PDF Menus: The fraudsters of the digital menu world
Have you ever wandered into a restaurant expecting to be greeted with the menu, then all of a sudden, on your table, you see a little square with a QR code. “A digital menu?” you wonder “cool”. This is your first real taste of a digital menu. You’ve never used one before but its starting to look like today’s your lucky day. You take your seat and eagerly whip out your phone to scan this shiny QR code menu. You open your camera, scan the code, click the link and then boom!
You see this…
A tiny, non-readable, PDF staring right back at you. You immediately start to wonder why they didn’t just offer you the crusty paper menu instead.
The sad truth is that too many restaurants, hotels, and bars still think this is a conducive way to serve their menu to customers. Little do they realize they’re doing way more harm than good.
Below are three reasons why you should never opt for a PDF menu over an authentically digital menu.
1. They’re bad for business
Besides all the obvious downsides such as, usability, simplicity, and affordability, there are many other reasons why PDF menus simply have no place in your establishment.
For those of you who think I put affordability on the list of downsides by mistake, I’m sorry to break it to you but I didn’t. I’ll explain later.
The main reason as to why you should avoid PDF menus is their lack of digitization. PDF menus are terrible for SEO (search engine optimization) and provide web browsers no way of telling potential clientele how great your bar or restaurants menu is. You want to give search engines as much content to search through and search engines don’t read regular PDF files. Not only are you missing an opportunity to tell search engines more about your restaurant, but PDF files also take longer to load than authentic digital menus written in HTML. This will adversely affect your SEO ranking as well.
Lets say you own a bakery and one of your specialties is Madeira cake. Someone looking for Madeira cakes on the internet is going to type in exactly that, ‘Madeira cakes’, not ‘bakery’. With a PDF menu, that web search wouldn’t produce your bakery as a list of possible businesses to grab a Madeira cake from, even though it’s your specialty.
2. They’re bad for your customers
Hate to break it to you but that cool new QR code PDF menu actually doesn’t sit well with your customers either. The initial wow factor of being able to scan a code to view your menu will eventually fade and your customers will be left with more questions than answers.
Besides the fact that they’re hard to read on small screens (AKA smartphone screens) some of them actually need to be downloaded onto the customers device before they can be viewed. This needs more time and data on the customers part which eventually leads to customer dissatisfaction with your service.
3. They’re more expensive than paper menus
Look at this way, your PDF menu and your in-house paper menus are the same. They have to be in order to assure consistency across all your menus.
The unfortunate thing however is that your paper menus need changes, sometimes regular changes. This means that you will have to print new menus, which means that you’ll need to re-upload a new PDF (and therefore a new QR code) every-time you make said changes. Sometimes that responsibility doesn’t lie with you but with your web designer (if you have one) which usually comes at an additional cost to you.
As much as your contactless PDF menu looks cool and seemingly affordable, it’s actually costing you slightly more than having just paper menus. You still have to do multiple re-prints of your menu, multiple uploads to your website, and make constant changes to the table cards that house your QR codes.
What do we suggest? You guessed it, an Esca Menu. Unlike many digital menus on the market today, an Esca Menu is a HTML written, mobile and search engine optimized menu solution that can be used everywhere from your tables to your website and even your kitchen. It provides you with the ability to fully control your businesses menus, receive orders, and receive payments all from one place without ever needing to understand coding or design. Just drag & drop, it’s that simple.
Wave goodbye to your phony PDF ‘digital’ menus by starting a free trial with Esca Menu today!
