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Create a digital beer menu with one click

Last updated March 02, 2023 · By Dylan Blake

Digital beer menus are attention-grabbing and easy for customers to read. 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 even create a digital beer menu? How can I actually get it onto a TV? And how can I avoid going through a whole updating rigmarole every time I kick a keg?

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 breeze—once 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.

🚀 I'm ready to make my digital beer menu now!

Create your digital beer menu in under 5 minutes.


Want to skip the read and just talk to a digital beer menu expert?

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.


Designs

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.

👇 Create your own digital beer menu in minutes!

🚀 I'm ready to make my digital beer menu now!

Create your digital beer menu in under 5 minutes.

Getting started/setup process

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!

WANT A DISCOUNT? Send an email to support@beermenus.com and mention you read blog post 91. If you become a BeerMenus TV Menus subscriber we’ll credit your account for the cost of your Fire TV Stick.

Equipment

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. We’ll 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 they’re not necessary. You can learn more about your Fire TV Stick options here.

Once your Fire TV Stick arrives, just plug it into your TV’s 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 you’ll be fully set up in under 10 minutes!

See step-by-step setup instructions.

How to update your TV menu

Once your menu is set up, keeping it up-to-date is extremely easy—just update your selection on your business’s BeerMenus.com page.

You can easily update your menu using any device—computer, phone, tablet, etc.—from anywhere (i.e. you don’t 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.

Posting specials & promoting events

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

Can I include other beverage types (not just beer)?

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.

Preview your menu in a digital beer menu template

It's super simple to preview your TV Menu. Just follow the steps below to preview your TV Menu without talking to a single person.

(But please keep in mind that we'd love to chat with you! 🍻)

1. Create a page for your business's BeerMenus account:

2. Add your beers on your update menu page:

digital beer menu
Just start typing the name of the beer you'd like to add. Select it from the dropdown and click "Add to menu."

3. Click the TV Menus tab at the top of your update menu page:

digital beer menu

4. Click the blue "+ New TV menu" button:

digital beer menu

5. As soon as you do, you'll see your basic TV Menu preview:

digital beer menu

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.

Customizing your TV Menu

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!

Custom header/footer

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.

digital beer menu header
To build the header or footer, just select the area you'd like to add content to, decide whether you'd like to add an image or text, then add it!

Menu settings

Themes

There are some pre-designed themes you can choose from along the left hand side of the page:

digital beer menu design themes
Our menu themes run the gamut from weathered paper to ultra-modern.

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

digital beer menu settings
Use the structure settings to build out the bones of your menu.

The Structure settings allow you to adjust or tweak things like:

  • How many menu items you want on each page
  • How many columns you'd like to use
  • Landscape or portrait layout
  • How you'd like to sort your beers (style, alphabetical order, etc.)

Content settings

digital beer menu settings
Decide what to show and what to hide from your menu.

Use the content settings to include/exclude content from your menu. For example you can:

  • Show/hide serving type (e.g. Draft, Bottle)
  • Show/hide producer location
  • Show/hide descriptions
  • Show/hide IBU
  • Choose which menu sections to include (maybe you only want your drafts on the TV Menu)

Customize settings

digital beer menu settings
The fun part! Add a header if you haven't yet, choose your fonts, your colors, and more.

Once you've built out the bones of your menu, it's time for the fun part—customizing. Use the settings here to:

  • Build a custom header/footer (you can also do that through the live preview)
  • Add a background image
  • Add a watermark
  • Choose your fonts
  • Choose your font color

🚀 I'm ready to make my digital beer menu now!

Create your digital beer menu in under 5 minutes.

Touchless QR code menus

In response to COVID-19, we also offer customizable touchless QR Menus.

These are safe for customers and your staff, and also provide you a ton of menu flexibility, since you no longer have to worry about fitting your menu items on a certain number of pages.

Simply print off your unique QR code from your BeerMenus page. There are 3 different designs to choose from. Here's one example:

QR Code Menu
QR Code Menu

Post the code 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:

QR code menu

But we can also customize it to your business:

QR code menu
QR code menu

Learn more about QR Menus or get started on your QR Menu now: