01
Design for a 7-second read
A customer at the counter scans, they don't read. Cap each board at 7–9 items, group by course, and let one hero item own the visual weight. Anything longer pushes people to order the same safe dish they always order.
Guide
Digital menu board design that raises average spend.
Digital menu boards don't sell more because they're digital. They sell more when the layout, type scale and price hierarchy are designed around how a customer actually decides. Here's how we build them.
- Written for hospitality operators
- Mallorca-tested
- No jargon
Fundamentals
Six rules that decide whether a board earns its screen.
02
Size type for the furthest customer
Rule of thumb: 2.5cm of cap height for every 3m of viewing distance. On a 55" screen viewed from 4m that means item names near 40px and descriptions no smaller than 26px. If your staff squint from the pass, the queue can't read it either.
03
Drop the currency symbol and the dot leaders
Prices set plainly (14 instead of €14.00) reduce the pain-of-paying response. Dotted lines that run from item to price train the eye to shop on price — align prices right under the description instead.
04
Anchor high, then sell the middle
Place your premium item first. It sets the reference point that makes the item you actually want to sell look reasonable. Most venues see the margin lift in the second and third item, not the anchor.
05
Photograph less, but properly
One excellent photograph per board outperforms six average ones. Real photography of your plates, shot in your light — stock imagery reads as a chain and quietly lowers what people expect to pay.
06
Build dayparting in from day one
Breakfast, lunch, aperitivo and dinner boards should switch on a schedule, not by a member of staff remembering. This is the single feature that separates a digital board from an expensive printed one.
Hardware
What to buy before you design anything.
Get these four decisions wrong and no amount of design fixes the board.
Screens
Commercial-grade panels rated for 16+ hours. Consumer TVs dim and fail fast in a hot Mallorca kitchen or a sunlit terrace.
Orientation
Portrait for narrow counters and drink lists, landscape for full food menus. Decide before you design — rotating a layout ruins hierarchy.
Players
A small media player or built-in system-on-chip running a hosted web page. Your menu should be a URL you control, not a file someone re-uploads.
Brightness
700+ nits for terraces and window-facing walls. Under 400 nits anything near Mediterranean daylight is unreadable by 11am.
Rollout
How we install a board that pays for itself.
- 1
Audit the menu
Rank items by margin and popularity before touching design. The board should promote the profitable, popular quadrant.
- 2
Set the layout system
One grid, one type scale, defined slots for specials — so any future edit stays on brand.
- 3
Shoot the hero items
Half a day of photography covering the 4–6 dishes doing the heavy lifting.
- 4
Wire the schedule
Dayparting, sold-out states and seasonal swaps handled from one dashboard.
- 5
Measure the shift
Compare average spend per cover four weeks before and after. That's the only number that matters.
FAQ
Digital menu boards, answered.
Next step
Want boards that lift spend per table?
Send a photo of your current menu and we'll tell you what we'd change before you spend anything.