QR code menu, PDF or paper: which one for your restaurant?

Three ways of showing a menu live side by side in restaurants: the paper card, the PDF that opens when you scan a QR code, and the digital menu, a real web page designed for a phone. They are not equal, and they do not exclude one another either. Here is what each does well, what it does badly, and how to combine them.

The paper menu: reassuring, but frozen

It reads without a phone, a network or a battery, and many guests like holding it. Its weakness is that it is frozen: a dish runs out, a price changes, a new dessert arrives, and it means a reprint or a crossing-out. It cannot be translated without printing a second card, and every piece of information you add, allergens for instance, makes it denser to read.

It still has a place nothing replaces: in the window, where French law asks for a display readable from outside, and under the counter, for the guest without a phone. Those rules are set out in what French law actually requires.

A PDF behind a QR code: an A4 page on a small screen

It is the quickest option: take the paper menu, turn it into a PDF, print a QR code that points to it. But the guest gets a page drawn for an A4 sheet on their phone:

• they zoom and drag the page around to read a dish and its price;
• a heavy file takes time to open on a weak network, on a terrace as in a basement;
• every change means remaking the file and putting it back online at the same address, or the QR code leads to the old menu;
• one language per file, and one more file for each translation;
• photos and allergens pile up on the page instead of sitting with each dish.

A PDF helps out for a one-night menu or an event. For a menu that changes with the season, it costs more time than it saves.

The digital menu: a page made for the phone

A digital menu is a web page built for a phone screen: categories you scroll through, one dish per line, a photo when you have one, a price readable without zooming. The guest scans the QR code on their table and the menu opens in their browser, with no app to install.

• One change, everywhere, at once. A dish that runs out is marked sold out with one tap from your phone: every table sees it as sold out at the same moment, and nobody can order it any more.
• Several languages without reprinting. The guest reads the menu in their language; you write it once. See a menu in several languages for your foreign guests.
• Allergens dish by dish, entered once, in the right place, and kept with the dish when you edit it.
• A real web page, which search engines can read like the rest of the web, where a PDF stays a separate file.
• Ordering at the table, if you want it: the same menu lets the guest send their order. See how ordering at the table by QR code works.

What works in the dining room: digital at the table, paper where it is needed

The simplest combination fits in three lines:

• the digital menu at the table, with a QR code on each table;
• a menu readable in the window, printed from the digital one, so it is right on the day you print it;
• a few paper menus under the counter, for those who prefer paper or have no phone.

How to choose

• Your menu rarely changes and your guests are regulars: paper is enough, keep it.
• Your menu follows the market or the season: a digital menu saves you a reprint at every change.
• You welcome foreign guests: a translated menu saves printing one card per language.
• You want orders taken faster: only a digital menu lets guests order from their table.

Moving to a digital menu with ScanEat

With ScanEat, you build your menu from your phone, with its photos, allergens and languages, and your QR code coasters are shipped to you, one per table. Create your menu and try it on one table tonight.