Digital menu boards. You keep the software money. We design the screen — layout, type, colour, motion, and every price in a file you own outright. No subscription, no platform, no per-screen fee.
A board is three things: a screen, a cheap player, and the content. The first two you can buy anywhere. The third is the only part that makes anyone order more.
Watch the cold brew
change price mid-sequence.
That single moment is the entire argument for a screen over a printed panel. A printed board costs you a reprint and a drive. A screen costs you thirty seconds and nothing.
Product · sample café board — items and prices assemble, then one price updates
We build digital menu boards as finished screen files: a layout that reads from the back of the line, type sized for the room, colour that survives a bright window, and motion that draws the eye without making prices jitter. That covers digital restaurant menu boards, café and bar boards, barber and salon service lists, and food truck screens — anything where the offer changes faster than a printed panel should. And a board doesn't have to be a menu: the screens that earn hardest sell occasions — the theme night, the Sunday buffet, the sister business — cycling with the menu on one loop.
Good digital menu boards design is mostly restraint. Three rules we hold to: a hierarchy the customer can read in under four seconds; prices in a fixed column, always in the same place — and easy to change, because re-pricing weekly is half the reason a screen beats print; and exactly one thing on the board that looks special. Two specials is no specials.
Make the board yourself, in minutes.
A café board and a drive-thru board
are not the same board.
Reading distance, dwell time and light all change — and each one changes the design, not just the words.
Counter boards are read standing still from six to ten feet, so they can carry a full menu and reward detail. Drive-thru is read from a car by someone deciding at speed: fewer items, far bigger type, and hard contrast because the screen competes with Arizona sun. Window-facing boards are read from outside through glass, which flips the brightness problem entirely — a screen that looks great indoors can be invisible from the sidewalk at noon. And a food truck board has to survive being outside all day and still read at four feet with a queue in front of it.
How much do digital
menu boards cost?
Split the question into its three parts and it answers itself. Two of the three you buy once, from anyone.
The screen
Any modern TV starts the job. Commercial displays cost more and earn it in two ways: brightness for daylight and window positions, and a duty cycle built for running open-to-close rather than three hours an evening. Buy it wherever you like.
The player
The cheapest option is free: most TVs will loop a video file straight from a USB stick, forever, with no computer involved. Above that sits a small dedicated media player for scheduling and multiple screens. Also buy it wherever you like.
The content
A one-time design cost for a file you own outright — no monthly fee, no platform lock, and it keeps working if we vanish. This is the part we sell, and the only part that changes whether customers order more.
Yes, you can build
a DIY digital menu board.
This page isn't going to pretend otherwise. Here is exactly how, including the part where you don't need us.
- Get a screen and mount it. Landscape for a counter, portrait if it faces a window. Mount it high enough to clear heads and angle it down slightly if it's above eye level.
- Start from a correctly sized file. Download our free 1920 × 1080 menu board template — it has the safe zones and the header/items/prices structure already drawn. Build in RGB, not CMYK.
- Export a still image or a looping video. The Board Studio above renders both from your typed menu — a looping MP4 sized for a TV's USB player and a still JPEG — or export from your own design tool. A still image on a USB stick is a perfectly respectable menu board. An MP4 loop is the same thing with motion.
- Plug it in. Most TVs will auto-play media from USB. If yours won't, a small media player costs less than one reprint of a printed board.
Where DIY stops being cheaper: when you have more than one screen and they have to match; when the menu dayparts from breakfast to lunch on a schedule; when you want motion that isn't distracting; or when you've spent three evenings on it and it still looks like a spreadsheet. That's the point where you buy the design and still skip the subscription.
One boundary, stated plainly: we don't sell digital menu board software, players, CMS platforms or screen-network management. If you're shopping for a system to run two hundred lobby screens with user permissions and remote scheduling, you want a software company — and there are good ones. We make what plays on the screens, and it runs on whatever you already own. The Board Studio on this page isn't a platform either — it runs entirely in your browser, uploads nothing, needs no account, and the file it hands you keeps working if this site vanishes.
Menu boards, answered.
Three separate costs. The screen: any modern TV can start the job, while commercial displays cost more and are built for all-day brightness and longer duty cycles. The player: anything from a free USB video loop to a small dedicated media player. The content: a one-time design cost for a file you own outright, with no subscription. Our design rates publish on this page once the rate card is finalised — we would rather show a gap than an invented number.
Yes. Mount a screen, start from a correctly sized 1920 × 1080 template, export a PNG or a looping MP4, and play it from a USB stick — most televisions do this natively with no computer. DIY stops being the cheaper option when you need multiple screens to match, scheduled dayparting between breakfast and lunch, or motion that reads as designed rather than distracting.
1920 × 1080 pixels for a standard landscape screen, 1080 × 1920 for a screen turned portrait, in RGB. Keep critical content inside a 10% title-safe margin because televisions vary in how much of the edge they display and a wall mount can hide a little more. Our free template draws all of this.
Neither. We design the content that plays on screens you buy yourself, and it runs on whatever player you choose. Signage software and screen-network management are a separate industry with their own vendors; we deliberately stay out of it and pass the saving to you as a file you own.
Yes, and it usually needs adapting rather than copying. A printed menu is read at arm's length in the hand; a board is read from six to ten feet in a queue. The same type sizes and line lengths that work on paper are often unreadable on a wall. We keep the brand — typeface, colour, tone — and re-set the hierarchy for the distance.
Menu board templates
1920 × 1080 and 1080 × 1920, safe zones drawn, no email required.
Custom signs
The permanent signage that goes around the screens.
Large format printing
When a printed panel is still the right answer.
Upload artwork
Send your menu, your logo, and we'll come back with a proof.