Digital menu board ideas for cafes and restaurants

A good menu board helps people decide before they reach the till, and it sells the dishes you most want to sell. These ideas cover both, plus the allergen rules every venue has to get right.

Start with the layout

Group dishes by category and lead each one with a bestseller or the dish you most want to sell. Keep the prices in a straight column so they're easy to scan. If one screen gets crowded, use two: each Screenli screen has its own content, so food can go on one and drinks on the next.

Make the type big enough

Stand at the back of your usual queue and read the board. If you can't read the prices comfortably from there, the type is too small. Strong contrast helps too: light text on a dark background, or dark on light, rather than colour on colour. Fewer items in bigger type usually beat a full menu nobody can read.

Give specials their own space

Keep specials apart from the main menu, on a slide of their own or in a fixed box on the menu artwork, so you can change them without redesigning everything. Mixing specials into the main list makes the whole board look temporary.

Allergens are the venue's responsibility

The law is clear on the basics. If any of the 14 regulated allergens are used as ingredients, you must tell customers. You can do that verbally, but only with a sign telling customers to ask.

The Food Standards Agency's best-practice guidance, published in 2025 for England, Northern Ireland and Wales, goes further. It says allergen information should be easy to find in writing without customers having to ask, for example on the main menu, paper or digital, with a conversation to back it up. It's guidance rather than law, but a menu board is an obvious place to follow it. In Scotland, check Food Standards Scotland's guidance.

A screen makes one part of this easier. When a recipe changes, you update the allergen panel in the artwork and upload it again instead of reprinting menus. Checking that the information is right stays with you.

Give events a slot

Quiz nights and live music can go into the rotation as a slide or a short video. Videos play without sound, so make sure yours work with the sound off.

Put your reviews on screen

If your Google reviews are good, they can run on the board too. Screenli pulls them in every week. Each screen can show every rating, four stars and up, or five stars only.

Changing the menu

When the menu changes, upload the new version from the dashboard and the screen picks it up within 15 minutes. If you'd rather not design it yourself, we can make the artwork for you.