QR menus: the good, the bad, and the paper

Terraces reopened on 1 June, and overnight there is a square black code on every table in the country. It is a sensible idea: fewer shared menus, faster ordering, easier updates. It is also, in most places we have sat down this week, done badly enough to make guests miss laminated paper.

The bad

• The PDF. Scan, wait, a 6 MB PDF opens in a viewer designed for contracts. Pinch, zoom, scroll sideways, lose your place. The menu was made for A4; the phone is not A4.
• The app. "Download our app to view the menu." Nobody downloads an app for a lunch. They ask for the paper one, and the waiter has none.
• The dead code. Printed on a sticker, peeling, pointing at a page that no longer exists or now shows the winter menu. A QR code is a link; links need looking after.
• The data grab. A menu that wants your name, your email and cookie consent before it shows you the soup. People notice, and they remember.

The good

A QR menu done well is just a very good web page. It opens instantly, reads as a list on a phone, has today's prices, marks what is sold out, and makes the allergen question answerable without waving down staff. Some places let you order and pay from it; that is a real improvement for the guest and for the kitchen. The best ones are so plain you do not notice the technology at all.

How to do it properly

1. A web page, not a file. Built for a phone screen: one column, clear headings, big enough type, no zoom needed.
2. Prices and "sold out" that someone on the floor can update in thirty seconds from their own phone.
3. Ordering only if the operation can take it. Table ordering is wonderful when the kitchen sees it on a screen and the runner knows where table 12 is. It is chaos when orders arrive by email.
4. No account, no consent wall, no app. The code should lead to the menu and nothing else.
5. Print the code properly. On the table, protected, with the short address underneath for the phones that cannot scan.

Keep the paper

Some guests cannot or will not scan. Grandparents, people with a dead battery, anyone who simply wants to hold a menu. A few printed copies on the counter are not a failure of the digital plan; they are hospitality. The QR menu should be the better option, not the only one.

The pattern here is the same as everywhere on the web right now: technology in service of the meal, invisible when it works. If your code leads to a PDF, this is a small job to fix — and your guests will feel it tonight.