Menu board design tips
Six plain rules for a board people can read fast.
Guide
Bakery menu board: daily items, photos that sell, and a clock.
A bakery sells what it baked today. Here is a board plan for items that change every morning.
Daily changing items: the bakery problem
A bakery menu changes every morning. Monday is blueberry muffins, Tuesday is apple turnovers, and Saturday is the long-line croissant day. Whatever you bake today is what you sell today. A fixed menu does not fit that, and a printed menu is out of date by 10 a.m.
So split the board in two. Keep a “Always here” block for the items you bake every day, like bread, plain croissants and coffee. Add a “Today” block for the three or four things that change. Only the Today block gets edited each morning. For example: “Today: Blueberry muffin $3.75, Cinnamon roll $4.25, Lemon loaf slice $3.50.” The rest of the board stays the same for weeks.
Photos that sell
People buy baked goods with their eyes. A close, bright photo of a golden roll does more than a long description. Use one photo per item for your top three items, and make each photo large, at least a third of the board height. Skip the tiny photos for every item. Too many small pictures look like clutter.
Tips for photos you take yourself: shoot by a window with daylight, not under a kitchen light. Put the pastry on a plain plate or a plain board. Get close so the food fills the frame. Take the picture from slightly above, the way a customer sees it on the counter. Use your own real food, because customers feel tricked if the picture looks better than what they get.
This is how we work at our ice cream shop. Our boards use real photos of real scoops and sundaes, with big prices beside them.
Want your bakery photos on a board like ours? We set up your first screen with you. Try it free for 14 days, no card.
Sold-out items: Coming soon
A bakery sells out. The last cinnamon roll goes at 11:15, and people keep asking for it. A board that still shows the roll sends people into a no. A feature that hides an item when your register says it is gone would help. It is Coming soon, tied to our Clover sync, and it is not live today.
Until then, here is what works. Keep the Today block short, so one item is quick to remove. When something sells out, text us or use the contact form, and we remove it from the board. You can also design a spare “Sold out” sticker that your team puts on the counter. Do not leave a gone item on screen all afternoon. It costs you the next sale, because a customer who wanted the roll may leave instead of picking something else.
Schedule: morning vs afternoon
A bakery has two shifts of customers. Mornings are coffee, breakfast pastries and bread. Afternoons are cookies, cakes by the slice and a pick-me-up drink. One board can show both, with a schedule that swaps the hero block by the clock.
Here is a plain plan. From open until 11 a.m., the big block says “Breakfast,” with muffins, croissants and coffee. From 11 a.m. to close, the big block says “Afternoon treats,” with cookies, slices and iced drinks. The small “Always here” block stays on both. Our player already runs by exact times, so the screen can turn on at open, turn black at close, and the TV stays plugged in with nobody touching a remote. A time-of-day swap like this is something we set up with you. We have not run a time-of-day swap in a bakery yet. At our shop we use hours to turn the screens on and off and swap holiday boards, and the same clock can do this job.
What we run, and what is live
All 5 of our TVs run Wow Menu Boards every day at Sweet Aloha Ice Cream in Davie, Florida. We are not a bakery, and we will say so. Our owner has run food counters for years, and a daily-changing menu is the same puzzle.
Live today: full-HD motion video, exact on and off schedules, play when the internet drops, self-updates, and setup and changes by our team. Coming soon: a dashboard to edit it yourself, and the sold-out link to your register. Our Basic plan is $12 per screen, per month, and Standard ($19) and Pro ($29) open when Clover sync ships. To plan the board, read our six plain design rules, see how updating a board works, or check our features.
Keep reading
How to update a digital menu board
Keep prices right without the stress.
Menu boards: printed, chalk or digital?
Four kinds of board, and three questions that pick one.
How to turn a TV into a menu board
Five steps, with examples from our shop.
Run your shop's menu like we run ours.
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