QR Code Menus for Restaurants: Safe & Hygienic Digital Menu

5 min readSep 1, 2020

The Centre of Disease Control (CDC) has informed the hospitality industry to avoid using or serving reusable items in restaurants, bars, and cafeterias, such as menu cards, cloth napkins, and table cloths. Instead, they are encouraging the use of disposable items and digital menus. QR Code menus can greatly help restaurants, hotels, bars, and cafes to reoperate safely and hygienically. Let’s see how it’s possible.

CDC Wants You To Operate Safely

Now that we have been given the green light to open our restaurants, we must refurbish our services and be more cautious in serving customers. In light of the CDC guidelines for COVID-19, restaurants must introduce new service approaches to maintain social distancing and prevent virus transmission. These include digital menus, cashless payments, and more takeaways. Apparently, QR Codes can solve most of the problems for restaurants, including editable menus, online payments, and marketing to boost takeaways.

That being said, the CDC has found that menu cards could be the biggest carriers of the virus as they are touched and shared by hundreds of people in a day.

QR Code menus could be a quick and effective alternative to traditional, booklet menus, much better than the disposable and digital board menus.

To understand the benefits of QR Codes Menu, let’s find out more about Digital Menus and Disposable Menus.

Why Disposable Menus are a Not Good Choice

Menu cards which can be discarded after a single use are termed as disposable menus. They are primarily printed in A4 sized sheets with minimal designs and graphics to ensure cost-efficacy. While they minimize physical contact, they don’t completely restrict it. Restaurant staffs still need to dispose of and change the menu after visitors leave.

Furthermore, two big disadvantages of disposable menus are:

a) They increase the cost of printing menus. You would probably need at least 1000 per week, and even more so if your menu changes based on the days and hours. And

b) They impact the environment negatively. Imagine the number of trees we have to chop down to print disposable menus for all the restaurants across the world?

According to industry research, the average printing cost of menus for a month is between $200 and $1000 depending upon the menu size and number of customers. For instance, a restaurant with 5 to 8 tables that sees 100 customers per day on average may have to spend approx $300 to print 2200 one-page menus per week.

Are Digital Menus Effective?

The CDC provided another alternative — digital menu boards mounted on the walls. You may have seen digital menus at the movies, clubs, malls, kiosks, and shopping complexes. Well, truth be told, digital menus have 4 advantages over disposable and traditional menus.

a) they can be clearly viewed from a distance;

b) they are far more attractive and engaging;

c) they potentially reduce physical contact, and

d) they can be updated and changed based on your meals.

That being said, digital menus are costly affairs and not all restaurants can afford to design and develop them. Even a low-graphic, less technology digital menu can cost you a fortune of $700 per board. The cost of installation definitely goes up if the menu is LED-based. This is a huge investment for restaurants running on a small scale.

While Digital Menus (both LED and boards) are a fantastic strategy to turn into no-contact service, they are not a sustainable solution during the pandemic when the economy is already poor.

Why QR Code Menus are Ideal

QR Code menus for Restuarant have no limitations. In fact, they offer more than just menus. Here are a few prominent advantages of QR Code menus:

They are COST-EFFECTIVE and EASY to IMPLEMENT. In Capital and bold. One QR Code is enough to display at least 10 different menus for different times of the day. You don’t have to install it like a digital board menu or print them every day like disposable menus.
They are QUIRKY, Beautiful, and Engaging. Very few restaurants are using QR Codes nowadays. So, if you install one, especially of the size of a billboard, you will definitely pique some curiosity on the go.
A QR Code can be scanned and downloaded in smartphones. Yes, any person, even the one who walks by your restaurant, can scan the QR Code displayed on the window, download the menu card, and order food for takeaway or delivery as and when he pleases.

QR Code content is EDITABLE. There is no limit to this. You can change the embedded menu card anytime without having to reprint it. Hilton and Marriot hotel chains have already installed QR Codes for menu access and for providing other information.
Most of all beautiful QR Codes with Menu list can easily be generated and maintained with free QR Code generator sites online.

Restaurants can use QR Codes in other ways as well:

Promote your social media accounts through QR Code
Engage customers by sharing recipes, food information, and promotional offers through Video — Audio QR Code, Coupon QR Code, URL Link, and PDF QR Code

Share your restaurant location through Google Maps QR Code
Share Contact details with Site URL QR Code or vCard QR Code
Encourage app downloads
Track conversions and other customer satisfaction metrics with QR Code and AI

Besides being cost-effective and easy to use, QR Codes are dynamic in nature, long-term, and can be generated in a beautiful attractive way by adding graphics, logos, etc at online QR Code Generator sites.