Hospitality: menu boards and daily specials

No other screen is looked at as long and as attentively as the menu above the counter. Guests in the queue have nothing else to do: they read not for two seconds but for forty – and make a purchasing decision while they do.

That reverses the usual rules. A shop-window display has to get a single message across in two seconds; a menu board may be dense: prices, categories, side dishes, notices. What it must not do is change while somebody is reading. A board that flips every eight seconds forces the guest to wait for their page to come round again – that annoys people more than any ugly typeface.

Still, not every establishment needs a board. A restaurant with a fixed menu and a weekly special on a blackboard does excellently with chalk. The screen pays off where things change often or where many people wait: changing daily specials, seasonal promotions, several branches with the same menu, takeaway with a queue. In most businesses both end up existing – the board for the decision in the queue, the printed menu at the table for everything after that.

The most common ailment of menu boards is called too small and too much. As a working rule we reckon on a cap height – the height of the capital letters – of roughly one hundred and fiftieth of the viewing distance.

The price column sits on the right and flush underneath, with the same number of decimal places – nothing reads more restlessly than a column where the figures dance. Set descriptions smaller than the product name, but never below half its size. How type and contrast work at a distance is covered in the chapter on content.

A good board reads like a well-organised counter: it begins top left and ends bottom right. If the menu does not fit on one surface, take two or three screens side by side and divide them firmly: hot food on the left, drinks in the middle, desserts on the right. Fixed places beat any rotation.

Pictures sell, but they cost space and calm. Two or three per surface is enough, only for items where appearance decides – burgers, bowls, cakes. For drinks, text is enough. And they have to come from your own product: a purchased image that looks different from what goes over the counter is a disappointment waiting to happen.

Here lies the advantage paper does not have. The same surface shows coffee and croissants at seven, the lunch offer at eleven, cakes at three and the aperitif from five. No handling, no forgotten menu change, no argument at eleven about breakfast.

Set the switchover to the kitchen's processes, not to the full hour. If the menu changes at twelve exactly, half the queue is standing in front of an offer the kitchen is not serving yet. Put the change ten minutes earlier, and make the transition soft.

The second part is the word sold out. Guests forgive a sold-out dish easily if they see it on the menu, and badly if they hear it at the counter after four minutes. Give the staff a way to grey out an item with one action – a tablet at the till, a list, a tap. Greyed out and struck through is better than gone: the guest sees that the dish exists, just not any more today.

In open service – where food goes over the counter unpackaged – the Swiss ordinance on foodstuffs and utility articles and the ordinance on food information apply. For the menu above the counter that means three things.

Allergens: the information about ingredients subject to declaration has to reach the guest before purchase. Verbal information from staff is permitted – but then a written notice pointing to it has to be clearly visible. Anyone displaying allergens works with abbreviations after the product name and a legend at the foot of the surface.

Origin: for meat and fish it belongs in the product line or in a footer that stays permanently and does not rotate with the rest.

Price disclosure: what is shown is the price actually payable, including VAT. A price that only appears in one of three rotating views is not a clearly visible disclosure. Settle doubtful cases with the cantonal food inspectorate before the inspectorate comes to you.

The appeal is obvious: the items are already in the till system, with name, price and availability. But this is exactly where the errors arise that nobody understands later.

Set down on half a page who maintains which field. The failures are always the same: an item gets renamed in the till and becomes cryptic on the board; the interface quietly stops working after a till update. That is why every integration needs a rule for the case where no data arrives: then the last valid menu stays up.

As soon as the order is placed, the screen's job changes: it is no longer about selling but about calm in the room. A display listing order numbers in two columns – in preparation and ready – saves staff from calling out and guests from crowding at the hatch. The numbers have to be legible from every corner of the waiting area, so larger than anything on the menu.

An honestly stated waiting time works better than any apology. If your till system supplies an estimate, show it and round up. Somebody expecting fifteen minutes who gets their food after twelve is satisfied; the other way round, not.

For the drive-through, three things are added. The guest reads from the vehicle, often against the light: the display needs at least around 2500 candela per square metre, anti-glare protective glass and a sun shield. It stands outside, so it belongs in a housing with a suitable IP rating and with heating. And the menu has to be shorter than indoors: four to six items, large type, no descriptions.

Proximity to the kitchen is an imposition on electronics. Grease settles as a film on glass and housing, steam carries it right up to the ceiling, and above a counter with a salamander it gets hotter than any data sheet allows for. Check the permissible operating temperature before you fix the mounting position, and leave air behind the screen: a display that cannot shed its heat throttles back or switches off.

The critical light source is rarely the ceiling light but the window opposite. Before installation, stand where the guest stands and look at the planned surface – in the morning and in the late afternoon. More on this in the chapter on location.