4 Ways Restaurants Are Using QR Codes To Enhance The Guest Experience

I recently shared a LinkedIn poll asking whether people prefer using QR codes or physical menus in restaurants.

Nearly 1,300 people from around the globe responded to the poll and commented with their input, and the overwhelming majority (79%) preferred physical menus. As we emerge from the COVID-19 dining era, it’s clear these diners want to be immersed in the full restaurant experience without being tied to a phone.

Many expressed how they prefer to chat with their servers for recommendations and be engaged with the friends they came with, rather than lost in their cellphones.

“Going to a restaurant should be an experience, and personally I feel like we are surrounded (and yes, sometimes even overwhelmed) already so much by technology, that when I go out, I'd like to leave all things digital in a purse and just enjoy the ambience, conversation, and food without further distractions,” responded Esther Elmaleh of creative studio Reparto21.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no place for technology in restaurants. From mobile ordering at a quick-service restaurant that lets guests skip the line at the register, to scanning a QR code to pay for the bill at the end of their meal, here are 4 ways to use QR code technology in your restaurant to enhance the guest experience.

1. Order From Your Phone

While it makes sense that guests prefer to access their servers’ knowledge about the menu at a sit-down restaurant, there are plenty of settings where scanning a QR code to mobile order from the menu might be most convenient. It’s all about the time and place.

Imagine walking into a cafe and the register is empty. The person at the counter is smiling at you. You walk up, order a coffee and panini to-go, and it’s ready for you in 5 minutes. Easy, right? Now imagine you showed up to that cafe 15 minutes later and they’re slammed with a line out the door during their lunch rush. You might prefer to skip the wait time standing in line and get your order in instantly through your phone.

Or perhaps you sat down at a busy airport restaurant, but you’re in a rush to catch your flight and the server hasn’t even stopped by your table yet. Wait, but there’s a QR code menu on the table! And it lets you place your order right from your phone. What a time saver.

Toast, Square, Upmenu, and GoTab all offer tools for guests to order and pay at the table by scanning a QR code. Ultimately, empowering the guests to place their own orders can help improve table turn times and gives your team more flexibility to focus on other duties, especially when you’re understaffed.

“QR codes are just one way of accessing a digital menu to facilitate an order. … Digital ordering must be flexible enough to become a logical part of the brand experience. For example, making people pay as you go in a table-service restaurant means significantly disrupting the brand experience,” said survey respondent Daniel Rodgers, founder of touchless ordering solution QikServe.

2. Interactive Menu Experiences

With QR code menus, you can do much more than drive customers to a tiny, hard-to-read PDF version of your physical menu. If QR codes are here to stay at your restaurant, it can be worthwhile to invest in a mobile-friendly, media-heavy online menu.

Consider including appetizing food photography, for instance. Photos of your menu items can entice your guests and upsell them to key items (or keep them from ordering and returning a dish they expected to be different). But that’s only the start. Platforms like Popmenu also let you pull in customer reviews on each dish so diners can use these reviews to help them make their meal choice.

“Unlike PDF menus, QR menus offer customers a much better dining experience with an attractive layout and dynamic nature. Customers love to see what they are going to eat before they order their meal.” said Duygu Kutluoglu Kilic, co-founder and CEO of Fine Dine.?According to Duygu, operators who use Fine Dine Menu’s QR menus increase their revenue by an average of 20% by displaying photos and product descriptions of the dishes.?

Some brands are even experimenting with augmented reality (AR) menus. Think 3D visuals layered onto your physical menu that a guest can access through their phone camera. Mexican street food brand Wahaca created an AR menu experience that opens with a greeting from the restaurant’s co-founder and allows customers to navigate the menu with expanded information about each dish, such as ingredients, allergens and sustainability practices.

3. Scan to Pay Your Bill?

If mobile ordering or interactive menus don’t seamlessly integrate with the experience at your table-service restaurant, you can still give guests the option of paying for the bill from the phone at the end of the meal.

“Digital ordering is about providing the consumer with options and giving them control over their experience. I enjoy engaging with staff, but much prefer the option to order and/or pay myself, when I want to. How far a brand leans into the technology is up to them, but consumers should always be given choice. Digital ordering can only ever be seen as an enhancement in my eyes,” said Ben Eckley of FreedomPay.

Companies like Up n’ Go, Clover and Heartland enable a QR code to be printed on the guest’s check, so they can scan, pay and, well, get up and go.

This doesn’t interrupt the dining experience – you still get the interaction with your server at the start of and throughout your meal – but it does give diners more control while relieving your waitstaff of an extra task.

Think of all the times you’ve tried to flag down your server to pick up your credit card at a restaurant – and then wondered where they ran off to after disappearing with it for another 20 minutes.

Ultimately, Scan to Pay technology saves the time a guest would typically wait for the server to swipe their credit card and return with the receipt, so they can leave as soon as they’ve paid without any extra wait time. And with payment options like ApplePay, it can even be as simple as the click of one button without having to manually type out 16 digits.

4. Personalization

An added benefit of QR code technology is data capture about your customers, like their order history or contact info – which ultimately allows you to personalize your guests’ experience during future visits.

Plus, once you’ve captured the attention of your guests on their phone, you can prompt them for feedback on their experience with a quick survey. That’s a win for not only you as the restaurant owner, but also the guests once you take action on that feedback.

You can also direct guests to follow your restaurant’s social media accounts, encourage them to share their experience with others online, and use the opportunity to promote special offers like happy hour. The better customer profile you’ve built out, the more targeted your marketing and communications can be.

How else are you using technology in your restaurant to enhance the guest experience? Leave a comment to let me know!