QR menus for restaurants: how they work, what they cost

A QR code is a web address written as a pattern of squares. When a guest points their camera at it, the phone reads the address and offers to open it — and the menu loads in the browser that is already on the phone. A QR code is just a web address in a pattern of squares. Every phone sold in the last decade opens it with the camera app that is already installed, and the menu loads in the browser the phone already has.

Because the address is fixed and the page behind it is not, the printed code never has to change. A price edited at four o'clock is on every table at four o'clock, on codes printed months earlier. That is the whole mechanism, and it is the reason a QR menu is cheaper to run than a printed one rather than merely more modern.

Three steps, and the order matters.

1. Put the menu in. Each dish gets a price, a short description and a photograph. Sections group them the way your paper menu already groups them — guests read a menu by section, not alphabetically.
2. Publish it. This gives the menu a permanent address. Everything after this is an edit to a live page.
3. Print the code, put it on the tables. One per table, on card. It does not expire.

The slow part is the first one, and it is slow exactly once. Most of an afternoon goes into photographs; the rest takes minutes.

Many restaurants start by putting a PDF behind the code. It works, and it is worth knowing precisely what it costs you.

Open the demo and compare it against the last PDF menu you scanned. That is a faster answer than any table.

DigiMenu starts at $19 a month for the QR menu itself, $39 a month to add the admin panel with live orders and analytics, and $99 a month for a custom restaurant website with online ordering. Printing the codes costs whatever your printer charges for a sheet of card.

The costs a restaurant usually forgets are the ones that disappear: reprinting menus when a supplier's price moves, and the week a menu spends out of date because reprinting is not worth it yet.

It is worth being straight about this, because the honest answer is short and nobody selling one usually gives it.

• Where the signal is bad. A basement dining room with no wifi is a dining room where the menu does not load. Keep printed copies behind the counter.
• For guests who would rather not. Some people do not want to hold a phone at dinner, and a restaurant that makes them is not being modern. A stack of paper menus and a QR code are not in competition.
• For a menu that never changes. If the same twelve dishes have been on the board for ten years, most of the advantage above does not apply to you.

What is a QR menu?

A QR menu is a restaurant's menu published as a web page, reached by pointing a phone camera at a printed QR code on the table. The code contains a web address; the camera opens it in the phone's normal browser. There is nothing to install and no account to create.

Do guests need to download an app to open a QR menu?

No. A QR code is just a web address in a pattern of squares. Every phone sold in the last decade opens it with the camera app that is already installed, and the menu loads in the browser the phone already has.

How does a restaurant create a QR menu?

Add your dishes, prices and photos once, publish the menu, then print the QR code that points at it and put it on the tables. With DigiMenu those three steps take an afternoon, and changing a price afterwards takes seconds and no reprinting.

How much does a QR menu cost?

DigiMenu starts at $19 a month for the QR menu itself, $39 a month to add the admin panel with live orders and analytics, and $99 a month for a custom restaurant website with online ordering. Printing the codes costs whatever your printer charges for a sheet of card.

Is a QR menu better than a PDF menu?

For most restaurants, yes — but for one specific reason. A PDF is a picture of a page: guests pinch and zoom to read it, and changing a price means re-exporting and re-uploading the file. A QR menu is a web page built for a phone screen, and a price you change is live immediately on every table.

What happens if a guest's phone has no internet?

The menu will not load, the same as any web page. Restaurants that expect this keep a small number of printed menus behind the counter. A QR menu is not a reason to throw away every paper copy.