QR codes for restaurants are incredibly handy for everything from marketing to menus, and they aren’t likely to go anywhere.
What Are QR Codes and How Do They Work?
Put simply, Quick Response (QR) codes are a style of barcode that allow users to scan them with a smartphone camera and quickly gain access to digital information. QR codes can contain images, videos, and even links to websites, making them incredibly useful when trying to communicate digital information that’s hard to just type out.
Benefits of Using QR Codes in Restaurants
QR codes are incredibly useful for a number of reasons. The first and largest benefit that they offer is that they’re incredibly small and easy to produce. Because of this, you can quickly and easily place QR codes anywhere you’d like (within reason, obviously) with a link to your menu, Instagram, or website. Beyond that, though, QR codes in restaurants are used quite commonly for marketing, safety, reducing costs, and more.
Streamlined Menu Access
One of the most common uses for QR codes in restaurants is to help guests access a menu. Whether you choose to place a QR code on coasters, directly on the table, or on a poster by your servers, what matters is that it’s easily accessible. From there, any guest with a smartphone can find your menu and peruse at their own pace, ultimately making it far simpler for them to find and use your menu.
Reduced Costs for Printing and Updates
The cost of printing is actually another benefit of QR codes in restaurants. Well, more accurately, the reduced cost brought by QR codes is another benefit. Rather than needing to reprint dozens of menus for every update, new menu, and special, QR codes are easily modified at any point. As long as you have a computer, you can quickly edit the information and files that your QR code communicates, ultimately making for a simple and quick way to cut costs.
Improved Customer Experience
Beyond cutting costs, QR codes can be great for the customer experience. While the way that you use them will likely change over time, there’s quite a bit that we can do to make our guests’ lives easier. QR codes can be used to place orders from their table, cutting the need for servers to check on them constantly, and they make it super simple for guests to get questions answered. By providing them an instant link to your website, socials, and any other important areas, you’re making their life easier.
Enhanced Marketing Opportunities
QR codes are also excellent for marketing. In the same way that you can stumble on a restaurant in the wild, you can stumble on QR codes. By their very nature, people are incredibly curious — and you should use that. Place stickers and flyers around town with a cool design and mysterious message, and you’re set. People just can’t resist scanning QR codes when given a bit of mystery to solve.
Improved Safety and Hygiene Standards
Finally, it’s time to talk about hygiene and safety standards. Leaving menus unsanitized between guests is a large hygiene concern. By allowing guests to use their own phone rather than a menu, that’s one less thing that can potentially communicate germs.
Popular Uses of QR Codes in Restaurants
Digital Menus
Digital menus are the name of the game when it comes to restaurant QR codes. They’re simple, easy, and save the restaurant from the cost of printing. By digitizing your restaurant with a QR code for menus, you’re simultaneously making your own life simpler while improving the experience of the guest; it really is a win-win.
Online Ordering and Payments
While online ordering used to mean that you were getting a delivery, in the modern age, they can happen anywhere. Because of this, many restaurants have opted to lean into QR codes as a way to process payment. This makes the guest’s life easier by allowing them to close out whenever they want, and it makes yours easier by cutting out the need to check out every guest. Beyond that, though, by allowing guests to order from their table, their service is improved, too!
Loyalty Programs and Discounts
QR codes are an excellent way to communicate loyalty programs and discounts. By using a QR code to link out ways to sign up for the loyalty program (or just giving out coupons with a QR code), you’re able to get your name out there and quickly get others on board. And when it comes to loyalty programs, the faster the sign-up, the better.
Customer Feedback and Reviews
QR codes provide an excellent way for guests to leave reviews and feedback. Whether you link them out to your Google Business page, to your website, Yelp, or to a form for feedback, the result is the same — your guests feel heard, and you get helpful feedback. Another great side effect of this is that you’re able to potentially send out polls and surveys to test the waters on new ideas, making it easier to test out new concepts, menus, and practices.
Event Promotions and Special Offers
Along the same lines of thinking as with loyalty programs, QR codes make for an excellent way to promote events and specials. This is generally done best through online marketing and email, but you can go so far as to print QR codes on to-go boxes, bags, napkins, and menus — it really is up to you. The important thing is that you advertise your events and offers, and QR codes make that incredibly simple.
How to Implement QR Codes in Your Restaurant
Choosing the Right QR Code Generator
Now, there are a lot of QR code generators on the market. While all of them do the same overall thing (generate QR codes), they’re not created equally. While there are a lot of excellent paid options out there, services like Adobe and Canva offer free (or low-priced) alternatives.
The sacrifices here are twofold. While paid QR code generators allow you to go so far as to edit the look of the QR code, most free ones only allow you to edit its contents. Additionally, some free editors don’t allow you to edit your QR code once it’s been published, forcing you to pay to do so. While this isn’t the end of the world, it is inconvenient, so do your research first.
Creating QR Codes for Different Needs
QR codes are incredibly versatile, and as such, it’s important that you make the most of them. Most QR code generators will limit you to ~15 or so codes, so be sure to use each of them. You can set up one QR code for menus, one for online ordering, another for your loyalty program, and more for marketing materials.
Placing QR Codes Strategically in Your Restaurant
Where you place your QR codes is actually quite important; after all, people need to be able to find and scan them for them to work! Because of this, there are a few spots that are commonly used to great success.
The most common placement for a QR code in a restaurant is on tables and coasters. If you have the ability to place a sticker on the corner of each table, that’s an easy solution. On the other hand, coasters are a great way to cheaply produce a lot of easily moved QR codes without the need to worry about the sticker peeling off or being damaged.
Beyond that, though, you can place QR codes in promotional materials like flyers and posters, and anywhere else that it’s likely for people to see them.
Testing and Troubleshooting QR Codes
QR codes can be a bit of a pain to develop. While they’re often pretty simple to create, some editors make it far harder than it should be — which is another great reason to pick your generator carefully. Be sure to test your QR codes before making them live and give them a scan. Sometimes you’ll find that they either don’t scan well (or at all), and other times you’ll find that they link to the wrong information. And that is why it’s important to test your QR codes.
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