The True Cost of Digital Menu Boards

Pricing · Published August 29, 2026

The number a signage vendor puts on the front of a proposal is the screen. The bill is the screen, the player behind it, the mount, the electrician, the design work that makes the board readable from the back of the queue, and a per-screen software fee that keeps arriving for as long as the board is on the wall. This guide costs all of it, line by line, with a worked three-screen example. Our own rate sits alongside every figure, because we hold it at 35 to 40 percent under the published market range and we would rather show you the arithmetic than assert it.

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The six things you are actually buying

A digital menu board is not one purchase. It is six, and vendors differ in which of them they include in the headline number, which is the main reason two quotes for the same restaurant can be thousands of dollars apart without either being dishonest.

• The display. A commercial panel rated for the hours a restaurant runs, in portrait or landscape. This is the line most people think is the whole cost.
• The media player. A small computer that drives the screen. A television's built-in apps are not a substitute: they cannot be scheduled, updated remotely, or recovered when they hang.
• The mount and the cabling. Cheap on a stud wall at eye height, expensive above a hot line or on a ceiling drop.
• The installation. Screens above a serving counter usually mean a new power drop, a network run, and in a commercial kitchen, a licensed electrician.
• The menu design. The single most underestimated line. A menu that reads on a laptop is not a menu that reads from six metres back through a queue.
• The software. Per screen, per month, forever. Over a normal five-year hardware life this is frequently the largest number on the page.

What each line costs, and what it costs with us

The market column is the range the digital signage vendors and integrators publish for the same line item, converted to Canadian dollars and rounded. It is an observed market range rather than a quote from any one supplier. The right-hand column is our ceiling rate for the identical scope.

Market figures are observed published ranges, not quotes. Our column is a ceiling, not an estimate: it is what we will put in writing for that scope.

A worked example: three screens over a counter

Ranges are hard to act on, so here is the configuration most Ottawa cafes, takeaways and counter-service kitchens actually buy: three indoor screens above the till, no drive-thru, a menu that changes with the seasons and a handful of price moves a year. Every figure below is the midpoint of the corresponding range above, so the example and the table cannot disagree with each other.

The gap is $2,580 in the first year and $3,828 over three. It is not a discount and it is not an introductory rate, which is the important part: it is what the same work costs when nobody is reselling somebody else's subscription back to you.

Years two and three assume the same three screens plus six menu changes a year. Hardware replacement is not included in either column: it falls outside a three-year window on commercial panels.

The costs that are not in the headline number

These are the lines that turn a $1,500 quote into a $4,000 invoice. Ask about every one of them before you sign anything, including with us.

• Electrical work. A screen above a serving counter rarely has power where it needs it. In a commercial kitchen that is a licensed electrician, and it is the single most common overrun on these projects.
• Menu changes after launch. Ask what a price change costs and whether you can make it yourself. A per-change fee on a menu that moves with produce prices is a subscription with extra steps.
• The per-screen software fee, multiplied by years. Three screens at $25 a month is $2,700 over three years, which is more than the screens cost. Vendors quote it monthly for a reason.
• Content production. Photography of your own food, if the boards use images. Stock photography of a burger that is not your burger is worse than no photograph.
• Ownership of the hardware. Some signage contracts lease you the screens. Read whether you own the panel at the end, or whether you are renting a television at 30 percent a year.
• Power. Modest per screen, but it runs every hour you are open, and it is a real operating line rather than a rounding error over five years.

Why our number can be 35 to 40 percent lower

There is no clever trick here and no corner cut on the install. The difference is structural, and it is worth understanding because it also tells you what to negotiate on with anyone else.

• We do not resell a signage vendor's subscription. The per-screen software fee a reseller charges you carries their margin on top of the platform's own price; we charge the platform cost and make our money on the build.
• Hardware is passed through at what we pay for it. Displays, players and mounts are the line most integrators mark up hardest, because a restaurant has no easy way to price-check a 'commercial-grade' panel.
• The menu design is done once, properly, by the person who builds the screens. Nobody is briefing a studio and billing you for the round trip.
• No downtown office, no account management layer, no commissioned sales team between you and the work.

The practical consequence for you: ask any vendor to break out the hardware from the labour from the software. A quote that will not separate them is usually a quote where the hardware is carrying the margin.

When a digital menu board is the wrong purchase

If you run one board, your prices move once a year, and the menu is readable from the door, a well-printed sign is the correct decision and digital will not pay for itself. We will tell you that rather than sell you three screens, because a restaurant that regrets the purchase is not a restaurant that recommends us.

Digital earns its keep in four specific situations: when prices move often enough that reprinting is a real cost; when you day-part, so breakfast, lunch and dinner need different boards; when items sell out mid-service and a wrong board costs you an argument at the till; and when the queue is long enough that people are deciding before they reach the counter, which is where a rotating board genuinely lifts the average order.

QR and web menus, which cost a fraction of this

The cheapest menu upgrade available to a restaurant is not on the wall. It is the menu a phone can read: a real web page on your own domain, not a PDF, that Google can index and quote in a local result, and that a QR code on the table points at.

It costs a fraction of a screen install, it is the version most of your customers see before they ever walk in, and it is the one most restaurants have neglected. If your budget only stretches to one of the two this year, do this one first. When you do add boards later, the boards should read from the same content, so the wall and the phone can never disagree about a price.

How to get a number for your own room

Screen counts and sightlines are decided by the room, not by a form, so we come and look at it. Tell us the restaurant, we come in between services, and you get a written scope with the hardware costed out line by line. There is no charge for the visit.

If you already have a quote from a signage company, bring it. We match the scope item for item and come back under the number in writing, and if we cannot beat it honestly we will say so and tell you to take their offer.

Related reading

• Digital menu boards and QR menus, our service
• Websites, bookings and menus for Ottawa restaurants
• How much does a website cost in Ottawa?
• How our beat-any-quote promise works

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