[HN Gopher] QR codes have replaced restaurant menus. Industry ex...
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QR codes have replaced restaurant menus. Industry experts say it
isn't a fad
Author : hiddencache
Score : 10 points
Date : 2021-08-21 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| avastmick wrote:
| I saw this roll out in China five years go when we lived there as
| a family for some years. The mobile platforms there are much more
| highly integrated than in the West, with in-built payments and
| reviews all in-app. So it was all very friction free. The locals
| were not all happy about it. Younger people took to it well. But
| it was great for expats who found the language(s) hard to
| navigate person to person. It cut down on wait times in busy
| restaurants and those with staff hesitant to serve foreigners
| with likely no local language skills. It seemed more efficient as
| the waiters generally took your order and then rekeyed into an
| order app, either there and then or at the serving station. I
| guess at high-end restaurants it would lack the personal and
| tailored dining experience. But for average places I found it an
| improvement over the often spotty experience of in person order
| taking with mistakes in ordering or forgotten items etc. It's new
| so not everyone likes it. Without better integrated payment and
| feedback the UX will likely be clunky for a good while.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Industry experts want everyone to get used to them so they can
| start filling them with ads is my guess. No thanks.
| tehlike wrote:
| A/b test on pricing(or even personalization of pricing) comes to
| mind.
| cinntaile wrote:
| What's the advantage over a regular menu? That you don't have to
| wait for the waiter? I get the point when paying but for the menu
| I'm not seeing it. Is the entire menu baked in the QR code or is
| it actually just a URL to a website?
| thenanyu wrote:
| Vendors can have a translated version of your menu in many
| languages without having to maintain hard copies of each, or
| running out of a particular language on a day the tour bus
| arrives.
|
| Vendors can mark items as sold out for the day in real time.
|
| Vendors can re-price without needing to print all new menus or
| make ugly and tedious modifications on existing menus.
|
| Patrons can place their order and pay the bill through the menu
| system.
|
| Patrons don't need to wait to be provided a menu.
|
| Patrons don't need to handle an item that's been touched by
| dozens-hundreds of people that day.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Vendors /can/ do those things, but I've never seen it done.
| What I have seen are lots of static PDFs with no
| consideration for mobile friendly viewing. And you still have
| to wait for the waiter to place your order.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| There's your startup opportunity. Bonus points if you add
| surge pricing and the ability to tack on 15% to every item
| if the party is obviously there on an expense account or
| just looks like a bunch of rich guys.
| toper-centage wrote:
| That I don't need to stare at a small, bright, distracting
| screen when I'm there to relax and enjoy time with friends. Add
| to that that most restaurants have terrible accessibility in
| these digital menus, like PDFs with tiny fonts, poor zooming
| capabilities, etc. Paper menus don't waste my data and battery.
| They are also inherintly private and don't communicate my
| personal data to others.
| filoleg wrote:
| I think you might have misread the parent comment, because
| you are agreeing with them, but it feels like you are arguing
| against them. The parent comment was stating that they don't
| see much extra benefit to QR codes over paper menus, so they
| are asking if they are missing any potential benefits and why
| anyone would prefer QR codes. And you say that the benefits
| include not having to stare at a small screen instead of
| enjoying time with friends, which sounds like a benefit of
| paper menus, not QR codes.
|
| I am fully with you on your points btw, i vastly prefer paper
| menus over QR codes myself. Especially given that every
| single time i dealt with a QR code at a restaurant over the
| past year, it was always just a URL to their website. Which
| suffers from bajillion different issues (in addition to the
| inherent ones, like having to stare at your phone screen and
| attempting to navigate it, instead of having it all in one
| place on a large piece of paper), pick as many as you want
| from this list:
|
| * poor website layout rendered on phone
|
| * bajillion different menus (brunch menu, weekend menu, happy
| hour menu, dinner menu, etc.) without any clear indication
| which of them is currently active ("oh, you want item X? Too
| bad, we are currently on our lunch menu at 3pm that switches
| to happy hour menu at 4pm until 7pm, but normally it would be
| dinner menu at 4pm, but today is friday, so it is different,
| but on weekends you can pick from both happy hour and dinner
| items after 4pm")
|
| * outdated items on the website, some of which aren't
| available
|
| None of those are imo inherent problems with qr codes/online
| menus, but so far I've seen exactly zero establishments that
| put any thought into this. Theoretically, online menus could
| offer tons of advantages over paper menus. Two very obvious
| examples off the top of my head:
|
| * for restaurants that tend to run out of certain menu items
| throughout the course of the day, they could update the
| availability status for those items in their online menus, so
| that customers could easily see what they can actually order.
| Instead of wasting waiter's time with "I want to order item
| X. Oh, it isn't available right now? Can you come back in 5
| mins, I need some time to pick another one."
|
| * they could at least show "current active menu", instead of
| having to make you figure out which of the bajillion menus is
| the one that applies right now (weekend menu, brunch menu,
| dinner menu, happy hour menu, or some mix of multiple ones?)
|
| * stretch/bonus goal: ordering items to the table and paying
| the check through the portal, though this is actually a
| significant task/feature to implement, compared to the
| previous two
|
| But as it stands now, my personal experience with QR codes at
| restaurants have been largely unfavorable compared to that of
| paper menus.
|
| EDIT: reading other comments in the thread, it seems like
| there are quite a few places that implemented payment and
| ordering through QR codes, which tells me that it can
| definitely be done the right way. I have a feeling that me
| not encountering those in real life might be due to my
| location (Seattle), but here the situation with that has been
| abysmal.
| mkmk wrote:
| Besides QR code menus, a wonderful breakthrough has been the
| prevalence of QR-code bills at the end of the meal which allow
| the patron to pay without going through the credit card and
| credit card slip dance. It's delightful not to need to needlessly
| wait for ten minutes at the end of each meal!
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Depends on the QR code. I spent some time in nyc and saw some
| really good and bad implementations. The good have QR code's
| per table and allow you to have a dedicated experience where
| the server knows exactly who you are and the bill is
| automagically tabulated whenever you are ready to pay. The bad
| ones where literally a link to their not mobile friendly menu.
|
| QR code menus are still nonexistent down here in Texas..
| senkora wrote:
| Anecdotally, I saw them quite a lot in Plano.
| [deleted]
| shostack wrote:
| How advanced are the analytics these provide? Depending on what
| signals they collect,I could see this being used to map with
| demographic data, etc.
| jfax wrote:
| I find it unusual that it is preferable to make a network
| connection probably half way across the world to retrieve list of
| food than have it locally available. Restaurant 802.11 portal
| pages should have a menu on it.
| tomohawk wrote:
| I've walked out of restaurants without menus. I'm not the only
| one.
|
| The last thing I want to do at a restaurant is to pull out my
| phone.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The true dark pattern at the restaurant is in the checkout
| screen. Often with the waiter standing next you while you fill it
| out. Tip options used to be 15, 18, 20% or something close. More
| recently, I've seen 20, 25, 30%. Ingenious, but not cool.
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(page generated 2021-08-21 23:02 UTC)