How to show a café or restaurant menu on a TV cheaply

The cheapest way to show a café or restaurant menu on a TV is often the TV itself: export the menu as a photo and let the TV's photo mode loop it from a USB stick. It costs nothing beyond the stick, and it is also the least flexible option, because every price change means making and copying a new picture. A browser tab with a menu page sits in the middle, and dedicated signage software sits at the top for a chain with several screens.

Four ways, cheapest first

1. A photo on a USB stick. Most TVs can show pictures from USB, so this is a menu with no computer and no account. Check your TV's manual for the photo mode, then export the menu at the screen's proportions and put the stick in. When lunch ends, someone has to walk to the TV with a new file.
2. A printed board plus a TV. Print the menu once for the wall and keep the TV for specials. Nothing to maintain, and no way to mark an item sold out without reprinting.
3. Signage software. Yodeck, OptiSigns and DigitalSignage.com all handle menus and scheduling, with paid tiers from about $3 to $10 per screen per month (their own pricing pages, October 2026). Choose this when the menu changes often or when several screens must show the same thing.
4. A menu page in the TV's browser. You type the menu in a browser on your phone or laptop, open the link on the TV, and nobody installs an app. That is what Digital menu board does.

What a menu board in a browser looks like

Open Digital menu board, type the dishes and prices one per line, and the sign fits them to the screen. The heading, the colors and the font are yours. The editor needs no account, and the display link works on a TV, a tablet behind the counter or a spare monitor.

Two limits are worth knowing before you plan around it. OwnScreen has no connection to a till, a stock system or a POS, so marking an item sold out is a manual edit. And the text is fitted to the screen: a long description shrinks every other line on that sign, so keep the wording short.

Change the menu from the phone at the counter

Sign in, press Save on the menu and choose Go live. The saved menu gets its own link, which you open on the counter TV. From the dashboard on your phone you can replace the message while the lunch rush is running. A visible, connected live screen checks for changes every three seconds.

That is the difference between a photo on a USB stick and a live screen: the sold-out edit takes one person, one phone and a few seconds, and the TV is already showing the change before the next customer reaches the counter.

Schedule lunch and dinner

If the lunch menu and the dinner menu are different, save both, then give the live screen a schedule: which saved screen to show, on which days, and between which times. Choose the business's time zone and leave the TV on its live link. The screen switches on its own at the times you set.

Schedules need Pro, which is US$14.99 a month or US$149.90 a year for up to five live screens. Starter is US$4.99 a month for one live screen and covers phone edits without a schedule. Every plan starts with a 2-day free trial, so a week of lunch service tells you whether the schedule earns its price.

Today's menuSoup $5Toastie $7Coffee $3

Make your menu free

Make it readable from the queue

Stand where customers order and read the screen out loud. If you have to move closer, cut words rather than shrinking the type. A menu with six lines reads across a small café; a list of thirty does not, whatever the software. For a long list, split it into slides that take turns, and check the pace with a colleague who has not seen the list before.

Prices are part of the sign. Type them exactly as you charge them, and decide before you start who checks the screen when a price changes. A menu board is only as good as its last edit.