The ice-cream shop is small, "mom and pop" shop; the owner is the manager.
Your inference is off, they are not crazy and most definitely not lazy; in fact the opposite which is why they are pursuing this endeavor.

This is a good idea; they actually do this already. They want to take it to the next level... hence a Slashdot question. 8)

Would love to know if anyone has follow up on this.

That is a good question...
It doesn't have to be trigger by motion; that is just a likely scenario when the menu board is updated. It could also upload a new photo every so many minutes/hours ... the trick would be to pick an interval that is frequent enough to be up-to-date but not so frequent that they much through their allocated bandwidth for the month from the frequent uploads.

Thank you; had not heard of this brand before.
The TV-IP562WI may do the trick.

An interesting approach but it has some issues for this situation:
1) The potential web camera is on a LAN with an IP that isn't web visible
2) The idea is not to have to dedicate any other computers to get the image up
3) The shop does not have a static IP address

All of these are addressable, but if the camera can push the image out, rather than someone reach in to pull it from the camera, it seems to be a much easier task.
(Or it would be if the Hikvision FTP was working as claimed in the manual.)

The end goal is to have a web-page that displays the image; FTP is just a way of getting the image to the page.
The Foscam they tried did have FTP build in but image quality wasn't up to snuff.

Thank you for mentioning the Zoneminder wiki/forums; that seems to be a good source of information from people having utilized the equipment they talk about.

Know Nutter: Thanks for the link.
Anon: Thanks for the notice on the resolution... there may be a DLink solution; the one KN mentioned is a bit low (640x480) but I see there are some at 720p which may do the trick if they go in this direction.

Thank you, this is definitely an option.

Thank you. May not work as the existing camera mounts are from the ceiling; not easily accessible... still worth checking out; perhaps there is a hack.

This is fantastic; hadn't come across Mobotix or Axis.
Will check them out. Thank you.

Immerman: If you know of an App, please pass on the word. The key is that it needs to be triggered if there is motion (when the board is updated).

koan: I thought of a iPhone or Android that could do the trick but would need to find a piece of software that can activate with motion, and FTP the image up to a site. Webcams are essentially build for this, with both video and images. The problem is, the older ones have horrible resolution. The newer webcams look great (720p, 1080p, good sensors, etc...) but are all working on a model where you have to pay to access the feed from their "private cloud". So I hear you say "webcam" is the problem... great I agree... but what do you offer as a solution?

You're right, it's not too difficult to take a photo and upload it everyday.
What's easier than that? Having to take no photo or upload at all because it's all happening automatically.

...another task is the exact situation they want to avoid and see technology as a solution.

For those comments about defacing; it's not a small menu off to the side, or in front of the shop, it's a 6 foot tall menu board in the main area (it's an ice-cream shop) which is already updated daily (or a few times a day if they run out of a flavor and cross over to their next batch, etc...) Once a camera is in place, showing the menu online is something they just don't have to worry about any more - updating the menu board updates its on the web.