How to set up a QR code menu for your café or restaurant

What a QR code menu is

A QR code menu is a menu made for phones, opened by pointing a phone’s camera at a printed square code. Most phones made in the last few years read QR codes from the camera app, with nothing to install. The code holds a web address; the menu opens in the phone’s browser.

It saves reprinting when a price changes or a dish runs out, and it can do things paper can’t: show only the vegetarian dishes, search, or show a dish’s allergens on a tap.

Set one up in Menu Maker

1. Open Menu Maker and pick a template (café, restaurant, pub, pizza, food truck or bakery), or start blank.
2. Add your place’s name, logo and opening hours, then your sections (Starters, Mains, Coffee …) and dishes.
3. For each dish add its price, up to three sizes (“Small £3 · Large £4”), dietary tags such as V, VG and GF, and the allergens it contains.
4. Tap Share to get the link and its QR code. Open the link on your own phone and check every dish.
5. Tap Table card to print the code as a card for each table, a tent card that stands up, or four cards to an A4 sheet.

Printing the code

• Print it big enough to scan from a seat: a table card puts it at around 5 to 6 cm across.
• Keep it black on white. Light codes on dark paper, and codes over photos, scan badly.
• Leave the white border round the code; cameras need it.
• Scan the printed card with two or three different phones before you print a batch.
• Put a line on the card such as “Scan for our menu”, so people know what it’s for.
• Stick a code in the window too: Menu Maker’s window poster has your opening hours and the code on one A4 page.

Changing the menu later

A free Menu Maker menu travels inside its own link: the dishes and prices are written into the address, so nothing is kept on a server. When you change the menu, you share it again, which gives a new link and a new code, and the old printed codes keep showing the old menu.

That’s fine for a menu that rarely changes. If your prices change often, a short link is easier: you print the code once, and pressing Update changes what it shows. Sold out works the same way: one tap in the editor greys a dish out.

Taking orders

Menu Maker has no basket and takes no payments. An Order button can open your own ordering page, such as a delivery app’s page for your place or your own website, or WhatsApp with the dish written in (“Hi, I’d like to order: 1 × Flat white”). Book a table opens your booking link or calls you.