For breweries & taprooms
A split-flap board behind a bar is not signage. It is the only staff member who never forgets to mention the flight, never gets too busy to say "want a four-pack for the road," and never stops telling people what is happening in the tanks out back.
This is what the taproom pack puts on the wall, why each board is there, and the numbers behind it. Everything below is running right now — you can watch it before you read it.
The room
A brewery asks a board to do three things at once, and most digital menu boards only do the first.
The pack keeps all three by building its boards into two piles and weaving them: a menu spine and a story ring. After every couple of story boards the rotation flips back to the menu, so nobody who looks up mid-mural has to wait out a brand film to find out what a pint costs.
The evidence
Every board in the menu spine exists because something measurable moves when a taproom does it. Sources at the bottom of this page.
A guest who tries four does not stop at four — they find the one they actually want and order a pint of it. Staff can only suggest it when they are not slammed. The wall suggests it every ninety seconds, all night, with four cartoon pours and a number.
The flightMystery-shop work across taprooms found tabs run about 27% higher when the question gets asked. A board cannot close that sale, so it does not pretend to — it shows the growler, crowler and refill ladder with prices, and ends on ASK AT THE BAR. Your staff still close it; the board makes the question obvious and the answer easy.
Take one homeFrom the coolerMoving the priciest item to the top of a list lifts average check without changing a single price. So every tap has a top of the list switch: tick it and that pour is pinned to row one. The barrel-aged 11 sits above the pils at 6, and the pils stops looking like the safe choice and starts looking like a bargain.
On tapCornell's menu-pricing work found guests spend about 8% more when the $ is not there — the symbol is what makes a number feel like money leaving. Prices are bare numerals, right-aligned in their own column so 6 and 11 end on the same flap. Prefer the symbol? Type it; the board renders either.
On tapKitchenMerchLimited runs move when the countdown is public. Last call draws a keg with an inch left in it and lists what is nearly gone. It is yours to type on purpose: a board that invents a keg count is worse than no board, because the first guest told "we ran out an hour ago" stops believing the rest of the wall.
Last callThe part nobody else has
Type a brew date and a tap date. From then on the board reads your own wall clock, works out which vessel that batch is standing in today, draws it, and counts down to tap day. Nobody updates it. Week two looks different from week one because your brewery is different in week two.
A regular who watched the fresh-hop go from kettle to fermenter over three weeks has a reason to come back the day it lands — and the board gave them the date without anyone typing it twice.
No photographs and no video. Every pixel below is a coloured flap that flips into place with the rest of the board — the folk art a split-flap can actually do, which is why it belongs on one. Three colours were added to the wheel to make beer look like beer: amber, copper and cream.
The fine print that matters
Sources
Try it on your own wall
Open the taproom reel on the TV behind your bar — a smart TV's browser or a $30 stick is plenty (the screens guide walks through it). Let it run through a shift. If nobody asks "hey, what's that?", we owe you nothing. If they do, book fifteen minutes and we'll build it for your brewery — your beers, your batches, your name.
The reel airs a fictional house, Northview Brewing Co, with sample menu and prices. Every board in it says so.