Menu TV Portrait or Landscape, and Where to Hang It

You need enough screens to hold the draft list at 2 lines under what passes your across-the-room test, plus 1 for each spot that orders a different section, such as a growler counter. Hang each where the people ordering see it close to straight on and clear of glare, and turn it landscape unless your longest line fits the narrower portrait width. Below are the room walk, the count, the portrait math and a tape test to run before anything goes on the wall.

How do you walk the room before you hang a screen?

Walk the room with a sheet on 2 visits: once in daylight at the hour the sun comes through the front, and once at night under service lighting, with a few staff standing in for a crowd. An empty room hides the thing that blocks a sightline on a busy night, which is people standing at the bar.

Bring your current list, painter's tape, a tape measure and this sheet:

ROOM WALK SHEET
Stop              Guest decides   Distance   Reads a screen?   Blocked by / glare   Fix
Order point
Front door
Growler counter
Far seats, ends

The "Guest decides" column sets the count. Write down what a guest at that spot needs on a screen: the full draft list, only the fills, only cocktails, or nothing, because they've already ordered. The distance column feeds the type size, which the across-the-room type size test settles.

Where should the screen hang for the people ordering?

Hang the main screen where guests at the order point can read the full draft list over the tap towers and the bartenders without tipping their heads back. In a counter-service taproom, check from the back of the line on a busy night. At a bar, check from the stools and from the space behind them where people stand to order.

Seen from the order point, the screen's bottom edge has to clear the tap towers and a bartender standing at them. Check it with someone working the taps, since an empty well hides the problem.

Then sit on the nearest stool. A screen hung high enough to clear the towers from the back of the room can leave the front stools reading with their heads tipped back. If no single height works for both the stool and the back of the line, the screen belongs on another wall.

In a sports bar, keep the menu screen out of the row of game screens, so nobody has to hunt for the beer list among them.

What blocks the view from the front door?

The crowd and glare block the view from the door. A guest who can read the list from the door walks up ready to order, but on a busy night people stand between the door and the bar, and a screen at head height disappears behind them.

Glare comes from a window or glass door facing the screen, and the reflection moves with the sun. Pendant lights do the same at night. Check from the door and from the order point at the bright hour, because bigger type won't read through a reflection.

OSHA's computer workstation guide on monitors tells office workers to place a monitor perpendicular to a window, and a screen behind a bar picks up window reflections the same way. The Federal Highway Administration's sign manual says a road sign whose face throws a mirror reflection that hurts legibility should be turned slightly away from the road.

In a bar, that means a wall at right angles to the window, a shade for the bright hour, a screen turned a few degrees, or a pendant moved off the screen's line.

Does the growler counter need its own screen?

The growler counter needs its own screen when guests there can't read the main screens close to straight on. Fill guests stand close, and the counter often sits off to one side of the taps. All they need is what you'll fill and what it costs, which the guide to growler and crowler fill prices works out.

If the counter reads the main screens well, a To Go section at the bottom of the draft list does the job. If the counter faces a side wall, or sees the main screens at a steep slant, give it a screen that shows only the To Go section.

Why does the list fail from the ends of a long bar?

The list fails from the ends because a guest off to the side sees every letter squeezed narrow. A screen flat on the back wall is read straight on from the middle of the bar and at a slant from the ends. At a slant, letters keep their height and lose width in proportion to the cosine of the angle, so a 6 and an 8 start to look alike.

In a made-up example, a screen hangs centered on the back wall, the stools sit 8 feet out from that wall, and the end stool is 14 feet along the bar from the point under the screen. The middle stool reads the screen straight on from 8 feet.

The end stool reads it from about 16 feet (the square root of 8 x 8 + 14 x 14) at about 60 degrees, so each letter shows half its width at 2 times the distance.

Turning the screen helps one end and hurts the other. Angle it 20 degrees toward the right end, and the right end stool goes from 60 to 40 degrees, or 77% of the width, while the left end stool goes from 60 to 80 degrees, or 17%.

Treat 45 degrees as the line to test hardest, since past it letters lose more than 30% of their width. On a long bar, hang a second screen toward the far end, or put one on the end wall facing down the bar. If the across-the-room test fails only on one side of a screen, angle is the reason, and moving or adding a screen fixes it faster than bigger type.

How many menu screens do you need?

You need enough screens to carry the draft list at 2 lines under what passes the across-the-room test, plus 1 for every spot that orders from a different part of the list. With the sheet filled in, count in 3 steps:

1. Divide the draft list's total lines (taps, section headers and on deck lines) by the lines that pass the test on 1 screen less 2 spare, and round up. The spare lines hold the next collab or special without a new layout.
2. Check that every spot ordering from the full list can read those screens. If one can't, try another wall before adding a screen. A zone no wall covers gets its own.
3. Give 1 screen to each job spot, meaning a spot that needs a different section, like fills at the growler counter or cocktails on the backbar.

Here is a made-up 20 tap beer bar with a growler counter on a side wall. Its full list has 20 taps, 6 section headers and 3 on deck lines, and 20 lines pass the test from the far ordering spot, 20 feet from the backbar.

Screens A and B hang side by side over the backbar, with the list split across them. Screen C hangs by the growler counter and shows only the To Go section. Where the break between A and B falls, and what tops each screen, is covered in what each menu screen should carry.

Should a menu TV be portrait or landscape?

Turn a menu TV whichever way your longest line fits at the size your far ordering spot needs. A tap line runs sideways with tap number, brewery, beer, style, ABV and prices, so width usually decides it. With placeholder names, a long one looks like this:

9 | Brewery | Beer name | Fruited Sour (Raspberry) | 5.5% | 16 oz $9 / 10 oz $6

A 16:9 screen turned to portrait holds about 1.8 times as many lines, and each line gets 56% of the landscape width. Here is that math for the example bar's 55 inch screens, with these inputs:

• Picture size: on a 16:9 screen the picture is about 0.87 times the diagonal wide and 0.49 times it tall, so 47.9 by 27.0 inches.
• Margins: 2 inches on each side and a 3 inch band at the top for the logo.
• Starting letter size: capitals 1 inch tall for every 30 feet to the far ordering spot, the ratio section 2A.13 of the Federal Highway Administration's sign manual gives for road signs.
• Longest line: printed with 1 inch capitals, the backbar's longest line measures 60 inches and the To Go list's measures 54 inches. Line length scales with letter size.

Portrait would give the backbar screen 33 lines at the starting size against 18 in landscape, but the longest line fits only if the capitals drop to 0.38 inch. That is 57% of the starting size and just above the smallest letter a 20/20 eye can make out from 20 feet.

EyeWiki, the American Academy of Ophthalmology's eye encyclopedia, explains that an eye chart letter is sized to cover 5 minutes of arc at its test distance, which works out to 240 x 0.00145 = 0.35 inch at 20 feet. So the backbar goes landscape.

The growler counter goes portrait. Fill guests stand 8 feet away, so the longest To Go line fits the narrow width even with capitals at 0.43 inch, 1.6 times the starting size.

Use this rule of thumb, then test it in your own room:

• Landscape when lines carry every field and 2 prices, guests read from across the room, and the wall is wider than it is tall, as over a backbar or above a tap wall.
• Portrait when lines are short (fills, cocktails, a single section), guests stand close, or the space is tall and narrow: a pillar, the strip between 2 windows, beside a cooler door, or the end wall of a narrow taproom.

If the longest line fits neither way at a size that passes, shorten the line itself by trimming a style, dropping a descriptor or showing fewer pours. The guide to ABV, style and pour size on a draft menu covers wording that keeps those fields short.

How do you test the orientation before you hang anything?

Test the orientation with tape and paper from every stop on the sheet. Tape the screen's outline on the wall both ways, which for a 55 inch screen is 47.9 by 27.0 inches. Print your longest line and a stretch of the list at the size that passed the across-the-room test, and tape them inside each outline.

Then look from every stop at the bright hour and again at night. Go with the orientation where the longest line fits without shrinking and every stop can read it, and write the result on the sheet next to each stop.

How should screens that share one list hang?

Screens that share one split list should match in size and orientation and hang side by side at the same height, so a guest reading from screen A to screen B doesn't have to adjust. Put them in reading order, left to right, in the same order how to write a tap list sets for a single board.

A job screen, like the one at the growler counter, turns whichever way its own list fits and can be a different size. Its guests never read it alongside the backbar screens.

How does TapDisplay run several screens?

A TapDisplay board runs every screen at a location from the same menu, and screens are unlimited. TapDisplay pricing is $49 a month or $499 a year per location, or $39 a month or $399 a year each at 3 to 9 locations, so screen C in the example adds nothing to the bill.

• One list can be split across several screens, evenly by default, which is how screens A and B share the draft list.
• Each screen can show its own sections instead, which is how screen C shows only To Go.
• Screen C runs in portrait: set it to Portrait in TapDisplay, and rotate the TV itself in its own settings.
• When a screen's share runs long, the type shrinks to fit and then the list turns pages. Plan each share under its passing line count so neither happens in normal service.
• A kicked beer stays on the board struck through, labeled KICKED on keg menus or SOLD OUT on other menus. The word comes from your business type, and the line keeps its row, so the break between A and B doesn't move mid-shift.
• You change the board from a phone, a tablet or a computer. Each connected screen checks for changes every 30 seconds, so an edit shows on all 3 screens within about 30 seconds.

When should you walk the room again?

Walk the room again whenever the room or the list changes shape: you add taps, open a patio, move the order point, add a screen or rearrange the furniture. Keep the sheet with its distances and line counts, so the next walk starts from measured numbers. For the nights the bar is 3 deep, the rush board layout covers what the same screens carry.

The bottom line

Count screens from the list: total lines over what passes the across-the-room test less 2, rounded up, plus 1 for each spot that orders a different section. Hang each where the people ordering see it within about 45 degrees of straight on and clear of glare. Go landscape unless your longest line fits in portrait, which leaves 56% of the width, at the size your far ordering spot needs.