Digital beer menus are attention-grabbing, easy for customers to read, and way easier to manage than the old fashioned chalkboard. This makes life easier for your bartenders and makes the entire ordering process more efficient, which drives a significant increase in beverage sales.
But questions abound: how do I create a digital beer menu? How can I get it onto a TV? And can I update it in real-time?
TV Menus from BeerMenus make it extremely easy.
You can either design your menu yourself or get the help of our own professional designers, who can create a custom menu design for you at no extra cost.
Setup is a breezeβonce you have your hardware (TV + $30 Amazon Fire Stick), setup takes less than 10 minutes.
After that, update your digital menu with just a few clicks from your phone or computer.
Read on to learn how to create a professional, customized digital beer menu.
Schedule a free TV Menu consultation. In less than 5 minutes we'll discuss how the TV Menu works and walk through the setup process.
You can completely customize the look and feel of your digital beer menu with textures, patterns, fonts, logos, and branding. Designs range from rustic to modern and can include logos, specials, social media call-outs, watermarks, events, and more. Basically, if you want to include it, you can.
Here are a few examples:
These are all landscape orientation, but you can absolutely do a portrait orientation as well.
Creating your TV Menu takes just a few minutes.
First, create a page for your business on BeerMenus:
After that, just add the beers you have to your page and order an Amazon Fire TV Stick (recommend the Lite, which only costs ~$20-$30). This the only hardware you need, (and you may already have one).
When it arrives, just go through the 5-minute setup, download the BeerMenus TV Menus app on Fire TV, and enter your TV Menu ID. Your menu will be up and running.
Interested in a discount? Send an email to support@beermenus.com and mention you read blog post 91. If you become a BeerMenus TV Menus subscriber weβll credit your account for the cost of your Fire TV Stick.
Your TV Menu will operate through the BeerMenus TV Menus app on Amazon Fire TV.
This means the only piece of equipment you need to run your TV Menu (aside from a TV) is an Amazon Fire TV Stick. We recommend the Lite, which costs just $20-$30. (Order it from Amazon here.)
Reminder: send us an email at support@beermenus.com and mention you read blog post 91. Weβll credit your account for the cost of your Fire TV Stick Lite if you become a BeerMenus customer.
There are other, more robust Fire TV Sticks available, but theyβre not necessary. You can learn more about your Fire TV Stick options here.
Once your Fire TV Stick arrives, just plug it into your TVβs HDMI port, follow the basic setup instructions (like connecting to wifi), download the BeerMenus TV Menus app, and enter your menu ID. Your menu will launch immediately and youβll be fully set up in under 10 minutes!
See step-by-step setup instructions.
Once your menu is set up, keeping it up-to-date is extremely easyβwhen a keg kicks head to your BeerMenus page, remove the beer thatβs gone, then just start typing the name of the next beer to replace it.
You can easily make realtime menu updates using any deviceβcomputer, phone, tablet, etc.βfrom anywhere (i.e. you donβt have to be at your bar to update the menu).
You can also give your staff menu updating access, which allows them to update the TV displays on their own phones without having to find you or a manager.
As soon as you update your menu on BeerMenus, the change will automatically reflect on your TV menu, meaning it takes just a few seconds to update your TV Menu.
You can use your TV Menu to post full screen images to promote upcoming events, special offerings, or anything else you'd like.
It's easy to reformat the graphics for any event posters you make for your TV Menu. You can upload this graphic from any device to instantly update on your TV.
Here's a "how-to" video on creating and using image specials on your TV Menu:
For more on how to create specials for your TV menu, check out this help doc.
Example special designs
Beer information is of course very important for craft beer lovers, so we make it easy to include on your digital menu board.
Whenever you add a beer to your menu, that beerβs location, ABV, description, and IBU all get autofilled into your menu.
Many folks elect not to include descriptions in order to save space.
Yes. You can add all your beverages (and also food, merch, gift cards, etc.). Read more about how to add those to your menu by checking out this help doc.
π‘ So you know, we handle our wines and spirits like we do our beers: with their own separate databases. So, just like the beers in our beer database, every wine and spirit includes description, ABV, and other info (e.g. where it's produced). That means you can pull all that information over to your wine and spirits menus just as easily as you do on your beer menu.
Follow the steps below to preview your TV Menu without talking to a single person.
1. Create a page for your business's BeerMenus account:
2. Add your beer list on your update menu page:
3. Click the TV Menus tab at the top of your update menu page:
4. Click the blue "+ New TV menu" button:
5. As soon as you do, you'll see your basic TV Menu preview:
6. Customize your digital menu with a custom header/footer and menu settings
This is the fun part! See the next section for an in-depth look at customizations.
Every day folks with no graphic design background use our TV Menu builder to create menus perfectly customized to their business. Check out the video below for a quick overview, or else read on!
By default your TV Menu will just have your business name in the header and nothing in the footer, but you can customize either to include your logo, happy hour specials, "follow us on social media," or whatever else you'd like.
Themes
There are a number of pre-designed themes you can choose from along the left hand side of the page:
You can just choose a theme and stick with it if you like, or you can use a theme as a starting point and continue customizing from there. Most people do the latter.
Structure settings
The Structure settings allow you to adjust or tweak things like:
Content settings
Use the content settings to include/exclude content from your menu. For example you can:
Customize settings
Once you've built out the bones of your menu, it's time for the fun partβcustomizing. Use the settings here to:
In addition to digital TV Menus, BeerMenus offers two other automated on-premises menu formats: Print and QR Code Menus.
Each menu update pushes to all your active menu formats in real time. If you use Print Menus, TV Menus, and QR Code Menus, then all your menus will update in real time with that single update.
When you update your menu on BeerMenus, your printable PDF menu will also automatically update. (Hereβs a full Print Menu overview.)
Like with TV Menus, your Print Menu template is extremely customizable and reliable. Once you have it designed, all productsβand product info, like ABV, location, and descriptionβjust get dropped right into place. Push print, and youβre ready to roll.
Regardless of whether you want to design your own menu, you'd like us to design one for you (no additional charge), or some combination of the two, there are a ton of things you can customize on your Print Menu. Here are a few:
If you want to design your menu yourself, just get started below, choose your theme, and get off to the races.
QR Code Menus provide you a ton of menu flexibility, since they free you from having to worry about fitting your menu items on a certain number of pages. They also save you on printing costs and headaches. (Here's a full QR Code Menu overview.)
QR Code Menus from BeerMenus are unique in the space because they:
To use it, simply print off your unique QR code from your BeerMenus page. There are 3 different designs to choose from. Here's one example:
Post the codes on your tables, bartop, in front of the urinal, etc. Your customers can simply open up the camera app on their phones and point it at the code to see your menu.
And the menu they're brought to is designed and built specifically for this purpose. It's unique, it's customizable, and you can include all your menus (including your food) in this one place, all of it accessible.
Here's the default theme we use:
But we can also customize it to your business:
Learn more about QR Menus or get started on your QR Menu now:
BeerMenus pricing is modular (i.e. it depends on what tools youβd like to use). Month-to-month options range from $49/month to $99/month and annual plans are $499/year to $599/year.
Rates for restaurant groups and other special situations (e.g. nonprofits) are available.
