It’s not just scanning a QR code. It’s that the sites almost always require you to verify your phone number so they can track you across orders. I mentally blacklist any store with online ordering and leave a negative review.
We're just talking about QR codes that open up a PDF or HTML page that shows the menu. It's not online ordering.
I mean I've seen online ordering as an option at a couple of places that I thought was cool, but you didn't have to. Literally everywhere else I've been (in NYC) it's just been a static menu. Not tracking you.
In the USA it's been 90% a redirect to some massive print-ready PDF stored on AWS, the other 10% it's a redirect to a hand-coded HTML file that is badly out of date.
But obviously no, I did the restaurant no favor. I financially deprived the restaurant of income, and the server unfortunately of a tip. And I tip big.
I don't owe the restaurant a visit. They do owe me an experience. If it begins with struggling with their QR menu system, I'm opting out for a variety of reasons.
And a struggle it is. First find the mode where QR results is something actionable (I have an older phone) Hopefully their WIFI is exceptional, and the password not onerous.
Then answer their marketing questions. Finally peer at a too-small menu you have to scroll through on a tiny screen with terrible pictures.
Find something interesting? How to share it with your dining partner(s). No, can't point to their menu or say "Page three on the bottom!". No, you have to give them your phone. Oops! They touched something or it scrolled or went into low-power.
It's a fairly miserable experience for some of us.
If I'm hungry, I ask the same thing as whoever is close by and whose dish looks remotely edible.
If I'm not really hungry, or if the food isn't easily visible, I do the same as you do: yes, I carry a computer, but refuse to use it in most restaurants.
If McDonalds can afford some wall poster with pictures + names and prices, I'm sure most restaurants can. So the question is more why don't they want to? Even a flier by the door would be enough for me!
However, on a site were most people love pushing tech even when the best solutions are not technological, I wouldn't be surprised if we were in the minority and people tried to rationalize using QR codes.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's kind of weird to hold up the largest restaurant chain in the world by revenue as a baseline for what most restaurants can afford.
In fact, in many parts of the world and even in the US the standard for listing food available for order is just that - a flyer on the counter or even better, some pictures of the various dishes.
(You know the food's going to be good when the picture is faded from 15 years of sunlight.)
I went for sushi this week and of course there's a hundred things in twelve categories. I couldn't even figure out how to get back to the daily specials, once you move on, you can't see them again.
It's a fundamentally horrible experience and will definitely keep me from going back.
For outdoor picnic table style dining it's my new preference. The ability to easily leave a tab open and progressively order food and drinks on demand is amazing.
Not that it should replace all dining experiences but wait staff free dining when ordering from a bar + kitchen is superior for these instances.
The ability to just get up an walk off without synchronous negotiation is a more relaxed dining experience, the ability to have people progressively join and leave your party is also fantastic and can facilitate an old school community dining hall experience.
There are a few UIs I like for mobile, many are quite poor though.
I like it. It's annoying to wait for the waiter to come over with menus, it's annoying to wait to ask them to bring a menu back because you want to order more, and it's gross when you get a menu that hasn't been wiped down properly and is sticky with god knows what, and it's wasteful when they're printing hundreds of fresh menus a day for the places that give everyone a fresh one.
Keep a few backup printouts for those who need them (like your phone gets no signal), but otherwise it's a fantastic step forwards. Goodbye to grimy wasteful printouts.
Plus the bonus of never having to experience "oh sorry we're out of that" if they update the menus dynamically is fantastic.
It's also annoying to have to bring a phone to a restaurant. Not everyone carries them everywhere. I resent having to have one with me to participate fully in modern society, always listening and collecting data for its corporate masters. I occasionally wish I could throw mine into a large body of water; who knows, maybe some day I will.
Now I'm imagining a restaurant handing out iPads instead of menus to keep you "safe".
If I recall correctly before Covid Applebees had some weird off-brand tablet thing on the table that looked like you could badly order via it, but mainly what it did was not work for playing some horrible Android game.
I was at a restaurant in LA that had a tablet-like gizmo on the tables. You could order through it, call the waiter, and pay at the end. It wasn't presented as for keeping us safe, though.
The fun fact was that the waiter actually gave us paper menus when sitting us, without even asking, though they also introduced the gizmo.
I actually found that quite nice, since they had a wide selection of beers and there was a beer-selection app that would go in the details of each beer and allowed us to easily choose the kind we wanted.
Happened to me pretty recently in Bogotá, Colombia. At the table waiter handed us two very old iPads with broken screens to read a PDF of the menu.
In Santiago, Chile I was handed waiter’s phone with a menu from some local takeout when I informed them that I can’t read their menu hosted via QR since i don’t have data.
In South America it’s unfortunately popular to just have QR leading you to a huge PDF hosted somewhere in US to read a menu. Even in places that barely have internet like in the mountains… And more often than not they don’t have paper backups.
The only annoying thing is that the menu it opens is a pdf that was designed to be printed on A0 apparently, with times new Roman 10 point font, food on extreme left and price on extreme right.
And then you keep scrolling back and forth on your iPhone trying to read them.
Bonus points if you put the pdf in an iFrame in a site that’s off the bootstrap template but they forgot to include the js file so it zooms the hamburger button instead of the pdf when you pinch and refreshes the page when you jerk it too much.
You forgot "customized", and order drinks before food too - separately. The other part is: I dislike touching a phone screen while eating, so it needs to accommodate that too.
Edit: on a 2nd thought - how would family order look like - the kids need some way to link their orders (albeit having phones) to the payment. You'd need a temp password/pin for everyone to link to?
The ones paying the check are the ones making the orders. Makes splitting the check a solved problem by default. If it is a family with kids making the order, the kids simply pick what they want (no linking required for just browsing the menu), tell the parent what they want, and the parents order from their device. I don't think it is a hard necessity for everyone ordering stuff by themselves. Whoever pays the final bill can handle actually ordering the food.
At some point kids like independence... at least to choose/read the menu - around 5-6y of age. It'd mean sharing the phone with them one by one, instead of having a menu each.
Normally I'd pay the bill entirely (split whatever is non-issue at all) - however picking items for everyone is just bizarre, e.g. everyone would have to tell what to order, I would have to find and not mess up - in short not fun at all, cosplaying the waiting staff
Probably for US there is a market, but here in Europe restaurants mostly have a facebook page and that's it. They mostly don't really have an online presence and they don't really care either. That's what high taxes do, penalizing high achievers so ultimately every service 'stops' at a good-enough level.
If so many of the menus weren’t PDFs, I think the overall idea wouldn’t get such a bad rap. But yeah around half of all restaurants still do it in my experience.
It’s remarkable how particular non-IT industries attract personalities that are more or less technically averse than others. Arts and media, retail, building contractors: generally quite competent. Lawyers, medical: usually pretty bad.
Restauranteurs: the most technically inept grandparent you’ve ever encountered, the one who insists that if they ever touch a mouse it will catch on fire, and then somehow proves it
I remember helping an older relative. They said they needed my help ASAP because Dish network was coming because they deleted their account. Couldn't get any details. Eventually saw they simply deleted an email about their bill.
Only sorta related but I wonder why it seems so hard for some to adjust while others do just fine. It seems like it would make sense that "email is just like real mail, its just on a screen." Maybe the "infinite options" scare them a bit?
Honestly, I think it’s the “mysterious beige box.”
When I was a teen in the nineties, I was the go-to guy in the neighborhood for fixing computers (beats mowing lawns). One trick I figured out was, I could demonstrate something like plug in a RAM chip or CD-ROM drive, take the parts back out, and then tell them to do it.
Even though their problems were invariably software-driven (fcking windows), just having that hands-on experience — not much different from changing your oil — would usually be all it took. The fear would be gone.
Go look at hobby sites for hobbies that are heavily weighted towards the elderly. OMG.
It's way better now, but for a long time I would go to woodworking sites (before it was trendy), and if you got much past GeoCities level sites it was almost a miracle.
I've literally never seen that. It's almost always some web app type thing where you can select what you want, order it, and pay using apple pay/Vipps (my country's main electronic money transfer thing)/card. The UX isn't always perfect, but it has always worked too.
Edit: Downvotes? For simply sharing my conflicting experience? Okay.
Same. Depends a lot on how it's done though. Toast is the best that I see regularly. Menus designed for phones, easy to customize orders and pay. Hard to mess up.
My phone doesn't have a smudge of ketchup and a spot of sticky dried Coca-Cola on it that get on my thumb.
Also... I can imagine why it could be reasonable to assume my phone might have the same number of germs as the menu... but how on earth do you guarantee it has far more?
To be fair there are probably some good bacteria-static agents inside of the ketchup and coca-cola :) These smudges are probably a tad healthier than random smudges on your phone. At least for a day or two :)
> if they update the menus dynamically is fantastic
Until it's the prices that are dynamically updated.
Soon enough they'll use the information collected from your device to look up your income level, how often you've visited in the past, what kinds of things you're most likely to order, etc and use that data to set a price for your menu alone and suddenly you're paying more than the person next to you who is ordering the same thing.
This is a bizarre take. I dine/eat out fairly often to a point I know the staff names in quite a few places (it's Europe, no tipping culture, either). I don't quite see how I could customize any order with a web interface, realistically (food intolerances).
>when they're printing hundreds of fresh menus a day
They change the menu every day? Around here the menus are commonly placed in a book alike folder or the least they will have a plastic slip. As for waste the online part (with datacenters and all) would be more wasteful/less green.
>Plus the bonus of never having to experience "oh sorry we're out of that" if they update the menus dynamically is fantastic.
So they need to link the kitchen to the menu system in real time. That feels unliklely - most of the menus would mostly static web (or worse pdf) interfaces, and an order button.
> That feels unliklely - most of the menus would mostly static web (or worse pdf) interfaces, and an order button.
You say that like it's a given, but why? Products that can dynamically update the menu when something is out of stock with a couple of touches from FOH staff already exist. It's not exactly complex.
> I don't quite see how I could customize any order with a web interface, realistically (food intolerances).
This is harder, but that's why I don't think you can replace all your staff with a web interface - you still need a human in the loop to ask about important things like this.
Does that ever happen in the US? 90% of the menus I've seen via QR codes, and more generally online, are out of date. Often by months. I've gotten "sorry we're out ofthat" just as often with the new tech as with the old. I guess it's great that restaurateurs elsewhere get this right - most of the positive comments seem to be from Europe - but for the OP and a significant percentage of HN readers that's clearly not the case.
There are certainly bad QR Code menus, but good ones are just menus. They're fine. Everything in Conor's piece points to an almost incredible lack of self control--he is incapable of not being distracted by his phone--which to me is a bigger problem than the format in which your menu is presented. Besides, give restaurant workers a break: it's one less thing they have to do to serve you, so they can focus more on providing good service.
Having said that, I hope we can all agree that paying directly by phone is one of the unambiguously great COVID-era innovations.
> Besides, give restaurant workers a break: it's one less thing they have to do to serve you, so they can focus more on providing good service.
In that case, they could just hand out menus at the entrance. Or if they don't greet you and instead just let you sit wherever, they can just put the menus in an obvious place. Restaurants have done this forever in similar situations. Online menus aren't necessary to solve this problem.
> Having said that, I hope we can all agree that paying directly by phone is one of the unambiguously great COVID-era innovations.
I don't really agree. At least I don't think it's an unambiguously great innovation. Personally I find the requirement to have a phone much more irritating than to the requirement to have cash or credit cards. That said, I've never seen a place accept payments by phone not accept either cash or credit cards so I guess it's mostly just irrelevant to me.
I could probably have phrased it differently and said having the OPTION to pay by phone is great. If I can avoid having to flag down someone who is working 5 extra tables because someone didn't show, just so she can hand me a paper slip ... I mean, it's a plus from my perspective. But I'm at the age that it catches me off guard every time I can do it.
> I could probably have phrased it differently and said having the OPTION to pay by phone is great.
This article and the comments here are complaining about restaurants who _only_ use QR codes for menus. I'd presume there is basically no one against having the _option_ of seeing the menu with a QR code. While I personally find QR codes much inferior to many other simpler approaches (paper slips, menus at the door, menu on the wall, etc.), I don't care if they offer them in addition to traditional methods.
> Besides, give restaurant workers a break: it's one less thing they have to do to serve you
Yes, I also found this sentence to be very naive. No, they don't have the 2-second task of handing you a menu, instead they have the 2-minute task of explaining why there's no menu, trying to find the QR code reader on your phone, waiting for it to actually show up, then handing the phone back to you and demonstrating how to navigate between pages.
I've only seen the ability to pay (which was also kind of confusing) once or twice. Everywhere else was either hard to navigate weird websites, or a PDF that takes forever to download and is very hard to read on mobile, let alone discuss with people you are dining with, who are also buried in their phone trying to figure out yet another maze of clicks and downloads.
In many places physical menus are handed out by a hostess whose whole job is to seat you and do that. If I want to "give them a break", I often just cook or get takeout. Physical menus are not hard to do and are much more friendly than reading from the palm of your hand.
Most places I go to now have the ability to pay on the phone, and it's much easier than trying to flag down a waiter. There's also no pressure for tipping, and I save precious time than having to wait for people to get back to me.
I have never experienced a weird website as is described in this thread. Discussing with people I'm dining with is also... the same? I have no clue how you are experiencing something different here.
Digital menus are not hard to do and are much more friendly. That said, this could all depend on how modern the area you regularly dine at - I'd expect less tech-savvy regions to fumble at this, which may indeed be your experience!
I do it as often as I can, which is sadly not often because I rarely carry cash. We do, for a variety of reasons, tend to frequent places that are ethically run though, and often know everyone involved fairly well. But, yes, as long as we have tipping as a significant basis for restaurant workers' income, cash tips.
Even if they're just menus, it's nice to be able to see every option at once, and scan back and forth between disparate item categories with one's eyes, without taking 5-30 seconds to navigate between them on a tiny screen.
Though I'm not a fan, I suspect this will be the new standard, kinda like self-checkout at the grocery store. Hated it at first, but now the idea that somebody is going to scan my groceries just seems annoying and antiquated.
I hate the self scan groceries. It takes me way more time than a fast cashier. It's just a way for extremely profitable businesses that have a semi-monopoly positions on good placement for stores to become even more profitable at expense of my ease of living.
To me as a 29 year old, this feels like the same "progress" as that of companies with a customer service without telephone number. If you have a real problem and you need a person on the other side, they don't provide it. It's just cheapskating.
>I hate the self scan groceries. It takes me way more time than a fast cashier. It's just a way for extremely profitable businesses that have a semi-monopoly positions on good placement for stores to become even more profitable at expense of my ease of living.
I'm not sure how you could call grocery stores as having "semi-monopoly positions" and being "extremely profitable", when they have razor thin profit margins.
I'm tired of hearing this "we have no margins". You still hold a monopoly-like position in many areas simply because... people have to eat. I can buy a car once every few years. I can rent or buy a house. I can't rent food. I have to buy. In most places it's going to be from one of the major grocery chains. They have economies of scale. They have a captive audience (or whatever it's called when people can't live without what you're selling).
> You still hold a monopoly-like position in many areas simply because... people have to eat.
That's not what "monopoly" means. Whether you "have to eat" is irrelevant. Most states have monopolies on gambling, but even though nobody has to buy lottery tickets, it's still a monopoly.
> I can rent or buy a house.
But you still need to get shelter somehow, right? ;)
It’s funny because I am usually frustrated by how slowly many cashiers are at scanning the items and how bad many are at packing the grocery bag. It doesn’t mean that I don’t go to a cashier when I have a bunch of items, though. The worst is when people go through self checkout with a full cart and don’t have any idea how to do it making the rest of us wait.
It's not hard to get fast at using self-scan, especially if you've worked retail. If many others can be efficient, perhaps consider whether you are part of why it's so slow?
Some of them are quite forgiving and let you go fast, others insist on you placing every item on the scale carefully and still freak out half the time. Depends on the quality of the area, perhaps.
A few grocery chains in Tokyo have clerks that take items from your basket, scan them, place them neatly in a 2nd basket. On completion, they take 2nd basket and place it at one of two payment machines where you can pay with cash, card, or smartphone. Two payment machines are necessary to prevent congestion. If you have problems with payment they're quick to assist.
After payment, the customer takes the basket to a 3rd location to bag their groceries and leave. There are clerks available to assist.
It is amazingly fast, I had the misfortune of shopping at 6:00 pm. I looked at the lines and estimated twenty minute checkout, actually got finished in about five minutes. The basket size limits the amount of groceries which is a minus, but helps move around the store quickly vs a huge cart and checks out faster.
If I have, say, 5 items or fewer I prefer the self checkout. There's usually no queue (as there are 8 or so machines) and scanning the items is only slightly less convenient than putting them on the belt at the human checkout anyway.
Only if you don't count the time waiting in line before it's your turn. Consider this analogy: you have a single-threaded task that takes 30 seconds to complete on CPU X, which has 4 cores, or 1 minute to complete on CPU Y, which has 24 cores. If your task is the only one running, then CPU X will finish it faster, but if there are 20 other tasks that also need to run, then CPU Y will finish yours faster.
I like the idea. I think some do a terrible job with it, doing little more than digitizing the print menu, with all of the tiny print. An easily scrolled list, with a fast loading modal with more details when tapped, would be far better. Take it one step further, let me create my order, and then show the server a QR code. As they go to each person on the table, they can still answer questions and take the order on the fly if they need to.
tldr; It's a UI/UX problem that can be fixed. The idea itself is sound.
QR code menus are fine, if made well, for quick-service and casual restaurants where the customer's interest is primarily in a quick and efficient meal (even a quick-and-efficient delicious and high-quality meal).
But if you are operating a fine dining establishment(1), where the food is but one component of the experience, and you have a QR code printed on a piece of paper taped to the table ... you're really taking away from the experience you're supposed to be selling.
(1) There are some limited exceptions for places which make a quirky tech vibe part of the experience, which mostly comes up in certain types of sushi bars.
> (1) There are some limited exceptions for places which make a quirky tech vibe part of the experience, which mostly comes up in certain types of sushi bars.
What kind of sushi bars are you talking about here? When I think of fine-dining sushi bars, quirky tech vibe is sort of the furthest thing on my mind.
> (1) There are some limited exceptions for places which make a quirky tech vibe part of the experience, which mostly comes up in certain types of sushi bars.
Chinese hotpot, Korean BBQ, Japanese dining that isn't just sushi bars, Thai and Vietnamese places (among many others) quite often use digital menus as well as digital ordering. None of these exhibit a "quirky tech vibe", aside from some places which use robots to deliver small side dishes, or beverages. Many of these would also not be considered "quick and efficient", at least how you describe them.
It would be good to consider venturing outside your regular dining locales to see what the rest of the world is doing in terms of restaurant experience, and whether the American way is still even relevant.
the only problem is the mobile UI many have..show me a pdf of the actual menu so I can see everything at once or on a few pages snd zoom in and out..it helps me make a choice about what I want when I can compare it more easily with navigation
A pdf is the only version I've seen. I don't understand these strange complaints about places that need you to sign up for wifi AND have poor reception which sounds so unlikely (and pointless, since they just hurt themselves) or how it's hard to see or whatever. It's easier for the establishments to maintain and safer and conveniently dovetails into online ordering.
Honestly I am very surprised to see so much love for the QR code menus here. I have had nothing but bad experiences with them.
First of, on Android, the camera doesn't magically scan the QR code. You have to download a separate QR code scanner app for that. My wife and my parents all have Android phones and have no idea what to do when they see a QR code like that. The waiter usually just says "point your camera to it" because apparently everyone in the world assumes you have an iPhone and that's how it works there. When it doesn't work the waiter now has to do tech support on a random person's phone.
Second, as others have said, the social aspect of looking at it together is totally lost. Which is quite big IMHO.
Third, scrolling through a PDF or a page on a tiny screen makes it much harder to grasp the entire menu quickly. On a paper menu, I often just jump around and get inspired by the various dishes. Randomly scrolling up/down/left/right on a tiny screen feel awful compared to just letting your eyes drift.
My vote is for a QR code and paper menus. Let the people decide what they like without excluding elderly or non-tech savvy people.
It's even worse when you you don't have internet access, and have to use a restaurant WiFi that requires you to sign up.
Also, if you are dining with someone who has a food allergy, then all the "convenience" of online menusgoes away when a waiver has to bring their book of allergens to the table and manually take the order anyway.
Well that also assumes you live in a part of the world that's civilized and has an allergy book. Seen it plenty in Europe and almost never in the US. Most of the time, in the US, if you say you have an allergy to something the waiter says "I don't know" or "I'll tell the chef".
It's often the case in the UK that the mobile app/website in restaurants has full allergy information, including filters to only show items that match certain criteria.
Same. Not a fan of QR menus for plenty of reasons, but allergies isn't one of them.
Printed menus where I live (Seattle) tend to have the exact same info as the QR menus, which includes the allergen info. Which makes sense, because most of the time the QR menu is the exact same as the physical one (just printed out). And those that are not the same just have more info on the website, like full nutritional content and such.
> all the "convenience" of online menus goes away when a waiver has to bring their book of allergens to the table and manually take the order anyway.
Which is silly because an online menu is an amazing opportunity to do extensive dietary restriction support. In fact, it's so accomodative to have a filter to narrow/highlight menu choices that I'm surprised restaurants haven't done that and also made "Paleo" and other diets part of it. Plus every single menu entry could have expansions to show exact ingredients, etc., for extra research.
Honestly, a lot of it seems to boil down to that digital menus can be superior to the traditional options, but a lot of places are kind of awful at software and websites so you get a wide spread of quality, a lot of which is hilariously inferior to paper.
Please let your server know of any allergies or food intolerances. Gluten-free options are available but our kitchen is not gluten-free. Delivery, tax, and document fees extra. Void where prohibited. All rights reserved.
It's so common in the EU and UK that I think it's probably law, or a good way of complying with the law. It's specific to the restaurant's menu.
Some places will list the allergens directly on the menu, with symbols or footnotes. Less common is a separate menu showing only e.g. lactose free options -- I've seen this at nicer places in the UK.
Places like cafés and fast food where the menu is a blackboard or screen should have a book/file or similar. It is often just printed Word documents in a ringbinder, presumably prepared by the chef.
> First of, on Android, the camera doesn't magically scan the QR code.
Out of curiosity, what phones do you and your family use? Because my Android phone (a Pixel 4a) has never had any issues scanning QR codes by just pointing the camera at them.
Some OEM camera apps have built-in QR code detection (using Google Lens or something else) but not all do.
Starting in Android 13, a QR code scanner is accessible from Quick Settings on all GMS devices. This QR code scanner is built into Google Play Services though so it's not available on AOSP builds.
Right. I use F-Droid and have Google stuff turned off. I do have an app, Binary Eye, that can scan QR codes, UPC codes, Code 39, etc. But it doesn't have permission to launch a browser. I have to paste the code into Fennec. I need to do this maybe twice a year.
I've never seen QR codes in restaurants in Silicon Valley.
I have a (normal) pixel 3 and it does do it, but the UI is terrible and sometimes doesn't engage. And when it does the link shows up in what I found to be an awkward place.
I'm about 90% sure this used to work better on an older version of android.
I've certainly never tried to stop it from updating. It's on version 8.4.600.440402475.27. When I point mine at a QR code absolutely nothing at all happens
I don't know if this is the same experience for you, but for a while I would just open the camera app without realizing I had to swipe over to Google Lens mode to have it detect QR codes.
Anecdotally, between a Pixel 4a, Pixel 7 pro, OnePlus 6 and 7 Pro, none of them ever successfully scanned QR codes in photos. All required a separate app to correctly recognize QR codes.
Sorry, I meant as far as how many years it took to release an OS that natively supported QR code scanning. However, I double-checked and it looks like Oreo was the first version of Android to offer it natively via built-in Google services, and iOS got it with iOS 11, and both OSes released in 2017.
> First of, on Android, the camera doesn't magically scan the QR code.
Most Android phones do this automatically - and it's not too hard to write up a quick app for it to scan automatically when it detects a QR code.
> Second, as others have said, the social aspect of looking at it together is totally lost. Which is quite big IMHO.
My friends and I all browse together on our phones and we excitedly point out different menu items, that we can look at independently without having to cram together looking at a piece of paper. Otherwise I don't know how this is any different than having separate menus.
> Third, scrolling through a PDF or a page on a tiny screen makes it much harder to grasp the entire menu quickly. On a paper menu, I often just jump around and get inspired by the various dishes. Randomly scrolling up/down/left/right on a tiny screen feel awful compared to just letting your eyes drift.
Scrolling through a PDF / page has always been fine for my friends and I. I'm also not entirely sure why I would want my eyes to drift when actively looking for something to eat as well?
The security issue is forcing non-technical end users to troll through an app store to find "qr reader" and also not fall for the hundreds of scamware they'll encounter immediately in the search results.
If you can't write up a full-featured QR code scanner from scratch in 15 seconds, can you really call yourself a programmer?
On a more serious note, though, I wouldn't be much impressed with QR code menus. I usually have my 4G off, I don't trust random wifi networks, and I don't like smartphones as a form factor for any text over 500 characters.
HN is so ironic, they complain and criticize everything but fail to understand QR code. Are they actually a programmer or only acting like it. India already have UPI implementation while in the USA they need apple to save their useless banking system and still fail to move on with tech.
It's weird that people hate QR codes so much. Perhaps is it phenomenon only in the US? It's just a information encoded as a square, not something like Skynet.
>and it's not too hard to write up a quick app for it to scan automatically when it detects a QR code.
You're joking, right? In case you forgot the context, "not too hard" is looking at a menu that's in front of you. Writing an app to make up for the absence of the menu is definitely too hard.
The iPhone 5s from 2013 (109 months ago) scans QR codes from the default camera app just fine. Still gets security updates too. This is unparalleled in the Android ecosystem.
I’m not going to get into yet another platform flame war and I’m sure you have plenty of reasons why you selected your device and they’re valid. But if your post is about longevity and economics iPhone wins hands down.
Indeed. My iPhone 6s (lovely big screen) has worked perfectly since 2015. I'm disappointed that IOS 16 won't be available for it, but I really can't complain after continuous, impeccable compatibility for almost eight years.
And, as the parent noted, my 6s is still getting security updates; current is 15.7.1. I'd swear Apple is sneaking in some UI polishing too.
> It's 2022 and I am using a Samsung A8 phone from 2018 which is pretty good
And if it can’t scan QR codes from the camera app, that’s purely because your carrier is withholding software updates from you. It’s built-in from Android 8.0 and Samsung supports the 2018 A8 up to Android 9.
I get the sentiment, but the ire is better directed at those preventing older/cheaper phones from doing what they’re capable of.
I have a One Plus 7 Pro and it can scan QR codes, but you have to press a button in the camera app first. Not entirely intuitive up-front and a bit finnicky even once you know about it, but it's been good enough in practice.
I really would like to know how to scan QR codes without playing 3rd-party app roulette. Which button do you have to press?
I have the OnePlus 10 Pro. I've looked through all of the menus and settings, there's nothing that seems to be QR code related? Maybe they've removed the feature?
In 30 seconds, I found that you can do it by using the Google Lens feature, which is a button to the left of your zoom button in your camera app. If you don't want to use that, you can use google lens directly.
This isn't an Android vs Apple thing. Both of them introduced native QR code scanning in the same year -- 2017. That's five years ago. So I don't know what version of Android you're using, or what camera app.
But honestly, in 2022 it's kind of up to you to know how to scan a QR code, the same way you're expected to know how to type a domain name into a web browser. If someone has to teach you the first time then that's fine, there's a first time for everything, but the idea that there are people who haven't done it before isn't a reason to hold us back. And if you have a phone with a pre-2017 operating system or that otherwise doesn't support it in its native camera app, you can install an app for it.
But yes, places generally always have a backup option, whether a paper menu or tablet. I mean, people's cell phones run out of battery all the time. It's not just the elderly or non-tech-savvy ;)
They are decent as app shortcuts it seems. In the last two weeks I’ve done it twice as a replacement for typing in the name in the App Store of some targeted one-off app that is for a particular piece of hardware. In the first case it was some LED lights for my nephew. In the second case it was some light up hardware for a KPop concert I went to with my wife.
I absolutely hate it when there is a QR code with text like "Scan here for more Information" or similar - and then there is no link written or no information on how to get there without having to scan the code.
The best use I saw was on some small electronics thing I was looking at in a shop. One brand had QR codes on their boxes, which led to a full specification and the user manual -- more than could possibly have fitted on the box, especially as a European box can have 10+ languages.
Another is joining a Wifi network. I saw this at a couple of small hotels recently -- as well as giving the network name and password, there was a QR code. Scanning it prompted me something like "Do you want to join NiceViewHotel Wifi network? Yes/No" and was much quicker than typing in the key.
If my phone has something like this I would have turned it off when first going over a new phones settings. It's one of the first things I do. Go through every single menu I can find and turn off stuff I don't want. Something constantly using my camera to scan for QR codes is definitely something I will turn off. Just like say "Face ID".
Who thinks those are good ideas?
For the record I have scanned exactly 0 QR codes in my life.
You are aware that this is happening locally on your phone, right?
I have no idea whatsoever what caused you to dislike QR codes, but I kinda want to hear the story. Face Id, I can kinda see as a pin might be more secure.
Technology and software are awesome! After all, I build this stuff myself.
I also see how these things are built. I see how the sausage is made. Sometimes, when you see how the sausage was made, it can sour you. Even if you maybe didn't see how that specific sausage was made. Also, always beware of what the sausage might get used for other than the "intended purpose".
I never understood the premise for QR codes. You're trying to send me to some URL, create an SMS w/ some pre-defined text, automatically follow someone on Twitter or whatever and a bunch of other things. Until I scan the code I have no idea what it will actually do. I don't generally trust something like that not to be used for nefarious purposes. We teach people to be careful what links they click on and such. Here we teach them the opposite. If someone sticks a QR code in front of your face, just scan it! Now you can say that no restaurant ever would send you to a URL that then exploits a flaw in your browser and that there are way easier ways to compromise a system. Fair enough. Doesn't mean I have to start using QR codes for things that worked perfectly well in a non-QR code world.
Now the GP also said that restaurant people tell you to "just point your camera to it". This would indicate that there's an always on camera scanning my surroundings constantly to figure out if there's a QR code there. Frankly if that was actually the case, that would be super creepy. That is why I would disable such a function right away. Even if it's "just happening locally". Sounds a bit like that whole "they only scan your device for inappropriate pictures locally, nothing to worry about". Now combine that w/ all the new rage in "e-health" where you don't have to go stand in line for hours to see a doctor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32560361 ("Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin").
This is exactly the kind of thing I am worried about w/ any of these "advances" in technology. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
Anecdote: Just this week I ended up at a restaurant in San Jose that was QR code menu/ordering only. I don't know what format QR code they were using, but my iPhone would not read it at all. I've scanned many many codes with it in the past, but that particular one was just not having it. Luckily I was with a friend whose phone cooperated and I just paid them back. In cash.
>But honestly, in 2022 it's kind of up to you to know how to scan a QR code, the same way you're expected to know how to type a domain name into a web browser.
Why? I've literally never been in a situation where I've had to scan a QR code. I do mean never.
What benefit does a system like this provide when it's always clunkier than just having a physical object?
On an unrelated note, isn't this why all the scan-this-QR-code ads fall flat? Because it takes a lot of extra effort to actually "check out more info"?
It is not required to pay bills by scanning the QR code. It is perfectly possible to enter the IBAN and reference number manually as long as your banking provider lets you do so.
What is required is that you, when creating an invoice, provide the QR code for doing so.
I’m not sure were I said that it was required? I was responding to the comment. I see a huge benefit from scanning the QR code as it saves me trouble having to manually enter all the info. Older barcode style bills also worked but somehow scanning was always wonky.
It is supreme when sharing links in a presentation, it is supreme on business cards (since you can quickly get all the details and add them to your contacts), and it is the best thing for wireless access (just point your phone, and you are in).
Menus in restaurants are an exception. Those are better as physical objects.
But why would I want wireless access to a network that you can join by just pointing something at it? That specifically sounds like a wireless network to avoid.
And how is a QR code the best for sharing links in a presentation? Why would people want to look at what you linked during your presentation? And if it's afterwards they would need access to your presentation anyway, no? At that point a regular URL would do too.
Why would it be a wireless network to avoid? I mean, the QR code has the SSID and Password in it. For guest networks, the information is usually put up inside the areas guests go to anyway.
The way it worked at my previous employer, you had the guest network SSID and password on the wall and then the QR code, so you didn't have to type them in. There was no difference in security, just convenience.
As for during the presentation: surprisingly often, if you are doing workshops.
I have a OnePlus8 and it does not do QR code scanning. I had to install Google Lens. It's not about version of Android. The cameras are all proprietary and so are the camera apps.
As such I hate QR code menus. I'm with the boomers on this one. QR code menus are no better than touch screen menus to open the glove box.
I went to a restaurant on Friday where the sit-down experience was identical to the online-ordering take-out experience but with a table in front of the pick-up counter. The food was fantastic but I hated the experience.
Some time ago I had coffee with someone in a cafe that did the same thing. I never went back to that cafe again. We spent a full ten minutes of our ~hour time not talking to each other because we were too busy futzing with an awkward online ordering system.
I saw these during a holiday in Spain throughout the last week. I have no idea how to use them and didn't see anybody else use them either. It would probably be a different story if my phone had some kind of built-in support for this stuff (maybe it does?). I recall using the "Google Goggles" app for this kind of thing a _long_ time ago but it should be native - and obvious - by now.
I have a feeling that the industry has stopped depending on this stuff already... it's hard to tell without knowing how it works.
I hate QR codes for menus with a passion. Feels so awkward, need another app on Android, not easily read on dimly lit places. Usually I tell one of my friends to tell me the url.
On the other hand I love NFC for this. It blows my mind that it's not that common. Works perfectly and feels natural, just place your phone at the NFC tag.
I'm with you. NFC is awesome. I use NFC around the house for basic automation (Hue etc) -- and it definitely should be more common.
I was in a restaurant the other night that had QR codes printed on NFC tags, mounted on the wall for each table. The process of pulling up the menu was effortless.
I'm surprised when I see QR menus at upper-mid and high end restaurants. (Though that's mostly going away now.) For lower-mid and fast food, it's a clear cost reduction and turnover-boosting channel.
QR Code menus work well in China because you're also ordering from the menus too. You don't have to flag down a waiter and place an order unless you want to.
I've only seen that a handful of times. Most of the time I feel lucky just to get a responsive website instead of a PDF that I have to zoom in to read.
So now in the USA the waiter doesn't even bring you the menu and tell you order recommendations or the day's special? Are they still expecting you to give them 20% of tip/alms ?
This depends on the restaurant or maybe the area. In Portland the restaurants with QR menus (using Toast) always seem to have a server that brings out water and periodically refills.
99% of the restaurants I’ve been to in the US (and I live in California ) absolutely do not work that way. I’ve been to a grand total of one that does, and it was so annoying to everyone that they eventually stopped.
I don't bring my phone with me everywhere I go. I don't want to. It's big, and awkward, and annoying.
When it works, it is mediocre at best. When it doesn't work, it's a pain in the ass. Plus it means you almost never see a server. Again, great if there are no hiccups, but awful when something goes wrong.
And the huge variety of UIs are awful. Maybe in 10 years when everyone lands on one UI that make sense, and there's an IPAD at the table, and servers come by to follow up... maybe then I'll be OK with it?
2010's? Dude, I'm still in the 80's. I'm not some GenZ tiktok child who can't be with a screen for 10 seconds and thinks everything needs to be gamified. This dependency on phones is stupid. So I refuse to participate. The more people that do so, the less this BS takes over life. We're responsible for the world we live in.
Where I live in Europe the phone is used to charge transport cards, to pay at stores, to interact with banks and government, etc. Because of two factor authentication it's basically a necessity to have one for banking and certain government transactions (some of which can only be done online). I could carry around a laptop for work and business but it's far more convenient to use a smaller device.
For a month I traveled from Seville to Munich in 2019 and didn't need my phone at all. I bought food, tickets, took transit, etc. What I did NOT do was open a bank account.
So do these banks issue you a phone if you don't have one? Does the government have a law that requires citizens to own a phone? What brand? What capabilities.
There are online-only banks in the US that are only accessed through a phone, but they are not the ONLY banks.
I think you are confusing a world that CAN be accessed vs. a world that MUST be accessed via phone.
My banking and bill paying is basically online only. It's not obligatory but it's far, far more convenient online.
Debit cards still exist but they are being phased out slowly in favor of NFC.
To board transport I can still use a card but recharging it is easier via an app than by standing in line at a machine where I'd have to pay with a card or cash.
At work we often communicate via group chats. It's quicker and less intrusive than phoning or emailing. I don't love it but I'm accustomed.
To pay taxes or fines to report to the city that a tree branch fell to consult my property tax info or medical records or to get an appointment for minor surgery - it's all easiest or only possible online.
Online means via app on phone generally. Most of us don't carry around anything more expensive than a 150 euro Chinese phone.
> My banking and bill paying is basically online only. It's not obligatory but it's far, far more convenient online.
So, not a necessity.
> Debit cards still exist but they are being phased out slowly in favor of NFC.
Not a necessity (and I expect by "phased out" you mean you see them less).
> To board transport I can still use a card but recharging it is easier via an app than by standing in line at a machine where I'd have to pay with a card or cash.
Not a necessity.
> At work we often communicate via group chats. It's quicker and less intrusive than phoning or emailing. I don't love it but I'm accustomed.
I assume you have a work device and this is during work hours? If so, not a necessity.
> To pay taxes or fines to report to the city that a tree branch fell to consult my property tax info or medical records or to get an appointment for minor surgery - it's all easiest or only possible online.
Easiest = not a necessity.
You've just detailed things that _you_ find more convenient to do on your phone and that you are able (and encouraged) to do. But not one of them appears to require a phone, or - outside of your specific job - even internet.
My experience with QR-code menus has been nearly always terrible. Little to no thought goes into the format and presentation for a small screen device. Many restaurants just return a large PDF with microscopic fonts that you have to struggle to read on your small screen.
While some restaurants have a waiter taking orders, others enforce ordering via the same webapp. I've almost always run into problems where the order process hangs, or doesn't go through correctly.
There's a specially nasty surprise on iOS devices. Sure you can use the built-in QR code scanner and it pops up a webapp where you take 10 minutes to struggle through everything.... and now you just want to check that message from your friend to see if he's on the way, quickly switch to your favourite messaging app and then.... anger at not being able to find where the heck your menu and ordering process disappeared, because you didn't know that you should have explicitly ordered your phone to open the page in safari.
When presented with ordering via the web app, you often are just getting whatever the server sees on their tablet, filtered through a simple web interface.
And then you can have fun ordering the True Impossible orders, like using the McDonalds app to buy a cheeseburger with no cheese, no bun, no sauce, no onion, no pickle, and no meat.
Hopefully these restaurants will go extinct via natural selection. It takes so much longer to convince these broken portals to take your order. Which means the restaurant is losing money at peak times.
I had some friends come visit me here in Nashville for a week earlier this month. We went out to eat almost every day, and I did not encounter a single one of these. Where have these things taken off?
Interesting. I spent a month in San Diego earlier this year, but maybe I didn't go to the right places, or maybe it's because San Diego is conservative relative to some other parts of California.
Some restaurants paid a lot of money for QR-code things, and those push it from some kind of "sunk cost" fallacy I feel.
Out of 5 restaurants in Miami only two had QR codes, and one revealed menus instantly at the slightest hint that someone at the table couldn't read the code.
When they became widespread during the covid lockdowns they were a good solution when we wanted to avoid spreading things by touch. Even how, as long as you can still ask for a printed menu, I think the QR code menu is a reasonable default as long as the menu is relatively simple. If there are a lot of options it becomes cumbersome.
Now, I f you have to order through their menu site, that almost never works well. Those sites are just not well run enough to pull off ordering well.
I hate QR menu's. Younger me is absolutely appalled at that. Older me just wants a physical menu.
* I intentionally don't use my phone at restaurants. In fact, I often prefer to leave it in the car.
* In my area (rural America), a lot of businesses have really poor websites (noticeably worse than urban areas). Nearly all of the QR menus are down right terrible.
* There's a good chance some one thought it'd be great to have a bunch of collapsed sections and add a terrible animation. I need to manually expand each section and deal with the terrible animation repositioning the screen.
* For those less tech savvy businesses, they probably just uploaded a PDF of their menu. Bonus points if the menu is scanned in on their 15 year old printer/scanner combo.
* Finally, there's the group of restaurants that have changed menus but either (1) forget to update the website (2) accidentally have multiple, differing copies of the menu
I was at a food court a couple of months ago (sorry... "food hall") and one of the stalls didn't have a printed menu at all. Not even one available on request. Just a QR code.
Website is easier to translate and likely quicker to load. Search is similar whether its pdf or website.
I like qr codes as an option.
It all varies by context of course, but I much prefer ordering uk/nz style - order at the bar, pay, grab drinks yourself, food gets delivered by waiter. Much faster, esp when you are getting a single cup of coffee.
That's common in Britain for cheaper places, especially ordinary pubs serving food. At most middle or fancy restaurants you order from the waiter who comes to the table.
Bonus points for the menu PDF file being hundreds of megabytes because it's their high res file for the printing company. Double bonus if their restaurant is a mobile service dead zone.
And needing a lot of panning and zooming due to being based on a full page format which is unsuitable for a phone.
It also feels awkward because you stimulate everyone to pick up their phone as soon as you come in. I'm still from the generation that considers that something too avoid :)
You've got it backwards. The big files are menus that have been scanned with no compression at high resolution. Most of that info is vector/font on a properly designed menu.
I'm luckily in a rural area where we still have washable menus (literally printed on dishwasher-proof plastic) and I've not seen a QR code ... well, ever.
And the tide is turning, the waiter at a high-class joint we went to in another big city noticed some hesitation with the QR code and revealed normal menus.
> they probably just uploaded a PDF of their menu.
Tbh, this is usually the least bad outcome with QR code menus since at least it's usually just the same as the physical one but on my screen (worse than physical, but not "badly designed JavaScript animation hell" worse) *
Exactly the same sentiments. My family is zero phones when eating, whether home or out.
Luckily, most places would bring a physical menu when asked. One claimed they didn't have any, and seemingly made no effort to accommodate, so they just lost our business. At minimum, I don't think it's too much to ask for a single chalkboard or screen or something. Having nothing and demanding users scan QR codes is low effort.
Do you hate all QR menus or only the dysfunctional ones?
Most are terrible , but occasionally it’s a light web application where I can order and pay directly from. Which I like very much. I do dread the scanned menu PDFs though, they’re crimes against humanity
There are many services that provide nice web menus for the restaurants to use with QR Codes. The terrible state of any restaurant menu would be only because the restaurant is not aware of the service and the service providers failed to market their product to them.
673 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadIt’s the same as loud music or other bad aspects of restaurants. Just because vast number of people like it doesn’t mean I have to as well.
We're just talking about QR codes that open up a PDF or HTML page that shows the menu. It's not online ordering.
I mean I've seen online ordering as an option at a couple of places that I thought was cool, but you didn't have to. Literally everywhere else I've been (in NYC) it's just been a static menu. Not tracking you.
But obviously no, I did the restaurant no favor. I financially deprived the restaurant of income, and the server unfortunately of a tip. And I tip big.
I don't owe the restaurant a visit. They do owe me an experience. If it begins with struggling with their QR menu system, I'm opting out for a variety of reasons.
And a struggle it is. First find the mode where QR results is something actionable (I have an older phone) Hopefully their WIFI is exceptional, and the password not onerous.
Then answer their marketing questions. Finally peer at a too-small menu you have to scroll through on a tiny screen with terrible pictures.
Find something interesting? How to share it with your dining partner(s). No, can't point to their menu or say "Page three on the bottom!". No, you have to give them your phone. Oops! They touched something or it scrolled or went into low-power.
It's a fairly miserable experience for some of us.
If I'm not really hungry, or if the food isn't easily visible, I do the same as you do: yes, I carry a computer, but refuse to use it in most restaurants.
If McDonalds can afford some wall poster with pictures + names and prices, I'm sure most restaurants can. So the question is more why don't they want to? Even a flier by the door would be enough for me!
However, on a site were most people love pushing tech even when the best solutions are not technological, I wouldn't be surprised if we were in the minority and people tried to rationalize using QR codes.
> Even a flier by the door would be enough for me!
I wonder how many restaurants there are who can't afford paper flyers. They might even be faster/easier than maintaining an online menu.
(You know the food's going to be good when the picture is faded from 15 years of sunlight.)
It's a fundamentally horrible experience and will definitely keep me from going back.
However, I would probably not go back to a place that had a terrifyingly horrible UI for ordering, either.
Not that it should replace all dining experiences but wait staff free dining when ordering from a bar + kitchen is superior for these instances.
The ability to just get up an walk off without synchronous negotiation is a more relaxed dining experience, the ability to have people progressively join and leave your party is also fantastic and can facilitate an old school community dining hall experience.
There are a few UIs I like for mobile, many are quite poor though.
Keep a few backup printouts for those who need them (like your phone gets no signal), but otherwise it's a fantastic step forwards. Goodbye to grimy wasteful printouts.
Plus the bonus of never having to experience "oh sorry we're out of that" if they update the menus dynamically is fantastic.
If I recall correctly before Covid Applebees had some weird off-brand tablet thing on the table that looked like you could badly order via it, but mainly what it did was not work for playing some horrible Android game.
I suppose it could be used as a projectile.
The fun fact was that the waiter actually gave us paper menus when sitting us, without even asking, though they also introduced the gizmo.
I actually found that quite nice, since they had a wide selection of beers and there was a beer-selection app that would go in the details of each beer and allowed us to easily choose the kind we wanted.
In Santiago, Chile I was handed waiter’s phone with a menu from some local takeout when I informed them that I can’t read their menu hosted via QR since i don’t have data.
In South America it’s unfortunately popular to just have QR leading you to a huge PDF hosted somewhere in US to read a menu. Even in places that barely have internet like in the mountains… And more often than not they don’t have paper backups.
And then you keep scrolling back and forth on your iPhone trying to read them.
Bonus points if you put the pdf in an iFrame in a site that’s off the bootstrap template but they forgot to include the js file so it zooms the hamburger button instead of the pdf when you pinch and refreshes the page when you jerk it too much.
If it can be done right, but not done right heavy majority of the time, then it is fair to declare that approach as worse.
* fits screen well
* has great filter/sort/search option
* loads quick
* can be updated live
All you need to sell this is go out to eat and find shitty implementations!
Edit: on a 2nd thought - how would family order look like - the kids need some way to link their orders (albeit having phones) to the payment. You'd need a temp password/pin for everyone to link to?
This seems like a complete non-issue.
The ones paying the check are the ones making the orders. Makes splitting the check a solved problem by default. If it is a family with kids making the order, the kids simply pick what they want (no linking required for just browsing the menu), tell the parent what they want, and the parents order from their device. I don't think it is a hard necessity for everyone ordering stuff by themselves. Whoever pays the final bill can handle actually ordering the food.
Normally I'd pay the bill entirely (split whatever is non-issue at all) - however picking items for everyone is just bizarre, e.g. everyone would have to tell what to order, I would have to find and not mess up - in short not fun at all, cosplaying the waiting staff
It’s remarkable how particular non-IT industries attract personalities that are more or less technically averse than others. Arts and media, retail, building contractors: generally quite competent. Lawyers, medical: usually pretty bad.
Restauranteurs: the most technically inept grandparent you’ve ever encountered, the one who insists that if they ever touch a mouse it will catch on fire, and then somehow proves it
lol, somehow so true.
I remember helping an older relative. They said they needed my help ASAP because Dish network was coming because they deleted their account. Couldn't get any details. Eventually saw they simply deleted an email about their bill.
Only sorta related but I wonder why it seems so hard for some to adjust while others do just fine. It seems like it would make sense that "email is just like real mail, its just on a screen." Maybe the "infinite options" scare them a bit?
When I was a teen in the nineties, I was the go-to guy in the neighborhood for fixing computers (beats mowing lawns). One trick I figured out was, I could demonstrate something like plug in a RAM chip or CD-ROM drive, take the parts back out, and then tell them to do it.
Even though their problems were invariably software-driven (fcking windows), just having that hands-on experience — not much different from changing your oil — would usually be all it took. The fear would be gone.
It's way better now, but for a long time I would go to woodworking sites (before it was trendy), and if you got much past GeoCities level sites it was almost a miracle.
Edit: Downvotes? For simply sharing my conflicting experience? Okay.
And yet it's almost guaranteed that your phone has far more germs and bacteria on it than those menus
Also... I can imagine why it could be reasonable to assume my phone might have the same number of germs as the menu... but how on earth do you guarantee it has far more?
No, more likely it has particles of feces. Bon appetit!
Until it's the prices that are dynamically updated.
Soon enough they'll use the information collected from your device to look up your income level, how often you've visited in the past, what kinds of things you're most likely to order, etc and use that data to set a price for your menu alone and suddenly you're paying more than the person next to you who is ordering the same thing.
>when they're printing hundreds of fresh menus a day
They change the menu every day? Around here the menus are commonly placed in a book alike folder or the least they will have a plastic slip. As for waste the online part (with datacenters and all) would be more wasteful/less green.
>Plus the bonus of never having to experience "oh sorry we're out of that" if they update the menus dynamically is fantastic.
So they need to link the kitchen to the menu system in real time. That feels unliklely - most of the menus would mostly static web (or worse pdf) interfaces, and an order button.
You say that like it's a given, but why? Products that can dynamically update the menu when something is out of stock with a couple of touches from FOH staff already exist. It's not exactly complex.
> I don't quite see how I could customize any order with a web interface, realistically (food intolerances).
This is harder, but that's why I don't think you can replace all your staff with a web interface - you still need a human in the loop to ask about important things like this.
Does that ever happen in the US? 90% of the menus I've seen via QR codes, and more generally online, are out of date. Often by months. I've gotten "sorry we're out ofthat" just as often with the new tech as with the old. I guess it's great that restaurateurs elsewhere get this right - most of the positive comments seem to be from Europe - but for the OP and a significant percentage of HN readers that's clearly not the case.
The hostess is supposed to seat you with them
I don’t mind using an app to pay when I’m done though. Especially if I don’t have to wait for the server.
Having said that, I hope we can all agree that paying directly by phone is one of the unambiguously great COVID-era innovations.
In that case, they could just hand out menus at the entrance. Or if they don't greet you and instead just let you sit wherever, they can just put the menus in an obvious place. Restaurants have done this forever in similar situations. Online menus aren't necessary to solve this problem.
> Having said that, I hope we can all agree that paying directly by phone is one of the unambiguously great COVID-era innovations.
I don't really agree. At least I don't think it's an unambiguously great innovation. Personally I find the requirement to have a phone much more irritating than to the requirement to have cash or credit cards. That said, I've never seen a place accept payments by phone not accept either cash or credit cards so I guess it's mostly just irrelevant to me.
This article and the comments here are complaining about restaurants who _only_ use QR codes for menus. I'd presume there is basically no one against having the _option_ of seeing the menu with a QR code. While I personally find QR codes much inferior to many other simpler approaches (paper slips, menus at the door, menu on the wall, etc.), I don't care if they offer them in addition to traditional methods.
Yes, I also found this sentence to be very naive. No, they don't have the 2-second task of handing you a menu, instead they have the 2-minute task of explaining why there's no menu, trying to find the QR code reader on your phone, waiting for it to actually show up, then handing the phone back to you and demonstrating how to navigate between pages.
In many places physical menus are handed out by a hostess whose whole job is to seat you and do that. If I want to "give them a break", I often just cook or get takeout. Physical menus are not hard to do and are much more friendly than reading from the palm of your hand.
I have never experienced a weird website as is described in this thread. Discussing with people I'm dining with is also... the same? I have no clue how you are experiencing something different here.
Digital menus are not hard to do and are much more friendly. That said, this could all depend on how modern the area you regularly dine at - I'd expect less tech-savvy regions to fumble at this, which may indeed be your experience!
Life tip: tipping in cash is always preferred (by the tipee) over doing so digitally.
Thanks, but I'm going to tip through the normal tipping mechanism with my normal payment method to ensure that everyone stays honest.
And that probably includes the honest GrubHub drivers who invariably ditch my drink if they decide I haven't tipped high enough in the app.
No, we can't all agree to that. I dislike it deeply and won't do it. But I'm glad it pleases some people!
I'm not sure how you could call grocery stores as having "semi-monopoly positions" and being "extremely profitable", when they have razor thin profit margins.
That's not what "monopoly" means. Whether you "have to eat" is irrelevant. Most states have monopolies on gambling, but even though nobody has to buy lottery tickets, it's still a monopoly.
> I can rent or buy a house.
But you still need to get shelter somehow, right? ;)
After payment, the customer takes the basket to a 3rd location to bag their groceries and leave. There are clerks available to assist.
It is amazingly fast, I had the misfortune of shopping at 6:00 pm. I looked at the lines and estimated twenty minute checkout, actually got finished in about five minutes. The basket size limits the amount of groceries which is a minus, but helps move around the store quickly vs a huge cart and checks out faster.
Only if you don't count the time waiting in line before it's your turn. Consider this analogy: you have a single-threaded task that takes 30 seconds to complete on CPU X, which has 4 cores, or 1 minute to complete on CPU Y, which has 24 cores. If your task is the only one running, then CPU X will finish it faster, but if there are 20 other tasks that also need to run, then CPU Y will finish yours faster.
tldr; It's a UI/UX problem that can be fixed. The idea itself is sound.
But if you are operating a fine dining establishment(1), where the food is but one component of the experience, and you have a QR code printed on a piece of paper taped to the table ... you're really taking away from the experience you're supposed to be selling.
(1) There are some limited exceptions for places which make a quirky tech vibe part of the experience, which mostly comes up in certain types of sushi bars.
What kind of sushi bars are you talking about here? When I think of fine-dining sushi bars, quirky tech vibe is sort of the furthest thing on my mind.
Chinese hotpot, Korean BBQ, Japanese dining that isn't just sushi bars, Thai and Vietnamese places (among many others) quite often use digital menus as well as digital ordering. None of these exhibit a "quirky tech vibe", aside from some places which use robots to deliver small side dishes, or beverages. Many of these would also not be considered "quick and efficient", at least how you describe them.
It would be good to consider venturing outside your regular dining locales to see what the rest of the world is doing in terms of restaurant experience, and whether the American way is still even relevant.
First of, on Android, the camera doesn't magically scan the QR code. You have to download a separate QR code scanner app for that. My wife and my parents all have Android phones and have no idea what to do when they see a QR code like that. The waiter usually just says "point your camera to it" because apparently everyone in the world assumes you have an iPhone and that's how it works there. When it doesn't work the waiter now has to do tech support on a random person's phone.
Second, as others have said, the social aspect of looking at it together is totally lost. Which is quite big IMHO.
Third, scrolling through a PDF or a page on a tiny screen makes it much harder to grasp the entire menu quickly. On a paper menu, I often just jump around and get inspired by the various dishes. Randomly scrolling up/down/left/right on a tiny screen feel awful compared to just letting your eyes drift.
My vote is for a QR code and paper menus. Let the people decide what they like without excluding elderly or non-tech savvy people.
Also, if you are dining with someone who has a food allergy, then all the "convenience" of online menusgoes away when a waiver has to bring their book of allergens to the table and manually take the order anyway.
It's often the case in the UK that the mobile app/website in restaurants has full allergy information, including filters to only show items that match certain criteria.
Printed menus where I live (Seattle) tend to have the exact same info as the QR menus, which includes the allergen info. Which makes sense, because most of the time the QR menu is the exact same as the physical one (just printed out). And those that are not the same just have more info on the website, like full nutritional content and such.
The QR menu is just a PDF of the printed menu.
Which is silly because an online menu is an amazing opportunity to do extensive dietary restriction support. In fact, it's so accomodative to have a filter to narrow/highlight menu choices that I'm surprised restaurants haven't done that and also made "Paleo" and other diets part of it. Plus every single menu entry could have expansions to show exact ingredients, etc., for extra research.
Wow, they have book of allergens?
Is that with list of dushes from specific restoraunt? Or ith general reference book?
Never saw that in my country. I guess we don't use these. If you have allergy you are just screwed.
Some places will list the allergens directly on the menu, with symbols or footnotes. Less common is a separate menu showing only e.g. lactose free options -- I've seen this at nicer places in the UK.
Places like cafés and fast food where the menu is a blackboard or screen should have a book/file or similar. It is often just printed Word documents in a ringbinder, presumably prepared by the chef.
McDonald's example: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g18704... (just see the picture)
Ryanair in-flight menu example with symbols: https://www.foodsmatter.com/allergy_intolerance/management_t...
(Might _ua mean Ukraine? Then FWIW, I've seen this system in Romania, Bulgaria and Poland.)
Out of curiosity, what phones do you and your family use? Because my Android phone (a Pixel 4a) has never had any issues scanning QR codes by just pointing the camera at them.
Starting in Android 13, a QR code scanner is accessible from Quick Settings on all GMS devices. This QR code scanner is built into Google Play Services though so it's not available on AOSP builds.
I've never seen QR codes in restaurants in Silicon Valley.
I'm about 90% sure this used to work better on an older version of android.
Most Android phones do this automatically - and it's not too hard to write up a quick app for it to scan automatically when it detects a QR code.
> Second, as others have said, the social aspect of looking at it together is totally lost. Which is quite big IMHO.
My friends and I all browse together on our phones and we excitedly point out different menu items, that we can look at independently without having to cram together looking at a piece of paper. Otherwise I don't know how this is any different than having separate menus.
> Third, scrolling through a PDF or a page on a tiny screen makes it much harder to grasp the entire menu quickly. On a paper menu, I often just jump around and get inspired by the various dishes. Randomly scrolling up/down/left/right on a tiny screen feel awful compared to just letting your eyes drift.
Scrolling through a PDF / page has always been fine for my friends and I. I'm also not entirely sure why I would want my eyes to drift when actively looking for something to eat as well?
You just 'write up a quick app' in the middle of a restaurant?
On a more serious note, though, I wouldn't be much impressed with QR code menus. I usually have my 4G off, I don't trust random wifi networks, and I don't like smartphones as a form factor for any text over 500 characters.
You're joking, right? In case you forgot the context, "not too hard" is looking at a menu that's in front of you. Writing an app to make up for the absence of the menu is definitely too hard.
Not everyone makes $450,000 USD a year and can change phone every month, I am sorry.
You want to come in to my business and give me money? Upgrade your phone!
Then scroll through a 4" version of the 18" menu we scanned in and then threw away.
I’m not going to get into yet another platform flame war and I’m sure you have plenty of reasons why you selected your device and they’re valid. But if your post is about longevity and economics iPhone wins hands down.
And, as the parent noted, my 6s is still getting security updates; current is 15.7.1. I'd swear Apple is sneaking in some UI polishing too.
And if it can’t scan QR codes from the camera app, that’s purely because your carrier is withholding software updates from you. It’s built-in from Android 8.0 and Samsung supports the 2018 A8 up to Android 9.
I get the sentiment, but the ire is better directed at those preventing older/cheaper phones from doing what they’re capable of.
I have the OnePlus 10 Pro. I've looked through all of the menus and settings, there's nothing that seems to be QR code related? Maybe they've removed the feature?
"oneplus 10 pro qr": https://www.google.com/search?q=OnePlus+10+Pro+qr
In 30 seconds, I found that you can do it by using the Google Lens feature, which is a button to the left of your zoom button in your camera app. If you don't want to use that, you can use google lens directly.
But honestly, in 2022 it's kind of up to you to know how to scan a QR code, the same way you're expected to know how to type a domain name into a web browser. If someone has to teach you the first time then that's fine, there's a first time for everything, but the idea that there are people who haven't done it before isn't a reason to hold us back. And if you have a phone with a pre-2017 operating system or that otherwise doesn't support it in its native camera app, you can install an app for it.
But yes, places generally always have a backup option, whether a paper menu or tablet. I mean, people's cell phones run out of battery all the time. It's not just the elderly or non-tech-savvy ;)
Another is joining a Wifi network. I saw this at a couple of small hotels recently -- as well as giving the network name and password, there was a QR code. Scanning it prompted me something like "Do you want to join NiceViewHotel Wifi network? Yes/No" and was much quicker than typing in the key.
Who thinks those are good ideas?
For the record I have scanned exactly 0 QR codes in my life.
I have no idea whatsoever what caused you to dislike QR codes, but I kinda want to hear the story. Face Id, I can kinda see as a pin might be more secure.
I also see how these things are built. I see how the sausage is made. Sometimes, when you see how the sausage was made, it can sour you. Even if you maybe didn't see how that specific sausage was made. Also, always beware of what the sausage might get used for other than the "intended purpose".
I never understood the premise for QR codes. You're trying to send me to some URL, create an SMS w/ some pre-defined text, automatically follow someone on Twitter or whatever and a bunch of other things. Until I scan the code I have no idea what it will actually do. I don't generally trust something like that not to be used for nefarious purposes. We teach people to be careful what links they click on and such. Here we teach them the opposite. If someone sticks a QR code in front of your face, just scan it! Now you can say that no restaurant ever would send you to a URL that then exploits a flaw in your browser and that there are way easier ways to compromise a system. Fair enough. Doesn't mean I have to start using QR codes for things that worked perfectly well in a non-QR code world.
Now the GP also said that restaurant people tell you to "just point your camera to it". This would indicate that there's an always on camera scanning my surroundings constantly to figure out if there's a QR code there. Frankly if that was actually the case, that would be super creepy. That is why I would disable such a function right away. Even if it's "just happening locally". Sounds a bit like that whole "they only scan your device for inappropriate pictures locally, nothing to worry about". Now combine that w/ all the new rage in "e-health" where you don't have to go stand in line for hours to see a doctor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32560361 ("Google refuses to reinstate account after man took medical images of son’s groin").
This is exactly the kind of thing I am worried about w/ any of these "advances" in technology. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
Why? I've literally never been in a situation where I've had to scan a QR code. I do mean never.
What benefit does a system like this provide when it's always clunkier than just having a physical object?
On an unrelated note, isn't this why all the scan-this-QR-code ads fall flat? Because it takes a lot of extra effort to actually "check out more info"?
[1] https://www.six-group.com/en/newsroom/media-releases/2020/20...
What is required is that you, when creating an invoice, provide the QR code for doing so.
Menus in restaurants are an exception. Those are better as physical objects.
And how is a QR code the best for sharing links in a presentation? Why would people want to look at what you linked during your presentation? And if it's afterwards they would need access to your presentation anyway, no? At that point a regular URL would do too.
The way it worked at my previous employer, you had the guest network SSID and password on the wall and then the QR code, so you didn't have to type them in. There was no difference in security, just convenience.
As for during the presentation: surprisingly often, if you are doing workshops.
As such I hate QR code menus. I'm with the boomers on this one. QR code menus are no better than touch screen menus to open the glove box.
Some time ago I had coffee with someone in a cafe that did the same thing. I never went back to that cafe again. We spent a full ten minutes of our ~hour time not talking to each other because we were too busy futzing with an awkward online ordering system.
I have a feeling that the industry has stopped depending on this stuff already... it's hard to tell without knowing how it works.
On the other hand I love NFC for this. It blows my mind that it's not that common. Works perfectly and feels natural, just place your phone at the NFC tag.
I was in a restaurant the other night that had QR codes printed on NFC tags, mounted on the wall for each table. The process of pulling up the menu was effortless.
Don’t blame poor service on a QR code.
I've seen that at a couple of spots, but the vast majority are just a link to a menu. You order through the server.
And even where I've seen ordering through your phone, it's was just an option for those who prefer it. Not the only, or even recommended, way.
I don't bring my phone with me everywhere I go. I don't want to. It's big, and awkward, and annoying.
When it works, it is mediocre at best. When it doesn't work, it's a pain in the ass. Plus it means you almost never see a server. Again, great if there are no hiccups, but awful when something goes wrong.
And the huge variety of UIs are awful. Maybe in 10 years when everyone lands on one UI that make sense, and there's an IPAD at the table, and servers come by to follow up... maybe then I'll be OK with it?
So do these banks issue you a phone if you don't have one? Does the government have a law that requires citizens to own a phone? What brand? What capabilities.
There are online-only banks in the US that are only accessed through a phone, but they are not the ONLY banks.
I think you are confusing a world that CAN be accessed vs. a world that MUST be accessed via phone.
you: (moves goalposts)
My banking and bill paying is basically online only. It's not obligatory but it's far, far more convenient online.
Debit cards still exist but they are being phased out slowly in favor of NFC.
To board transport I can still use a card but recharging it is easier via an app than by standing in line at a machine where I'd have to pay with a card or cash.
At work we often communicate via group chats. It's quicker and less intrusive than phoning or emailing. I don't love it but I'm accustomed.
To pay taxes or fines to report to the city that a tree branch fell to consult my property tax info or medical records or to get an appointment for minor surgery - it's all easiest or only possible online.
Online means via app on phone generally. Most of us don't carry around anything more expensive than a 150 euro Chinese phone.
> My banking and bill paying is basically online only. It's not obligatory but it's far, far more convenient online.
So, not a necessity.
> Debit cards still exist but they are being phased out slowly in favor of NFC.
Not a necessity (and I expect by "phased out" you mean you see them less).
> To board transport I can still use a card but recharging it is easier via an app than by standing in line at a machine where I'd have to pay with a card or cash.
Not a necessity.
> At work we often communicate via group chats. It's quicker and less intrusive than phoning or emailing. I don't love it but I'm accustomed.
I assume you have a work device and this is during work hours? If so, not a necessity.
> To pay taxes or fines to report to the city that a tree branch fell to consult my property tax info or medical records or to get an appointment for minor surgery - it's all easiest or only possible online.
Easiest = not a necessity.
You've just detailed things that _you_ find more convenient to do on your phone and that you are able (and encouraged) to do. But not one of them appears to require a phone, or - outside of your specific job - even internet.
While some restaurants have a waiter taking orders, others enforce ordering via the same webapp. I've almost always run into problems where the order process hangs, or doesn't go through correctly.
There's a specially nasty surprise on iOS devices. Sure you can use the built-in QR code scanner and it pops up a webapp where you take 10 minutes to struggle through everything.... and now you just want to check that message from your friend to see if he's on the way, quickly switch to your favourite messaging app and then.... anger at not being able to find where the heck your menu and ordering process disappeared, because you didn't know that you should have explicitly ordered your phone to open the page in safari.
And then you can have fun ordering the True Impossible orders, like using the McDonalds app to buy a cheeseburger with no cheese, no bun, no sauce, no onion, no pickle, and no meat.
Hopefully these restaurants will go extinct via natural selection. It takes so much longer to convince these broken portals to take your order. Which means the restaurant is losing money at peak times.
Out of 5 restaurants in Miami only two had QR codes, and one revealed menus instantly at the slightest hint that someone at the table couldn't read the code.
It started as a hygiene thing. Now it's stayed as a convenience thing.
At this point in NYC I'm extremely surprised whenever I see a physical menu.
Now, I f you have to order through their menu site, that almost never works well. Those sites are just not well run enough to pull off ordering well.
* I intentionally don't use my phone at restaurants. In fact, I often prefer to leave it in the car.
* In my area (rural America), a lot of businesses have really poor websites (noticeably worse than urban areas). Nearly all of the QR menus are down right terrible.
* There's a good chance some one thought it'd be great to have a bunch of collapsed sections and add a terrible animation. I need to manually expand each section and deal with the terrible animation repositioning the screen.
* For those less tech savvy businesses, they probably just uploaded a PDF of their menu. Bonus points if the menu is scanned in on their 15 year old printer/scanner combo.
* Finally, there's the group of restaurants that have changed menus but either (1) forget to update the website (2) accidentally have multiple, differing copies of the menu
Just print a few hundred pieces of paper, and your customers will tell your employees which listed items they want.
I went to another stall.
I like qr codes as an option.
It all varies by context of course, but I much prefer ordering uk/nz style - order at the bar, pay, grab drinks yourself, food gets delivered by waiter. Much faster, esp when you are getting a single cup of coffee.
It also feels awkward because you stimulate everyone to pick up their phone as soon as you come in. I'm still from the generation that considers that something too avoid :)
Always amusing when the menu is on QR but the wine list is a normal printed paper.
And the tide is turning, the waiter at a high-class joint we went to in another big city noticed some hesitation with the QR code and revealed normal menus.
Tbh, this is usually the least bad outcome with QR code menus since at least it's usually just the same as the physical one but on my screen (worse than physical, but not "badly designed JavaScript animation hell" worse) *
Luckily, most places would bring a physical menu when asked. One claimed they didn't have any, and seemingly made no effort to accommodate, so they just lost our business. At minimum, I don't think it's too much to ask for a single chalkboard or screen or something. Having nothing and demanding users scan QR codes is low effort.
It's compounded by the fact that I currently use a Unihertz Titan Pocket. Physical keyboard, but only a 3" screen.