Menu board best practices for UK restaurants

A good menu board does three things: it helps customers choose quickly, it sells the items you want to sell, and it surfaces allergen information clearly.

Layout first

Group items by category. Lead each category with the bestseller or the highest-margin item. Keep the type large and the contrast high; if you cannot read it from the back of the queue, it is not big enough.

Allergens are the venue's responsibility

The 14 declared allergens covered by UK guidance need to be visible to a customer at the queue, not buried in a folder. Allergen accuracy sits with the venue; a digital menu board makes it cheap to keep allergens consistent across the chain when an ingredient changes, but it does not generate the accuracy for you.

Specials sit alongside, not inside, the main menu

Keep specials in their own panel that you can swap out at the start of service. Mixing specials into the main menu makes the whole board feel transient and undermines the core list.

Events earn a slot

Quiz nights, live music, private dining: any of it can sit in the playlist as a custom slide or short video. The front-window screen is the cheapest piece of event marketing you own.

A note on automatic scheduling

Screenli rotates content within a playlist. The platform does not change playlists for you automatically; you push the new playlist when service changes. For most restaurants this is the right model: the menu changes when the kitchen changes, not on a clock.