How to increase beverage sales in your restaurant

The short list

Put drinks where guests decide: on the board, next to the food

Guests usually decide on a drink while they read the food menu. If your drinks live on a separate card, a back page or a cooler door, they’re easy to miss. Put them on the board guests are already reading.

• ✓Same screen as the food. A short drinks section beside the mains and sides, with clear prices, not a list guests have to ask for.
• ✓Lead with the drinks you want to sell. House cocktails, local drafts, fresh lemonade or your best-margin drinks go at the top of the section.
• ✓Got a row of TVs? Give drinks their own screen, right next to the food. Just a Menu designs run across the whole row, so it reads like one big board.
• ✓Keep the long list on the QR menu. Bottles, cans and the full wine list fit on guests’ phones, so the board stays easy to read.

Just a Menu builds your boards from a photo of your menu, food and drinks together. Change a price once, and your TVs, your QR menu and your print menus all use it. How Just a Menu boards work

Combos and pairings: one dish, one drink, one price

A combo makes the drink part of the decision. Instead of asking guests to add a drink, you show the dish and the drink together, at one price.

Scene Magic in Just a Menu builds the slide for you. Choose a food-and-drink combo, pick a look like Game Day, Moody or Golden Hour, and it builds a finished slide with your real items and prices in about a minute.

Pairings to try

• ✓A burger and a pint: any burger with a 16 oz draft.
• ✓Wings and a pitcher: in the Game Day look, scheduled for game days only.
• ✓Tacos and an agua fresca, or tacos and a house margarita.
• ✓A lunch plate with a drink included, for the weekday lunch crowd.
• ✓Coffee and a pastry on the morning board.

Sample design

A combo slide: one dish, one drink, one big price.

Give the combo a short name, like “Pint & a Burger”, so staff can say it and guests can order it in a few words. Specials play in the loop with your menu, so a combo slide never covers the menu itself.

Put happy hour on a schedule

Happy hour only sells drinks if guests know it’s on. A slide with the deals and the hours tells the whole room, and a schedule makes sure it starts and ends on time, every day.

1. Make a happy hour slide with your deals and hours, like 3 to 6 PM, Monday to Friday. Scene Magic builds one from a promo like happy hour, or design your own in JAM Canvas.
2. In Digital Signage, find the slide (the app calls a slide a scene) and click Schedule.
3. For each day, choose All Day, OFF or Custom. With Custom, set a start and end time. Then click Save Schedule.

Your TVs switch to happy hour and back on their own. Nobody has to remember. Do the same for lunch, late night or weekend brunch drinks. Step by step: set the times

• ✓Add a food deal or two, like pretzels or fries, so the whole table has a reason to order.
• ✓Show the hours big, so guests know how long the deal lasts.
• ✓Check your local rules. Some states limit or ban happy hour drink deals.

Show the drink: photos on your boards and QR menu

A photo gives guests something to point at. A cold pint, a bright cocktail or a fresh lemonade is easier to choose when guests can see it.

• ✓One to four big photos per screen. A few large, well-lit photos of what you most want to sell beat a wall of thumbnails.
• ✓Use your own photos where you have them. Your glassware and garnish look like what guests will get.
• ✓Photograph the drinks that matter: house cocktails, specials and seasonal drinks.
• ✓Never put text over a busy photo. Keep the drink name and price on a plain background.

Illustration

The drinks list over the taps, with a photo of the cocktails beside it. The scene is staged; the board is a sample Just a Menu design.

In Just a Menu, use your own photos or pick from stock and food photo libraries, and remove a photo’s background in one tap. Your QR menu shows photos too, right on the menu guests are reading. On Square, Toast, Clover or Oracle? Item photos come across from your POS.

Run a rotating drink special, with no reprints

A drink special that changes gives regulars a reason to look up at the board and try something new. On paper, every change means a reprint. On a screen, it takes a few taps.

Drink special ideas

• ✓Drink of the week: one house cocktail at a set price.
• ✓Just tapped: the newest keg on its own slide.
• ✓Seasonal: a spiced cider in the fall, a frozen drink in summer.
• ✓A flight: four small pours at one price.
• ✓Zero-proof: a mocktail or a house lemonade for guests who aren’t drinking.
• ✓Weekends only: brunch drinks on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Run it with Just a Menu

1. Make the slide. Scene Magic builds one from a combo or a promo, with your real items and prices, or design your own in JAM Canvas.
2. Schedule it for the days you choose, like weekends only. It plays in the loop with your menu.
3. Put it on your QR menu too: there’s a spot for today’s special.
4. Post it: social templates fill in with your item, price and photo, sized for Instagram and Facebook. Download it and post it yourself.

When the special changes, make a new slide in about a minute. Nothing to print.

Keep rotating specials off paper. A printed menu has to be reprinted after every change, so print the regulars and add your QR code, and guests can check what’s on today. Print menus

Staff prompts: suggest a drink, name the special

Done right, suggesting a drink isn’t pushy. It’s good service. A specific suggestion usually works better than a yes-or-no question.

• ✓Name the special at every table, with its price. The board backs you up.
• ✓Offer a choice of two, not a yes-or-no question.
• ✓Suggest a pairing that fits what the guest ordered.
• ✓Taste the specials at line-up, so staff can describe them honestly.
• ✓Suggest once, then let it go. A guest who says no should hear nothing else about it.

Serve responsibly: never suggest another round to a guest who’s had enough, and follow your local alcohol service rules.

Keep the list honest: mark a kicked keg sold out right away

A drink that’s gone but still on the board means a guest picks it, hears no and has to start over. Fix it from your phone before the next order.

1. Open Menu Workspace and tap Sold Out on the drink. It comes off your TVs and your QR menu, or shows as sold out. You choose which.
2. Tapping a new keg or swapping a cocktail? Add the new drink with its sizes and price.
3. When a drink comes back, tap Available.

On Square, Toast, Oracle or Clover? 86 the drink in your POS, and it’s marked sold out automatically on your boards and QR menu. POS integrations

Tap lists change the most. For what to list per beer, layouts and text size, see the digital beer menu board guide.

Good to know: your drinks are menu items you list and change yourself. Just a Menu doesn’t connect to keg monitors or beer-list apps.

Price drinks to a target pour cost

Selling more drinks only helps if each one makes money. Pour cost is what a drink costs you, as a share of its menu price. Pick a target, then price every pour to hit it.

A worked example: a 750 ml bottle of liquor, poured 1.5 oz at a time.

Sample numbers. Round to a price that fits your menu, like 7.00 or 7.50, then check the pour cost again. Run your own numbers with the pour cost calculator.

Many bars aim for an overall pour cost of roughly 18 to 24%. Liquor and draft beer usually run lower; wine and bottled beer usually run higher. Your own targets depend on your drinks, your prices and your area.

Beer works the same way. A half-barrel keg holds 1,984 oz, or 124 pours of 16 oz on paper. Foam, spills and over-pours mean fewer in real life, so leave some room in the price.

Illustration

Pour size and price on every line, plus a flights line at the bottom. The taproom is staged; the board is a sample Just a Menu design.

In Just a Menu, each pour is a size with its own price, so a 12 oz and a 16 oz sit on one line. Change a price once in Menu Workspace, and your boards, your QR menu and your next print PDF all use it.

Questions

Next guide

Set up a digital beer menu board

What to list for each tap, layouts, text size, and kicked kegs off the board in one tap.

Read the guide →