Digital menu boards are an essential way to communicate about the food you serve and why customers should choose your business. That being the case, easy-to-read and enticing menu boards are a MUST for any restaurant operator. With many digital menu templates available, you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create an effective one.
You can start by downloading the template we created with Google Slides. Additionally, step-by-step instructions on creating your own digital menu board are at the bottom of this article.
1. General Restaurant Digital Menu Template
This design from DSMenu is an excellent fit for restaurants of all types. Multiple colors draw your customers’ attention to different parts of the menu. For example, spaces for images allow you to include some mouthwatering food photos without creating image overload. The left panel includes your restaurant’s hours of operation, web address, and social media handles. You can also highlight special offers or promote specials here.
As you will see, most of these templates come from menu board design company DSMenu. You can search its templates by category (such as restaurant and food types or holidays/events). Small restaurants will love that DSMenu offers a free Basic subscription that gives users access to dozens of digital menu board templates.
2. Digital Menu Template for Coffee Shops
This template from DSMenu is an excellent example of a clean, black-and-white styled template with creative ways to advertise menu items. The varying fonts, room for descriptors, and large space for all coffee products make it an alluring design that will captivate your customers.
3. Sandwich Shop Digital Menu Template
According to color psychology, orange and yellow make people hungrier. This board is the perfect example of utilizing these colors for that reason. The clear and professionally done photos of the menu items also make it a great example of what great photos of your food can do for customer perception.
4. Fast Food Digital Menu Template
This menu board is by NoviSign, a higher-priced signage brand offering services at custom-quoted rates. But this menu design offers some great ideas for non-NoviSign users too. It follows the classic fast-food model of highlighting combo orders with dynamic images. Listing each combo with a number speeds orders and reduces confusion for your cashiers. Showing the prices in a large font lets customers know exactly what to expect. And you can feature non-combo items in the footer menu that runs along the bottom of the screen.
5. Pizzeria Digital Menu Template
Because pizzas are so customizable, pizzerias tend to have a lot of information to display. That is why we love this board. The varied pizza photos, a section for gourmet slices, a list of the available toppings, and even pricing on sizes makes this an excellent example of a well-designed pizzeria menu template.
6. Digital Menu Template for Cafes & Bistros
Cafes and bistros tend to have wider-ranging menus than quick-service spots. They are also more likely to have liquor licenses, so they’ll want to display alcoholic beverage options. This streamlined menu design includes featured cocktails, starters, salads, main courses, and desserts. The illustrations that replace traditional menu photos allow you to give an impression of your food without committing to a specific plating or group of ingredients. This can be especially useful if your menu features farmers market ingredients that can change daily.
7. Build-a-Burger Digital Menu Template
This handy digital menu from Must Have Menus walks customers through its order process step by step. We like how the bubbles showcase the options in each step. So, by the time your customers reach your cashiers, they’ll be ready to place their orders in an organized way. The bubble and arrow menu flow is a great way to display complex information in a small space.
8. Diner Digital Menu Board
Like bistros and cafes, diners tend to have extensive menus with lots of different fare. This template includes a section highlighting signature dishes and popular items and has categories for items from the griddle, omelets, specials, lighter fare, and combos. The subtle colors and classic typeface are easy to read and present a homey, comforting look.
9. Digital Menu Board for Restaurants With Large Menus
If your menu is large and contains several item categories, this is the template for you. This digital menu board template includes sections for breakfast, entrees, sandwiches, share plates, beverages, beer, and desserts. And even with all those sections, it still finds room for a few spotlight sections that showcase signature items and remind customers about a promotional hot sauce. Like the bistro template, this menu template also relies on food illustrations, rather than menu photos. Here, the illustrations save space and allow for on-the-fly menu changes if you need to replace a dish’s garnishes or side items.
10. Plant-based Restaurant Digital Board Menu
Remember how we mentioned color psychology above? We said that orange and yellow tend to make people hungry. Well, green makes people think of plants and health. So, it makes sense that a plant-based restaurant like a salad bar would use a lot of green. We also like how images of popular salad ingredients like lettuce, broccoli, peas, and tomatoes frame this template. The subtle lines separating the individual items allow you to include detailed menu descriptions without making the menu look cluttered. We also like the promotional box on the bottom right corner, where you can spotlight specials or build-your-own options.
11. Digital Menu Template for Bakeries
This rustic menu style pairs perfectly with the themes of bread and delicious baked goods. Sections to highlight different types of baked goods, popular items, and instructions on large order quantities quickly show customers all their options. This is a great example of a bakery menu done right.
12. Donut Shop Digital Menu Board
We love this image-driven menu template for donut shops. You can easily attach images for premium signature donuts to drive higher ticket orders. The text-only right-hand column lists classic donuts that donut lovers expect to find, from glazed to buttermilk. The range of eye-popping colors draws customers’ attention to various parts of the menu, and you can include your half-dozen or dozen donut pricing in the spotlight section in the bottom right corner. There is something to be said for a menu that simply shows your great food.
13. Digital Menu Template for Build-a-Bowl or Noodle Shops
Build-your-own ordering is an increasingly popular restaurant category—for good reason. Customers love to customize their meals. This board clearly explains the steps in this customization process. It then simply lines the choices for each step to the right of each one. This clear and concise menu shows customers what to order and how and gives them a solid feeling of controlling their favorite menu builds.
14. Taproom & Draft House Digital Menu Template
Taprooms and draft houses tend to feature many beers that may change seasonally or even weekly. With the number of small-batch craft beer producers growing every year—even competing with macro-brewers now—draft houses want to show beer lovers that they have the latest brews on tap. This template from BeerMenus organizes a lot of information in a small space. Each beer listing shows the beer style, alcohol volume, serving size, and price. There is also room to include your taproom’s social media handles, and you can direct customers to more information about the individual beers on the BeerMenus app.
15. Template for Holiday Buffet/Event
Buffets, especially during the holidays, often have a ton of options to choose from. A themed board like this is great for an event where a lot of food is served for customers. The clear listing of items available is easy to read. There is the pricing on the left-hand side for clarity on the cost. And the themed buffet for Thanksgiving shows how a simple and concise menu board can be made for a holiday or an event.
16. Juice Bar Template
Juice bars are a great option for customers focusing on health and wellness or those who want a refreshing drink. The keys to a great juice bar menu are interesting names, clear product descriptions, and different prices per size. This template offers all of the above, plus images of oranges and apples that really make you crave one of the juices on sale.
17. Sushi Digital Menu Template
Sushi Restaurants are a favorite for many. It is important to have a menu layout that shares any specials or deals on rolls while also explaining individual rolls. This menu shares a great visual of sushi while being very clear on the pricing. A clear and concise layout is key when you have a menu with multiple pricing options for so many items.
18. Dessert Digital Menu Template
Having a quality dessert menu is great, but if you cannot promote what you have, you’re leaving money on the table. Dessert is often a secondary option for diners, and this menu has some great visuals to entice them into splurging on that end-of-meal treat. Room for some delicious photos, detailed descriptors, and overall pricing makes this dessert template one that should easily make diners fill their sweet-tooth cravings.
19. Kids Menu Digital Template
If you are a restaurant serving families with children, you will want a menu of items for them to choose from. A colorful, bright menu like this attracts the attention of younger customers and allows them to easily view and choose their options. A popularly reported statistic is that strong menu photos can increase sales by 30%. Making it easy for kids to understand and choose menu items is key, and this menu template shows how to do just that.
20. Happy Hour Digital Menu Template
Happy hour menus are often limited in their size since the offerings are typically a way to wring profit out of any lingering ingredients you have on hand. That said, a fun and well-designed menu can make your Happy Hour offerings look more generous. This menu is a great example of showcasing the happy hour as an incredible event, while communicating the limited menu available during this time.
Creating Your Own Restaurant Digital Menu Board
If you don’t want to subscribe to a digital menu board service, you can design your own digital menu template. Free to low-cost design apps like Canva include all the tools you need to create high-quality static images that you can download to a thumb drive. You can also create digital menu boards using presentation apps like PowerPoint and Google Slides. If DIY isn’t your bag, you might consider hiring a freelance designer through a site like Fiverr or Upwork to handle the design work for you.
We like Google Slides for do-it-yourselfers because these internet-based slides can display on a computer, mobile device, or television equipped with Chromecast or AirPlay. Several TVs from manufacturers like Sony and Vizio include built-in Chromecast; just check the product details before purchasing. If your menu offerings, pricing, or availability change during the day, you can update your Google Slides online in real time, and the changes will quickly reflect on your screens.
If you have a Gmail account, all you need to do is sign into your email account. If you are not a Gmail subscriber, you’ll need to create a Google account to access Google Slides.
Start with a blank slide. Use the design toolbar at the top of the screen to adjust the background color and add shapes, lines, and text boxes. Google Slides includes several options for shapes and colors to create a rough design. Add text boxes or tables to list individual items once you have a section for each menu category. We found that borderless tables are best for listing menu items; they keep your margins tidy.
If you have images of your menu items, you can include them as well. If you need a jumping-off point to create your design, you can tailor the Google Slide template we created. You can adjust every aspect of this design, from the font to the background colors, to make it fit your restaurant. You can also use the handy in-app Google search function to find free clipart if you need it.
Click on the File menu in the top left corner of the Google Slides menu bar. Select the option to “Publish to the Web.”
A pop-up box will prompt you to choose whether to start the slideshow as soon as the player loads and restart the slideshow after the last slide. If you have more than one slide in the set, you can also set the duration between slides, from one second to one minute. This is handy if you have included a promotional screen to showcase daily specials, catering menus, or upcoming events.
On your Smart TV remote control, navigate to the television’s web browser. Type in the link to your Google Slides file. The slide—or slides—should appear on your screen. Depending on your screen size and layout, you may need to adjust the image size. You can do this in Google Slides by navigating to the “Page setup” option under the File menu.
The default page setup in Google Slides is 16:9, which will fit most television screens. But if your display is different, you can also choose a standard 4:3 format, widescreen 16:10, or set a custom size.
Alternatively, you can connect a laptop to your Smart TV using an HDMI cable or use your TV’s screen mirroring function to display the screen from another Wi-Fi-connected device on the TV screen. For screen mirroring, follow the instructions in your Smart TV user’s manual.
For a low-tech option, you can download your slides to a thumb drive and plug the thumb drive into your Smart TV. Just navigate to the File menu and choose the “Download” option. Google includes options to download your slides as a PDF, JPEG, and PNG file, among other file types.
Last Bite
A digital menu can be the selling point for your restaurant’s offerings that make a difference in your overall business and earnings. The ability to influence diner choices through visuals and menu layout is what makes a digital menu template so powerful for any food business. You can also design a menu board using design or presentation apps like Canva or Google Slides. Use these templates to dictate what kind of menu you want for your business and what kind of experience you offer to your guests!
For more setting up digital menu screens in your restaurant, check out our guide to setting up and using digital menu boards.
