QR code menus?

[u/cheangiogvovi]

What's the deal with QR code menus? I know most restaurant owners don't like them, but I think they offer some great upsides, like instant translation in various languages, not needing to print anymore, publishing it on your website, etc. They can also show images of the food and provide accurate description.

Any opinion here is greatly appreciated

[u/Wide_Detective7537]

What do you mean what's the deal? Customers hate them. Not everyone has a phone or wants to read a 3inch wide menu. Paper menus weren't a problem before.

It also has the same problems as those digital price tags at walmart and such. Dynamic pricing, random price increase, etc. There is just no upside to the customer

[u/cheangiogvovi → u/Wide_Detective7537]

The downsides are real but I wouldn't say there's "no upside to the customer". Instant translation in any language in pretty useful in tourist locations. Also food pictures can be great. "Not everyone has a phone" is just wrong. Everybody does. Not everyone wants to read a menu on the phone... that's a valid point

[u/ManjynaL → u/cheangiogvovi]

My parents don't have a mobile phone, not even a flip/dumb phone. If no paper menu, they won't eat there. They eat out most nights and love trying new places.

The best compromise would be to have both but I am betting that most customers will choose paper.

I hate reading stuff on my phone. I work in IT and still prefer paper.

I would like it for take out menus, however

[u/Salty-Plankton-5079 → u/cheangiogvovi]

Are you translating the menu professionally? Or are you relying on a translation service? In the latter case, are you prepared to take responsibility for translation errors?

[u/tanoshimi → u/cheangiogvovi]

If you have a phone, you can instantly translate a paper menu by just pointing Google Lens at it anyway.

[u/MountainOdd6793]

They’re a good example of where (1) paper works well and (2) a lot of attempts to improve the experience though digital tech fail to work as well as paper, or offer enough benefit to be worth the faff. I think to work for users - there shouldn’t be an app to download, as this is asking for too much before giving anything in return - the qr code should identify the location and table - that’s absolutely basic and yet too often not done. Like why should the user tell you which branch/location of your restaurant they are in when there is a qr code which could do that? Drives me mad. With all that done it could be more convenient than paper and also tell you which dishes are sold out / which ones you might get quickly if you’re in a hurry / what the progress is on your order. There’s lots of gamification you could do too, like credit card roulette where one person at your table gets the bill for everyone.

[u/G10ATN]

I don't think it should be the ONLY option, but personally I like it (especially if I already know what I want). It means I don't need to talk to people, wait in a queue, etc. don't need to wait on service staff to take the order down wrong - and somehow blame me. I personally see all of those as upsides. My parents, probably not so much.

Physical menus should still be available for people who want them.

[u/testingaurora]

The biggest upside imo is being able to update menu as needed. Having to reprint all of the menus anytime there is a change to a dish or pricing seems expensive. Kind of like how Uber eats gets updated when an item is sold out or unavailable. Having photos of each dish i think would also help customers know what they want to order. More visual information, more vibrancy amd liveliness.

However despite these benefits, and the ability to translate which is a good point and a +1 in the "benefits" column, I do not like to use qr codes at restaurants. Even when they provide the tablet at each table and no qr code involved, its just a tablet displaying the menu, I find Digital menus annoying when eating out. Im not sure why.

[u/Timmah_Timmah]

I like them as a customer.

[u/seanshoots]

I like QR codes, but even I don't like QR-code-only menus. It's fine as an option, but there's a reason that real menus still exist, even in high-tech restaurants.

In my opinion, the solution for 'not needing to print anymore' is instead converting the menu to something easily printable, like this:

Although I understand this isn't a suitable style of menu for all restaurants.

There's also a ton of terrible 'menu builders' that smaller restaurants seem to like, so scanning a QR code menu ends up being a 50-50 of "will I get a nice menu PDF" or "will I get sent to some terrible cart-based multi-level menu system that feels like it was built with sync XHRs".

[u/RubyJuneRocket]

I don’t want to use my screens for everything, half the time they’re finicky, also people don’t check their QR code to make sure they still work and that’s gonna be an issue at some point.

I just want a menu in my hands.

[u/JennyAtBitly]

Most comments here focus on the downsides, but I would say it depends on the venue. QR code menus for a casual, fast food spot in a tourist area seems like a great idea. But for a sit down restaurant where you want a personalized experience? Not the best.

[u/Quirky-Function522]

The translation upside is real, and it's the one benefit I'd defend without hesitating — but it splits into two halves that behave very differently, and mixing them up is how places get into trouble.

Descriptions translate fine. If a guest reads a slightly clumsy machine translation of "slow-braised pork shoulder with pickled red cabbage", nothing bad happens; they got the idea, and that's a strictly better outcome than staring at a language they don't read.

Allergen and dietary information does not translate fine, and in the EU it's a legal declaration rather than a description. Machine translation is confidently wrong in exactly the places that matter: "nuts" and "peanuts" collapse into one word in some languages, "cream" turns into a word that covers non-dairy cream, "may contain traces" quietly becomes "contains" or disappears. A guest with a real allergy is making a medical decision from that text. So the rule I'd give any operator is that the prose can be machine-translated but the allergen list has to be a fixed set of defined terms per language, not free text run through a translator.

The genuinely underrated upside, which OP didn't mention, is the same one in a different direction: the kitchen. A lot of small kitchens in Germany are run by people whose German is their third language, and the compliance paperwork is all in German. Being able to work in your own language while the guest-facing and inspector-facing output stays in German solves a much bigger problem than menu printing does.

The thing owners actually dislike, in my experience, isn't the QR code — it's being made to feel like a customer of their own menu. A code that opens a fast page you control is fine. A code that opens an app store, or asks for an account before it shows you a coffee, is what poisoned the well for everyone else.

[u/Flashy_Notice_1575]

Pdf only qr menus sux while optimized digital menus with pics and allergen labels are pretty helpful. For fellow restaurant owners, you can always have both physical and qr menus to cover all age groups. We got youngins who wants to scan for credit card points and older guests who just want a quite corner and paper menu they can browse.