How to make a QR code menu for your restaurant

Start with the menu you already have

Put the printed menu, the specials board and whatever your servers recite every night side by side. Together, those are your real menu. Going digital is a good excuse to clean it up: drop dishes you haven't cooked in months and fix descriptions that no longer match the plate.

Then decide on categories, organised the way guests think rather than the way the kitchen works. Starters, mains, desserts and drinks covers most restaurants. On a phone nobody turns pages, they scroll, so fifteen small categories are harder to get through than five or six clear ones.

What to write for each item

For every dish and drink, have these ready:

• The name as it's said in the room. If everyone calls it "the house burger", so should the menu.
• A short description: the main ingredients, how it's cooked, and anything that might surprise someone (it's spicy, it's served cold, it's meant for two).
• The price, written the same way everywhere. Choose "12" or "12.00" and stick with it.
• Size or portion when it changes the price, such as 33 cl or 50 cl, half or full.
• Allergens and dietary notes.

Keep descriptions to a line or two. Phone screens are narrow, and a paragraph under every dish turns the menu into an endless scroll.

Allergens need real care: state them the same way on every dish, and check the rules where you are. The details are in allergen information on restaurant menus.

Photos: fewer, but good

Photos sell food. A bad photo sells it worse than no photo at all. A dark, yellow-tinted shot of a stew taken at 11 pm won't make anyone hungry, so if you can't photograph a dish well, leave it without one.

You don't need a professional, but you do need daylight. Shoot near a window in the late morning, on a plain surface, from roughly where a seated guest's eyes would be. Straight overhead works for pizza and bowls; it turns a burger into a flat disc. Wipe the rim of the plate. Take ten shots and keep one.

Not everything needs a photo. Pictures for the dozen best sellers and none for the sides looks deliberate. Keep files small, too: a guest on a weak signal shouldn't wait for a 6 MB image before they can see a price.

Prices and the things that change

The point of a digital menu is that you can change it, so decide early who updates prices and the sold-out list, and when. If the fish of the day changes every morning, somebody changes the menu every morning before service, not after a guest points it out.

The price on the menu has to match the price on the bill. When you raise prices, update the menu first and the till second. Guests do compare.

Making the QR code

A QR code is only a link. Two things about that link matter:

• It should point to an address you control and that won't change. If it links straight to a file on a free file-sharing site, the day that link breaks you reprint every code.
• It should be short. A shorter address produces a less dense code with bigger squares, and that scans more easily from further away and in poor light.

Download the code as a vector file (SVG or PDF) rather than a small PNG, so the printer can scale it without blurring. Leave the white border around it alone: that margin is part of the code, and trimming it is a common reason codes fail to scan. Dark on light is the safe choice. Inverted codes and pale brand colours give some phone cameras trouble.

How big to print it, and where

On a table tent or sticker, make the code at least 2 to 3 cm wide; 3 to 4 cm is more comfortable. A seated guest holds the phone 20 to 40 cm away, and a larger code scans faster. A common rule of thumb is that the code should be about a tenth of the scanning distance, so a window poster read from a metre away wants a code around 10 cm wide.

Add a line of text such as "Scan for the menu". A bare code on a table could just as well be the wifi password or a review page. Print a short web address under it too, for the guest whose camera won't cooperate.

Use one code per table, where every seat can see it or it's easy to pass around, and away from spots where it gets wet or buried under plates. Laminated cards and acrylic holders survive being wiped down; paper held on with tape won't last a week. On a terrace, glossy lamination in direct sun can make a code unreadable, so choose a matte finish.

Test it on real phones, in real light

Before you print a hundred table tents, print one and test it:

• With at least one iPhone and one Android phone, using the normal camera app rather than a scanner app.
• Sitting down, at the distance a guest would hold the phone.
• Under your actual evening lighting. A code that scans fine under an office lamp can fail on a candle-lit table.
• On mobile data with wifi off, to see how long it really takes to open.
• With the phone's text size turned up, as many guests have it.

Then read the whole menu on the phone as a guest would. Are prices visible without tapping? Can you get to the drinks in a couple of seconds? Ask someone on your team who hasn't seen it to find a vegetarian main, and watch where they get stuck.

About putting a PDF behind the code

The fastest route is to save the printed menu as a PDF, upload it and point a code at it. For a small place whose menu rarely changes, that can be enough. On a phone, though, an A4 page has to be zoomed and dragged around to read, some phones download the file instead of showing it, and every price change means exporting and uploading again, often to a new link. If your menu changes more than a couple of times a year, a menu built for phones saves trouble. There's a fuller comparison in PDF menu vs. digital QR menu.

Keep a paper copy, and keep the menu current

Some guests can't or won't use their phone. The battery is dead, their eyesight isn't great, or they're visiting from abroad without data. Keep a few printed menus at the bar or the host stand. They don't need to be fancy, but they must match the digital menu, so reprint them when prices change.

Once the menu is live, look at it from a guest's phone every week or two. Remove dishes that have gone and make sure last Saturday's sold-out item isn't still marked sold out on Tuesday. An out-of-date QR menu is worse than an out-of-date printed one, because guests assume the digital version is the current one.