its photos and the screen's working hours are stored on the screen, and the Menu board needs nothing from the network to play. Edits made while the screen is offline arrive when the connection returns. That includes the switch from breakfast to lunch: if the internet is down at 11:00, breakfast stays up until the connection is back. The screen still goes dark and comes back at its working hours.
What does stop is anything that needs the network at the moment it plays: a web page, a YouTube video, a live stream or a Canva design in the same playlist is skipped until the connection is back. One more reason to keep the menu itself in the Menu board rather than on a web page.
A power cut is different: the screen goes dark. What matters is what happens when the power returns. The SignageStack Android app starts at boot, so a box that powers itself on brings the board back without anyone touching it. Check the TV's own power-on setting too, or someone will be hunting for the remote at 7:00.
The rules that still apply on a screen
A screen does not change your labelling duties. Three examples:
- England. Businesses with 250 or more employees must show calories in kcal where people choose their food, menu boards included, together with the statement "adults need around 2000 kcal a day". The government guidance does not deal with boards whose pages rotate, so if you are in scope, ask your local authority how it sees one.
- United States. Restaurants that are part of a chain with 20 or more locations must show calories on menus and menu boards, under the FDA's menu labeling requirements.
- European Union. Allergen information is required for food sold loose, not only for packaged food, and national rules set how it may be given. Germany's rules, for example, allow a menu, a notice, or information given in person backed by a written record.
On the Menu board, the description line is the natural place for a kcal figure or allergen codes. Keep the full allergen list at the counter as well: a board that pages shows each page only part of the time.
Where to start
Start with the screen you already have. Open the web player in a browser on a laptop plugged into the TV, pair it with the six-character code it shows, and type ten items into the Menu board. That is enough to see how it reads from the back of the queue. Make a breakfast board and a lunch board, switch one off and the other on from your phone, and watch the screen follow. Once you know which design and which size work in your room, buy the Android box and, if your opening hours justify it, a commercial display.
The digital menu board page shows the designs rendered with a sample menu. The SignageStack trial runs for 21 days with every feature on one screen, and needs no card.
