Digital menu boards and commercial signage for Houston venues, built to sell rather than to display a photograph of your printed menu.
Most digital menu boards are a printed menu that somebody exported as an image and put on a screen. It looks tidier than paper and it does almost nothing paper could not. The same items sit there all day, including the breakfast ones at four in the afternoon and the thing that sold out at noon. Prices are whatever they were the last time a designer sent a file. So the venue has spent real money to arrive at a static sign that is harder to update than the laminated one it replaced, and staff have quietly stopped asking for changes.
The point of a board being digital is that it can change without anyone touching it. Breakfast comes down at eleven on a schedule. An item that ran out gets pulled from a phone in thirty seconds. A high-margin dish moves to the top panel during the hours it sells best. On a commercial display the board can also share the screen with live programming, so the same panel carries your promotion beside the game. All of that comes from the content source behind the glass rather than from the glass, which is the part nobody shops for.
From downtown and the Galleria to Montrose, the Heights, and the western suburbs, we design and install digital menu boards, commercial signage, and outdoor displays.
Heat is the single most expensive variable in how long anything lasts, so enclosed cabinets get ventilation and equipment spaces get cooling.
Humid air reaches anything not properly conditioned, so outdoor gear gets sealed and drained and equipment spaces stay conditioned.
In buildings that have taken water, equipment sits raised rather than at floor level in a back-of-house room.
Storms bring surges and brief outages, so the equipment behind your screens gets real surge protection and conditioning.
How we work
No display gets specified from a floor plan. What the wall is, where people queue, how much light lands on it, and what the content has to do decide the answer.
We do not quote a display until we have walked the wall, because four things there decide the specification and none appear on a drawing. What the wall is made of and what backing exists behind it, which determines what can safely hang. Sightlines, meaning where people genuinely stand while they decide, which for a menu board is the queue rather than the counter. The light in that spot at the brightest hour. Safety matters too, particularly anywhere the public passes underneath.
You see the design before you commit to equipment, including a Good, Better, and Best option per location and the exact dimensions of every content region, so whoever produces your artwork is building for the real canvas rather than sending files that get cropped. One team handles the install, calibration, staff training, and documentation, and coordinates with your general contractor, electrician, and IT department. Training matters more here than on most systems, since a board nobody can update becomes a static sign within a month.
Then the questions that separate a working board from an expensive sign. How many dayparts does the menu really have. What gets pulled when it sells out, and who pulls it. Which items you want promoted and at what hours. Whether pricing changes seasonally or by location. Those answers decide the content structure, and the content structure decides how many panels you need and how they are laid out, which is the reverse of how most of these projects start.
What we build
Digital signage is a display, a source, a network path, and a content plan. Here is what we design, program, and install.
Boards get sized off real reading distance from where the queue forms, mounted at a height a standing guest reads without stepping back, and structured so individual items and prices can be changed rather than the whole panel being one flat image. Dayparts run on a schedule so breakfast disappears at eleven without anyone remembering. Sold-out items come off from a phone. Where you run several locations, one change reaches all of them at once instead of somebody driving between sites with a laptop.
The source is what makes any of this possible and the part nobody shops for: a commercial content-management and scheduling engine, reachable from a phone or a laptop wherever you are, that schedules by daypart, pushes to one site or every site, and lets you see what each screen is showing. Without it you own displays rather than signage. With it, a manager who notices something is wrong can fix it from the floor, which is the difference between a system people use and one they abandon.
A commercial panel gives you pixel-by-pixel control, so a board can share a display with live programming through a custom layout rather than needing separate screens. A large portrait panel can carry three panes, with the middle one commonly holding whatever you are promoting. In a Houston venue that means the game and a drink special on the same glass, or menu content beside a broadcast, on hardware you were already planning to install.
The technical part
Three technical realities decide whether signage keeps working here: what the panel is rated for, where the equipment behind it sits, and what this climate does to both.
Panels carry a rated runtime describing the daily duty they were engineered for: roughly two to three hours a day for consumer sets, sixteen, eighteen, or continuous for commercial tiers. A venue open from breakfast to close is asking for the upper tiers, and matching them is most of what determines lifespan. Keep two numbers separate on warranties. Panel warranty is typically three years commercial against one year consumer, and consumer terms generally do not cover business use at all. System lifecycle is a different figure, closer to seven years.
Gulf humidity reaches anything not properly conditioned, so outdoor installations get sealed and drained rather than coated and hoped over, and indoor equipment spaces get treated as conditioned space rather than storage. Storm season brings surges and brief outages, so the equipment behind your screens gets real surge protection and conditioning. Commercial displays also accept wired control over RS-232 or IP, so screens come up on the right source at open and shut down at close, where a consumer set depends on an infrared emitter that eventually fails and strands the panel.
The panel is rarely the first thing to fail. The player and the equipment driving it usually are, because they end up in a sealed cabinet or a back room nobody conditions. Heat is the single most expensive variable in how long a system lasts, so enclosed millwork gets genuine ventilation rather than a closed door and equipment spaces get cooling and stay at or below 75 degrees. In Houston there is a second constraint: in buildings that have taken water, equipment sits raised rather than at floor level in a back-of-house room.
Almost always the structure rather than the hardware. If your board is one flat image exported from a design file, then changing a price means going back to whoever made the file, waiting, and loading a new image, which is enough friction that after a few weeks nobody bothers. You end up with a static sign that is harder to update than the printed menu it replaced. A board built properly is structured, so individual items, prices, and panels are separately editable, dayparts run on a schedule, and pulling a sold-out item takes seconds from a phone. That structure lives in the content source behind the glass rather than in the display, which is why the source is the part worth buying carefully. It is also why we spend real time on training and leave documentation on site: a board nobody on staff can change reverts to a photograph of a menu within a month.
Yes, and that is most of the reason to make it digital. Dayparts are scheduled, so breakfast content comes down at eleven and the evening menu appears without anyone remembering to switch it, including on the days your manager is dealing with something else. Individual items can be scheduled too, which is how a high-margin dish gets the top panel during the hours it sells best. Sold-out items come off immediately from a phone rather than waiting for someone to be at a computer. If you run more than one location, all of that can happen once and reach every site, or be targeted to a single one where the menu differs. None of it requires anybody to be on premises, which is the practical difference between signage and a screen with a picture on it.
On a commercial display, yes, and it is one of the highest-return things most venues do not realize is possible. Pixel-by-pixel control means a panel can be divided into regions rather than showing one full-frame source, so a custom layout can carry live programming in one area and your content in another. A large portrait display can hold three panes, with the middle one commonly used for a promotion. So the same glass shows the broadcast people came in for and a drink special beside it, which is exactly where an impulse order comes from. What it needs is a commercial panel with a source capable of driving the layout, plus content built to the documented dimensions of each region, which we hand over rather than leaving your designer to guess.
Somewhere conditioned, raised, and reachable, and it is worth deciding before anything is ordered. The panel on the wall usually outlives the equipment driving it, because the player gets tucked into a sealed cabinet or a back room nobody conditions. Heat is the single most expensive variable in how long a system lasts, so enclosed millwork needs genuine ventilation rather than a closed door and shared equipment spaces need cooling, kept at or below 75 degrees. Gulf humidity reaches anything treated as storage rather than as conditioned space. Then in Houston specifically, in a building that has taken water before, equipment belongs raised rather than at floor level. Those choices cost very little at design time and a great deal to correct after a second failure.
What We Do Here
Every system is designed, installed, and supported by our own team in Houston — never subcontracted.
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The way you can do different layouts on different TVs, so the marketing team can do their own in-house advertisements — that was really a big thing. Just for them to be able to upload their photos on their own and choose what dates to do it on is really helpful.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
The way you can do different layouts on different TVs, so the marketing team can do their own in-house advertisements — that was really a big thing. Just for them to be able to upload their photos on their own and choose what dates to do it on is really helpful.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
We don’t sell you what we have. We design what you need. That line is the operating principle I’ve built Crunchy Tech around for the last 20 years. And it’s the single sentence that separates us - and the small handful of firms like us - from the other 97% of the commercial AV industry.
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There’s a pattern I’ve watched play out for 20 years in hospitality AV, and it always ends the same way...
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Walk with me for a second. Pick any sports bar on your street. Go in. Sit at the bar. Look around. And tell me what you see.
Read article arrow_forwardTell us about the venue: how many boards or screens you have or want, how many dayparts your menu really has, who updates content today and how long it takes, whether you run more than one location, whether any screens face daylight, and where the equipment currently lives. We will walk the walls before quoting anything, then come back with Good, Better, and Best per location plus the content dimensions your designer will need.
