Learn about TV Menus

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.

Design examples

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.

There are a few examples below, and you can check out a lot more TV Menu design examples here.

Getting started/setup process

Follow these simple steps to get your TV Menu up and running.

1. If you haven't already, create a page for your business on BeerMenus. 

2.  Add your beers [or other menu items] 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 that, you'll see your TV Menu preview and settings page:

6. Customize your digital menu with a custom header/footer and menu settings

This is the fun part—see the Customizing your TV Menu section for more!

7. Set up your Equipment and launch your menu in under 10 minutes. 

Read more about equipment in the next section. 

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.)

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 the items on 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.

For more on how to create specials for your TV menu, check out this help doc.

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.

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.

Menu settings

Themes

There are some 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:

• 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

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

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