Digital Menu Boards and Dynamic Pricing: A Practical Guide for Restaurants and Cafes

For a restaurant, cafe, or takeaway, the menu board is the hardest-working sign in the building. Every customer reads it, usually at the exact moment of decision. Going digital is not really about looking modern; it is about making that decision moment work harder for you.

Why digital beats print at the counter

Printed menu panels have a hidden cost: friction. Changing a price means reprinting, so prices lag costs. Removing a sold-out item means tape or a marker, so it usually does not happen and staff absorb the complaints. A digital board removes that friction:

• Price updates take effect everywhere instantly, which matters when ingredient costs move, as they often do for imported goods in Mauritius.
• Sold-out items disappear or grey out the moment the kitchen flags them, protecting the customer experience and the queue speed.
• Breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus switch themselves at the right time without a staff member touching anything.
• Photography can rotate, and a good dish photo at the point of decision sells that dish.

The payback case usually rests on those operational savings plus a modest lift in average order value, not on anything exotic.

Layout: design for a queue, not a browser

People read menu boards while standing in line, often at a distance, often quickly. Structure accordingly. Put categories in the order people decide: mains before sides, food before drinks. Anchor each category with one highlighted item, your margin hero, using a photo or a subtle frame. Keep item counts honest; a board crammed with forty items in small type slows the queue and pushes people to default choices. Reserve one clearly defined zone for promotions so regulars know where to look for what is new, and keep the rest of the layout stable. Familiarity is a feature: regulars order faster from a board they already know how to read.

Check legibility at the real distance from the back of your typical queue, in your real lighting, at midday. If the fish curry price is not readable from there, the type is too small.

Dayparting: the easiest win

Dayparting, showing different menus at different times, is the first automation worth setting up. Breakfast retires at 11:00 without fail. The lunch express menu appears when office workers arrive and disappears when they leave. Afternoon screens can push snacks, pastries, and cold drinks, then hand over to the dinner menu. Each transition is a small merchandising decision made once and executed perfectly every day thereafter. Add weather logic if your platform allows it: iced drinks and salads on hot afternoons, soups and hot drinks when the rain sets in.

Dynamic pricing without the backlash

Dynamic pricing on menus has a bad reputation because of surge-pricing stories, and customers punish anything that feels like exploitation. But there are forms of it that customers readily accept, because they map to value they can see:

• Happy hour and off-peak discounts, cheaper coffee from 14:00 to 16:00 to fill quiet hours.
• Lunch specials priced below the evening menu for the same kitchen output.
• End-of-day reductions on fresh items that would otherwise be wasted, which reads as generous rather than greedy.
• Bundle pricing that appears at the moments bundles make sense.

The rule of thumb: price changes framed as discounts from a stable base are accepted; visible mark-ups at busy moments breed resentment and social media complaints. Keep base prices stable and honest, move value around with offers, and change things on a rhythm customers can learn. Always make sure the price at the till matches the price on the board at the moment of ordering; a mismatch destroys trust faster than any discount can rebuild it.

Getting started

Begin with one screen at the main decision point, your existing menu translated into a clean template, and dayparting switched on. Run it for a month, fix the legibility and layout issues you discover, then add sold-out integration with the till and one off-peak offer. Measure average order value and queue speed before and after. Menu boards reward iteration: each small improvement compounds, because every single customer reads this screen.