- How many items should a fast food board list?
- Four to six, and put the sides on the same screen only if they are part of the decision. A counter board is read in the four seconds between joining a queue and reaching the till, which is roughly six lines at a glance. Everything else belongs on a printed menu or a second slide in the loop. If you sell twenty burgers, the board's job is not to list them, it is to sell the three you want ordered and to price the rest honestly.
- Should prices include tax on the board?
- Show the price a customer pays at the till, whatever that includes where you trade. A board showing a pre tax number and a till showing another is the single fastest way to make a queue argue, and it is the complaint most often made about digital price displays. If you are obliged to show a tax breakdown, put it in small type under the price rather than making the customer do the arithmetic.
- How bright does a counter screen need to be?
- Bright enough to beat whatever light lands on it. Under warm indoor lighting a normal TV is fine; behind a window or under a shop front with daylight coming in sideways, a domestic panel washes out and the type goes grey. Look at the screen from where the queue stands at the brightest hour of the day, not from behind the counter at night. Dark backgrounds with light text survive glare better than the reverse.
- Can staff change it, or does it need a designer?
- Whoever is on shift changes it from a phone. That is the whole point of the board being a screen: the person who knows the fryer is down is the person who marks the loaded fries sold out. Design decisions like the colours and the fonts are set once by whoever owns the shop, and after that nobody needs to open a design tool to change a price.
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