The coronavirus has changed how we live and how we do business on many levels. From offices focusing on remote work from home structures to restaurants and food delivery services become a staple in many Americans lives, there is no question that post coronavirus that we will be facing a new world of business standards.
One new standard that will stay with us going forward is the use of QR based digital menu scans. If you have not seen these yet, these hands-free options of menus are not only a great idea for the health and safety of our customers and employees, but also a wonderful money saving tool for your business. We will talk about both advantages, and then let you know how we can set these up for your business.
What is a QR code? A QR code is a scannable pattern which are very similar to the barcodes used in grocery stores. These images link the scannable image to a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). This way when a person scans the QR code, it goes to a specific website or address. Most modern phones will automatically identify a QR code from the camera function and ask the user if they want to open the location on the code.
How this technology relates to us is that these QR codes can be put on table-tents, posters, art, and other forms of marketing material so that your customer can bring up your menu on their phone.
This offers dozens of advantages. On a health and safety side, menus will no longer be handed back and forth between customers which will cut down on the potential transmission of viruses that have a surface life. Secondly, with digital menus, you do not need to worry about the wear and damage that may have happened to your menu between customer use. Third, your menu can always be up to date without having to pay for reprints on all your menus. Fourth, your customer service team no longer needs to make the additional trip back and forth to provide and clear menus from a table. Fifth, and this is our opinion one of the best advantages of using QR codes, you can host your menu on your webpage and if you do not change the URL for the webpage when you update your menus on that page, your menus will always be up to date with your customers regardless of how long ago they got your QR code.
In addition, QR code menus save restaurants a great deal of money on mailed marketing materials and print resources. In the menu design industry, some of the largest costs for print is a combination of the shipping of printed materials to your location, the mailing cost of sending your menus to customers, as well as the print costs themselves. Laminate print menus are not cheap just due to the labor and materials used. So, with QR code design you could have your entire menu and message on a local print marketing tool like a poster, a print advertisement, or even a business card. Your entire menu can be a part of a small ad in a magazine or on a web-banner instead of having to take out a small loan to have full multi-page runs which age.
So how can you do this? If you are a little tech savvy, or have someone who handles your webpage, it is time consuming but simple. First you make a PDF version of your menu or prepare your menu content to be imbedded into your web page. You then take the URL from that page, generate a QR code that links to that URL, and save a copy of that QR code as an image file (we suggest PNG export from an adobe illustrator file). You then take that QR code, create the design on the print format materials you would like (like inserts for table tents, business cards, posters, or ad inserts) and have those items printed.
Or, if you would like, contact us and we can take care of almost all of that for you.
