Digital menu boards: change a price once and every screen follows
Swap the chalkboard and the laminated card for a screen that shows today's menu, today's prices and what has sold out. Update it from your phone between services. That same screen can carry a paid slot for the brewery or the local gym, and you keep up to 92% of every sale.
No credit card required • Cancel anytime • From £10/Screen/month
A printed menu is out of date the moment the kitchen changes its mind
Menus move more than any other information in a building. Suppliers change, prices rise, the fish does not arrive, the special sells out at half past one.
A pub prints its food menu on Monday morning. On Tuesday the beef goes up, so the £14.50 becomes £15.50 and somebody writes over it in biro. On Thursday the kitchen runs out of the lamb and a member of staff has to tell every table individually for the rest of the night. A care home prints the week's lunches on Sunday and pins them by the dining room door. On Wednesday the menu changes because the delivery was short, but the sheet on the door still says shepherd's pie, and a resident who has been looking forward to it since breakfast is told at the table that it is fish instead. A cafe writes the specials on a chalkboard each morning. It takes fifteen minutes, the handwriting is only legible from three feet away, and the board says nothing at all to the queue at the back of the room.
What a menu you cannot change quickly actually costs
You sell at last month's prices
When changing a price means a reprint, prices get changed late. A pub that reprints monthly is absorbing every supplier increase for up to four weeks across every cover it serves.
Staff repeat themselves all service
Every sold-out dish becomes a conversation at every table. That is time your floor staff are not spending taking orders, and the same disappointment delivered thirty times over.
Nobody can read it from the queue
A chalkboard works for the person standing in front of it. The people deciding what to order are in the queue behind them, and by the time they can read it they are already at the till.
Allergens are the risk nobody wants
A handwritten amendment on a printed menu is exactly where allergen information goes wrong. A menu that is edited in one place, and shows the same thing on every screen, removes the biro from the process.
One menu, edited once, on every screen in the building
A Menu in NowBoard is content, not a picture of a menu. Change a price or mark a dish sold out and every screen showing that menu updates within seconds, whether it is the board above the pass, the screen in the bar or the one by the dining room door.
Put a screen where people decide
Above the counter, facing the queue, or by the dining room entrance. Any TV with an HDMI port, driven by a NowBoard Player Pro, the free Player App on an Android TV stick, or a PC you already own.
Type the menu in once
Dishes, descriptions, prices, dietary marks. Start from a ready-made Menu Board and change the words. No design work, and nothing to lay out.
Change it from the pass
Sold out, price up, special on. Edit on a phone between services and every screen follows. No reprint, no chalk, no biro.
Ready-made menu Boards: full menu, weekly menu and today's specials
These are the actual Boards your screen can show in place of a printed card.
How different venues use NowBoard as their menu board
Pubs: one board for food, one for the bar
The food menu above the pass and the guest ales by the bar, on two screens showing different Boards. Mark a cask off and the bar screen updates without anyone touching the food menu.
Cafes: the specials the queue can actually read
Large type facing the queue, changed each morning from a phone in under a minute. The chalkboard took fifteen and could not be read past the second person in line.
Care homes: this week's lunches, by the dining room door
A weekly menu residents and families can read, updated the moment the kitchen changes it, so nobody is told at the table that today is different.
Hotels: dining, times and what is on tonight
Breakfast times, the restaurant menu and tonight's event on one screen in the lobby, so the front desk answers the question once instead of forty times.
Why NowBoard suits a kitchen that changes its mind
A menu is content, not a picture
Edit the dish once and every Board using it changes. You are not re-exporting an image and copying it to each screen.
Sold out is one tap
Mark an item gone and it shows as sold out rather than disappearing, so people stop asking for it.
Different screens, different menus
Food above the pass, drinks at the bar, breakfast in the lobby. One account, one login, each screen showing what belongs there.
Time of day does the work
Breakfast until eleven, lunch until three, the evening menu after five. Set it once with a Schedule and the screen changes on its own.
The screen can pay for itself
Sell a slot to the brewery, the taxi firm or the gym next door. You keep up to 92% of what you charge. How advertising works.
From £10 per Screen/month
Less than one reprint. The Free plan runs a Screen with three Boards so you can try it on the counter before you decide.
Common questions about digital menu boards
Can I show different menus at different times of day?
Yes. A Schedule changes which Board plays when, so breakfast gives way to lunch and then to the evening menu without anyone touching the screen.
How quickly does a price change reach the screen?
Within seconds of you saving it, on every screen showing that menu.
Can I mark something as sold out without deleting it?
Yes, and that is usually better: people can see the dish exists and has gone, rather than asking for something that has vanished from the board.
Do I need a special screen?
No. Any TV with an HDMI port. Portrait works too, which suits a narrow wall beside a counter.
What happens if the wifi drops?
The screen keeps showing the last menu it received. It catches up when the connection returns.
Stop reprinting the menu
Put one screen where people decide what to order, and change it from your phone between services.