A menu page for phones, with prices, dietary marks and hours, to put behind a table QR code.
A menu behind a QR code gets read on a phone, in low light, by someone holding a drink in the other hand. Almond & Ash is a made-up wood-oven restaurant, and its winter dinner menu, six sections long, is laid out for that guest. When a price changes you edit the page and publish it again. The link doesn't change, so the codes already printed on your tables keep working.
Who it's for
Restaurant, café and bar owners who are tired of reprinting, or of posting a PDF that guests have to pinch and zoom. It also suits a food truck whose board changes weekly, or a pop-up with one night's dishes.
It's a menu to read and nothing else. Guests still order from a person, and the page takes no payments or bookings. Keep a few printed copies for the guest whose phone is dead.
What a good one contains
- Sections you can jump between. The sample's bar of six, To start through Drinks, stays at the top of the screen as you scroll. Dessert is one tap away.
- A dish, a few ingredients, a price. "Charred leeks. Almond and red pepper sauce, chives. $13." Name what's on the plate and stop. Whole-dollar prices lined up on the right are quick to scan.
- Dietary marks with a key. V, VG and GF sit beside the dish name, and the key comes before the first dish.
- A filter, once the menu is long. With 28 dishes, a vegan guest shouldn't have to read all of them. One tap leaves the 11 they can eat.
- An allergy note that tells the truth. The sample says one oven cooks everything, so no plate is promised free of traces, and asks guests to tell their server every time.
- How to order here. "Two or three small ones each is about right" saves your servers the same explanation at every table.
- Hours, address and a start date. "This menu started on Tuesday, December 1" tells a guest the prices are current.
When something changes
Say the sea bream sells out on a Saturday, or the lamb goes up two dollars. Go back to the conversation, say what changed, and publish over the same page. Turn the link into a QR code once, print it at a decent size, and test it from a seat at your darkest table.
Check the marks against the recipes with whoever cooks. A wrong GF does more harm than a missing one. Then read every price aloud against the till before the first guest scans.
How to send it
As an open link. Guests scan and read. Nobody at a table should need a password, and a menu holds nothing you'd hide from the street.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
