Can QR Code Menus Help Restaurants
QR code menus are a simple and effective way to provide food and drink menus to customers, as well as any other links and marketing options you want to present to your diners via their own phones.
It’s starting to become the norm for restaurants to provide touchless menus in the wake of COVID reopenings and introduce a better and easier way to order from restaurants to a more technologically savvy customer base.
How Do QR Code Menus Work?
Once you’ve signed up to Candr, you can easily create a list of items that customers can select from their phones. This can include a single or multiple menus as PDFs or a website link to an online interactive menu if you have one available.
You are given a QR code that can be printed out and put on a table or a sign of some kind that is made available to customers to scan.
Customers will scan the QR code using their mobile phone simply with the Camera app available on all phones. Scanning the QR code will redirect diners to a website through their phone’s browsers.
No special app is required, or special skills are needed from your diners; if they can take a photo with their phone, then they have the skills necessary to view your menu.
Why Should Restaurants Use A QR Code Menu?
Stop Sharing Physical Menus
With the new world of COVID and the fear of touching things, you need to reduce what customers have to touch so they can enjoy dining at your restaurant. It can be the difference between somebody spending money with you or not.
Menus are challenging to keep clean, or you need to print out a fresh menu for every customer that comes in your door, which ends up being very expensive whichever option you decide to go with.
A QR code menu provided by Candr is a single printable code that you leave on the table that customers swipe over with their phone cameras, and it opens your online menu for them to review without ever having to touch anything. The diner needs no special software, simply a smartphone camera like an iPhone or Android device.
Reduce Interaction Time With Staff
Using a QR code menu from Candr means that you don’t need wait staff to explain the menu to your customers. You can provide as much information in the QR code menu as you like, including photos of the dishes, which is often not possible due to printing costs. Online menus are the same whether they’re large or small.
Some restaurants provide videos for customers to review, including kitchen tours as meals are being prepared, which is a fun experience for the diner. It also allows you to showcase your safety protocols for their food.
You could even direct customers to a fully automated ordering system to view the menu and place their order and ultimately pay for their meal without having to flag down any wait staff.
Save Money & Reduce Waste
With a QR code menu from Candr, you don’t have to worry about printing menus from a professional service or through your own in-house printer. Whichever option you’re using right now for menus is costing you money.
Menus cost you money when they need to be replaced due to damage or when you update your menu with new items, which can happen seasonally, or you may be writing your “specials” on a blackboard for people to try and see, which often results in poor sales of the specials.
With a QR code menu, you can update your menu as often as you like, have special menus for events, and even include seasonal or special items for a short time. All of this can be easily done and costs no additional money.
Localized Menus
In addition to having your standard menus available via QR code, touchless menus open up the opportunity to have different menus at each of your locations and even translated menus for guests who may have difficulty with the standard language of your restaurant.
So if one of your restaurants was to run out of a specific menu item, you could quickly update your local menu for that restaurant so that there is no confusion or disappointment to your diners.
You can also offer a translated version of your menu which may even open up a new customer base who were reluctant to visit due to language barriers.
Increase Total Order Value
In most cases, your customer will order, and wait staff will take the menu away so that there is room on the table for the food and drinks. However, with a QR code menu from Candr, the touchless menu is accessible at all times without taking up any space.
An accessible QR code menu can dramatically increase subsequent orders throughout the meal, as people have more time to consider and look at sides or desserts that they want to get, or even a dedicated drink menu that they can peruse easily.
Without a QR code menu, some people are happy to ask for the menu again, others will just stay quiet, and you lose out on their added order items.
How Can Candr Help Your Restaurant?
While it’s possible to create free QR codes, that approach doesn’t always match a professional appearance for a restaurant. Whatever you used to generate the QR code may be tracking your customers and could even add advertising for other restaurants in the local area, which is not ideal when trying to show customers your touchless menu.
Candr provides two options that give you a completely professional appearance when presenting your QR code menu. Your QR code will present customers with links to your menu or multiple menus, a custom logo for your restaurant, and of course, links out to anything else you need, such as a payment system, your website, and your social media.
You can get free access to these features for a single location, or you can pay a small fee to provide this service to multiple locations and some great additional features.
You won’t need to create multiple QR codes for every menu or link you want customers to use; it’s all contained within a single QR code that can be scanned and directs your customers accordingly.
Is Candr Already Working With Restaurants?
Candr has already implemented QR code menus with multiple restaurants in Toronto that need to go to a touchless menu. So they have the experience and understanding of what is required and any features that will benefit you as a restaurant.
A great feature with Candr is that you can enable opt-in marketing to your customers so that you can capture their email and send follow-up adverts or promotions that may entice them to come back. This wouldn’t just be for the person who pays but for anybody looking at the QR code menus.
Many Candr success stories are available on the website. You can even access the links for some of these QR code menu champions currently using Candr in Toronto and other areas.
How Do You Create A QR Code Menu?
Creating a QR code menu is simple, and all you need to do is sign up for a free Candr account, which you can upgrade later when you realize the features are worth the minimum payment required.
With your Candr account you can include COVID screening checks, marketing opt-ins, links to your PDF menus, links out to your online menu or payment system, as well as links to your social media and anything else you want to offer to the customer. It’s all simple drag and drops through a web browser that you or your staff can update as needed.
