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It's really interesting to see how a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way are so quick to attack and be negative. Like all things in

It's really interesting to see how a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way are so quick to attack and be negative. Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible. I still think there is room for this to be the future though. I say this as a westerner but perhaps the west is not ready for it yet but I really enjoyed the experience of using QR codes in China. Go to a restaurant I just get shown where to sit and don't need to waste time with the host/server giving me menus or telling me anything. If I have questions they are there to answer the but I can also just sit down, scan the QR code, menu opens up and I can order food. Food just shows up minutes later. When I am done I go to the front and pay with Alipay. The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge. From the business perspective there is less interaction time necessary to serve a diner. Sure if this is an upscale high touch experience physical menu is where it stays BUT the majority of dining experiences are not like this. The menu is up to date and easy to modify. Possible to include multiple pictures and information about the food. I might be wild but I really like the experience and wish more places would adopt it. Like all things I think here in the west its still too new so we have a mixed bag of good and bad implementations. Give it a few years and I think it will be narrowed down to the POS providers who offer it as a feature.

melomal 5y ago
It's odd because it almost seems like a middle ground of having both options is unacceptable. It's chalk and cheese, black or white. You can literally have both physical and digital menu's and cater to everyone's needs. No harm done. People who loathe the idea can carry on, people that love the idea can carry on.
- jasonlotito 5y ago
  That's what I'm seeing at restaurants around here, both options. Default to digital, with the offer of a physical menu if you need. It's nice. Is that not common?
  - melomal 5y ago
    Going from the mass hate for QR code menus you would think not? Honestly, what's up with these polar opposites on HN. Never a middle ground.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  Having both could cause issues, as the digital menu is much easier to update than the physical one, which can lead to inconsistencies. Not that it means it shouldn't be an option, it's just something that needs to be considered
  - melomal 5y ago
    This is very true. I wonder how often restaurants change their menus. I live on the coast of Poland and 5 years later of living here, I can probably tell you what the menu is for the 5 'hot' locations to go to because it literally hasn't changed.
    - matz1 5y ago
      Then you might wonder whether the restaurant can't change their menus often because paper menu is hard to change!
      - FalconSensei 5y ago
        I would think a paper menu will be easier to change?
    - fragmede 5y ago
      Depends on the restaurant. Cooks are human too, so some will get bored after making the same exact thing for a year. Others might never get bored after a decade, or decide to keep making a dish because it sells well.
  - dmurray 5y ago
    Inconsistency between the digital and physical menu isn't really the problem. We care more about consistency between either menu and the single source of truth, which is what the chef is able to prepare today.
    - Kaze404 5y ago
      Depends on what the inconsistency is. You order something from the menu and later find out it's more expensive and the updated price is only shown in the digital menu. Depending on where you are that'd be an instant win in court I believe.
sdevonoes 5y ago
Main downside: I don't always take my phone with me. I don't hate QR code, but adding a "backup" menu that is accessible without phones is a must I believe.
- zucked 5y ago
  Agreed - I actually don't mind the QR thing when done elegantly (it often isn't but that's not the QR's fault) but what about travelers without a phone plan? Or folks who don't want to carry a phone? If you're going to print out a half dozen menus, you're pretty much right back where you started.
- paiute 5y ago
  this whole pandemic thing really worried me. I leave my phone at home on purpose all the time. I really struggled with everything from food to doctors. phones are becoming a requirement.
- FalconSensei 5y ago
  I still have my phone with me when I leave the house, but because now I work from home and don't need much mobil data, I downgraded my data plan to 250mb per month. I can see at some point I'll try to open a menu but won't be successful
- xster 5y ago
  On the flip side, I don't always take my wallet with me. It seems a lot easier to go phone only (especially in China) than wallet only.
andrepd 5y ago
> The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge. "Huge" might be a bit of an overstatement relating to such a minor convenience.
- infecto 5y ago
  So you are speaking for my opinions and feelings now? Y'all are crazy.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    I guess passing accusations of hyperbole are violence now.
alisonatwork 5y ago
This process was one of my most hated "innovations" in food ordering in China. It turns every restaurant into a production line fast food operation, exactly like American chain restaurants. At that point, why even bother going to a restaurant at all? Might as well just order a Sysco-equivalent microwave meal at the supermarket or 7/11, because the flavor and the service will be exactly the same. For me the best restaurants in China were the mom and pop joints where the person who takes your order is also the person who cooks your meal, or at least where you can see into the kitchen from the dining room so you can call out a request or ask a question as they're preparing it. This way it's much easier to figure out what's in the dish, see if the food is fresh, ask for it a bit more spicy, add another side, whatever. It makes the meal into a more of a social experience, and something that feels homey and satisfying rather than mass-produced. Ironically going to these sorts of Chinese chain restaurants with the QR code menu, they also tended to be twice the price of the mom and pop joints, so whatever money they might be saving by eliminating a server is definitely not passed down to the consumer.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Yeah, QR code menus are superior, until you have to use them. They never have instructions and every device does it differently and not in obvious ways. The only instructions you get from a stressed out server is "just scan it." Ok, how? This is a great way of making tech look stupid to luddites and it reminds me of modern UX trends that expect people to just know how to do some mysterious thing--and developers rely on most users assuming they are the stupid ones because they don't know how to use an app's hidden functionality. Not. Accessible. Every restaurant used to have the same UX, now they are all different. Stupid.
  - jscheel 5y ago
    It's also super fun to download a 45mb menu on your cellular data plan every time you want to look at the menu.
    - ff317 5y ago
      Exciting positive answers to this problem would be: 1) All such restaurants offering free open wifi + 2) A commercialized system that hosts the menu PDFs on tiny https servers on the restaurant's wifi router and serves them locally (potentially avoiding issues with far-away outages and also saving on the internet bandwidth for the common case).
thomascgalvin 5y ago
My big issue, which should be easily correctable, is that every menu QR code I've scanned results in a PDF that I have to download. Nobody wants PDFs. On desktop sites, it's common to add a (PDF Warning) to links that lead to PDFs. And on a phone, PDFs are even worse. They're almost always sized for the desktop, which means you have to pinch and scroll to see anything, and I don't download stuff from Firefox often enough to know how to find and delete the menus for every single restaurant I eat at. If the menu QR code led to a responsive website, I'd be fine with it. When the QR code leads to a PDF, it makes me angry. If the QR code led to an app I had to install, I'd walk directly out of the restaurant.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Which mobile browser downloads PDFs instead of just rendering them?
  - datameta 5y ago
    DDG is one example. I prefer it this way because I can choose how to view it, and not have to redownload it in case I lose the page or the cache for the file.
  - WhyCause 5y ago
    All of them. The data still needs to be downloaded to be rendered.
  - clon 5y ago
    Firefox Mobile
  - only_as_i_fall 5y ago
    Maybe there's some setting I'm missing, but the default android experience seems to be Chrome downloads a pdf which then is read by Google drive.
  - 5y ago
fouric 5y ago
> It's really interesting to see how a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way are so quick to attack and be negative. This statement is utterly useless. It provides no value to the discussion, doesn't make any interesting points, and tries to emotionally manipulate the reader. > Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible. HN readers seem to be bearish on these technologies because they're usually implemented poorly, and there's very little reason to believe that the situation will substantially improve anytime soon (or at all). People generally discriminate between restaurants based on price and food, not menus, so there's little incentive for restaurants to improve electronic menus - similar to business websites - meaning that if QR code menus gain wide adoption, we're extremely likely to see significantly worse experiences near-universally.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dsr_ 5y ago
  Even more so: "a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way" are professionally engaged in using, critiquing and developing user interfaces. These are the people you hire to tell you "this wasn't a good idea, here's a better one". Super-thin phones. Touch-screen controls in automobiles. QR codes instead of menus. All of these things seem nifty to marketing departments, may be accepted by consumers, and are detrimental to actual usage.
  - acituan 5y ago
    > Even more so: "a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way" are professionally engaged in using, critiquing and developing user interfaces. “I don’t like it” is not a critique though. The people you would want to hire could try to answer “here is an imperfect solution, how would you improve it?”
    - adamdusty 5y ago
      The article gives reasons why it is an imperfect solution.
Grustaf 5y ago
That's a bit like saying "why bother serving wine from bottles with impractical corks, each table should just have a wine hose with a tap". Going to a restaurant is an experience. A waiter, a physical menu and lots of other inefficiencies are part of that experience.
- infecto 5y ago
  Definitely not the same so please don't imply as such. Everyone has a different taste for their dining experiences definitely. For me, the normal I need something to eat experience does not need a waiter. But definitely if I a going to a nice place to sit, relax, enjoy the service, yes a waiter, paper menu is a nice experience. These are very different segments in the dining market imo. Kind of like how your normal restaurant is not going to use Tock for reservations.
- jjgreen 5y ago
  "Wine hose" you say, I'm interested ...
- jdmichal 5y ago
  > why bother serving wine from bottles with impractical corks, each table should just have a wine hose with a tap To be fair, you just 100% described a keg. It's just not common -- or is even non-existent? -- for wine to come in kegs.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    Wine is stored in barrels, which is pretty much the same thing, and there is of course the barbaric bag in box, but it’s not served that way in many reputable restaurants…
samstave 5y ago
A little while ago, I was making labels for cannabis products. All cannabis products need to be tested by a lab to show their constituent properties (pesticides, THC, CDB, etc) One of the things I did was create a QR code on the labels such that they pointed to a bitly address which then redirected to the PDF of the lab results for each product. This allowed for the consumer to actually read the Lab results, and it provided an litmus to the interest in each product by count of scans. I loved it, it worked really well - but the company wasnt too fond of showing the direct lab results for the reason that the PDFs had the manufacturing facilities address on the PDF... Could have done it better, but the overall idea was sound and was very easy to implement. An admin assistant could build this out. Thought of also tying it to slack or something such that we could just have a product interest channel and get an alert any time the products were scanned into that channel... There were actually a number of creative things that could be done using QR codes. This is great for very small packaged goods, such as pre-rolls, wax, diamonds, etc - where you have very little space on the package, and are already regulated on exactly what information you must include on the packaging, so if you wanted to provide more detailed product info, this would work well..
- infecto 5y ago
  I love this. It reminds me of transparency from amazon. Products have a QR code on the outside of the packaging to have some minimal effort prevention on counterfeits. Includes some metadata like manufacturing date and location. https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency
  - samstave 5y ago
    Huh, yeah the basic intent is the same as with Transparency (hadn't heard about that service until today) -- but its super simple to build out, and any company can easily do it... There is a bad-ass product from Seagull Scientific, called "barTender" (as in Barcode Tender) -- which is free to use, and does any and all barcodes/QR codes - and label document design. The only cost is a $500/$600 license for actually connecting it to a printer - but it makes it a breeze to create awesome labels, and print them out en-mass (like many thousands on the high speed printers)... You can hook it up to a DB or a spreadsheet for pulling all your product labeling info easily to fields so they auto fill for the products you are printing. Also, with using bitly - you also get a map of the geoip location of each scan - so you can see where interest is high geographically...
kerkeslager 5y ago
> It's really interesting to see how a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way are so quick to attack and be negative. It's really interesting to see how a different crowd to tech workers who are constantly in contact with the myriad of ways in which technology can be harmful to human interaction and happiness can be so quick to downplay any legitimate criticisms. > Go to a restaurant I just get shown where to sit and don't need to waste time with the host/server giving me menus or telling me anything. ...in which you view a human being as a hurdle to be surpassed rather than a human being. Conversations with waitstaff are often some of the most rewarding parts of a restaurant experience. Even just focusing on the food, the best way to find out about dishes you haven't tried is by talking to waitstaff. And I've formed great friendships with waitstaff at places I go regularly.
- infecto 5y ago
  For sure, I guess for me there is a time and place. Sometimes I am eating because I am hungry and sometimes I eat for the experience. For the former I like the idea of using a QR code. I never had troubles in China talking about the food when I used a QR code. I don't have romantic ideas about it though, I still was able to interact with the owners or wait stuff just as easily. Reminded me of the use of vending machine tickets in Japanese mom and pop restaurants.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    I see any system that requires people to have and use a smart phone to be negative for inclusivity and accessibility. Use this technology for progessive enhancement, not as a replacement.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      Yeah, I could see something like an open restaurant where you come in, scan the QR code, place the order, and get/pay for your food all without really interacting with someone. That'd be great, but I'd want a "push for server" button on every table for people without smart phones or people that don't know how to interact with QR codes. It certainly could be made super slick (embedding the table number, for example, in each QR code). But with all that, it'd cost money. So pretty much the only places you'll see do this well are big chains which tend to have crappy food.
dimmke 5y ago
I give it about 3 months before these QR code menus start asking for your email "for deals" before they'll display the menu. And I'm sure some great new YC backed startup will be created to collect all the data and aggregate it with other data broker information.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
> Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works As does a physical menu. I don't want to take my phone out when dining.
ar_lan 5y ago
> I say this as a westerner but perhaps the west is not ready for it yet This seems like an odd take. I'd be interested in tangible data, but I'd be inclined to believe that most tech-affluent people are probably OK with QR codes being the norm, in general. It saves money, paper, and isn't really a hard step for anyone with a phone. In general the west is pretty pro-tech.
- djrogers 5y ago
  > I'd be inclined to believe that most tech-affluent people are probably OK with QR codes being the norm, in general Everyone I know, "tech-affluent" and tech-savvy alike, hate them. Next time you go out for a meal with a large group, ask for physical menus and gauge the reaction of those around you - likely that most of them will ask for one too.
enriquto 5y ago
> Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works This is false. A QR-code based menu does not work for people that do not use a smartphone.
asah 5y ago
Already in the US, I'm seeing some restaurants where you pay right at the table as well. In NYC, you can see this at World's Wurst [1] in SoHo. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/World's+Wurst/@40.7279645,-74.001491,20z https://www.google.com/maps/place/World's+Wurst/@40.7279645,...
Camillo 5y ago
This setup seems beneficial to both restaurant owners and customers in China. The faster ordering process saves time for servers, which reduces labor costs, and the savings can be passed on to customers. But it cannot work in America because of the tipping culture.
RHSeeger 5y ago
> The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge But the negatives are also huge. - My phone is slow, so it's painful to navigate the menu - Half the restaurants have horrible UI for their menu - You can't casually peruse the menu, you have to go item by item down the list. At least to me, it's an awful experience.
rytcio 5y ago
The current state of tech is pretty horrible. The web is a terrible platform for how it is being used today. There is little to no innovation happening anymore, and everything driven purely by advertisements and user-hostile practices to increase revenue over usability. It's very difficult to not be pessimistic about tech.
weaksauce 5y ago
> Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible. for a good example of this look at the iPhone's predecessors and the iPad's predecessors... before those the PDAs were basically awful and internet phones were junk. the iPad basically created a wide-spread tablet market.
nyghtly 5y ago
I think this is more than just a difference in technology. The entire culture of restaurant dining is different in China. The greatest example of this is the fact that servers in China will always wait to approach the table until they are called over. This is quite different from the American approach in which the servers always come to us without being asked.
allenu 5y ago
I suppose for me, going to a restaurant is not a matter of "efficiency". I go there to socialize with friends, to enjoy the atmosphere, to interact with people. If service is slow, then, yes, I get annoyed. However, I don't think I ever go into a restaurant thinking, "I wish they would make restaurant ordering more efficient." If I want that, I go to a fast food place or place that does takeout.
unethical_ban 5y ago
I don't think it is bad as an option, but I resent it as the only method. * Homeless/poor may not have phones * Old people don't have smartphones or know how to use them * I don't want to have my phone with me at all times. I actually leave my phone in the car when dining sometimes. * Something as simple as a listing of options, which is often static for weeks or more at a time, now depend on a WAN connection! It's meatspace dependency hell. I know "menu costs" are such a thing that it is taught in accounting and business classes. Nevertheless, the idea of getting rid of a hard menu, even as a backup, is absurd, unnecessary, and dare I use a buzzword I hate, "privileged".
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  We went to a restaurant last week for the first time in a year, and sat there for 10 minutes waiting for a menu. The person who seated us didn’t tell us about the QR code. I discovered it after idly looking at the piece of paper on the table (which previously I assumed was an ad for drink specials). A few minutes later I witnessed an elderly couple experiencing the same thing. They sat for 10 minutes expectantly waiting for menus to be delivered. Lame experience.
giancarlostoro 5y ago
I agree with the efficiency sentiment. Nothing worse than waiting on a waiter for what feels like hours at a restaurant when the chef could just be preparing my meal. I would also be okay with an NFC approach or both NFC / QR code approach, NFC stickers are cheap and can do similar to QR codes.
SllX 5y ago
I’ve had experiences ordering through a QR code in San Francisco which were even more seamless: pre-pay for your food with Apple Pay right off the website, tip included. Scan again if you want to order something else. Everyone at the table can order separately. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it. It was like a custom web-DoorDash for one table with only one restaurant option. Probably someone could run with that and scale it up to a food court without much difficulty and a willing mall partner. Efficient, but if I gave a damn about the economics I would cook at home and this definitely removes some of the hospitality of the hospitality business.
barry27 5y ago
"The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge." Come now. Let's not get carried away.
RGamma 5y ago
You're saying it's okay to require the entire stack of technology of 50+ years of CS and hw/sw engineering to be able to order something at a restaurant at negligible benefit is something desirable? Requiring an inordinate amount of technological sophistication/complexity for simple things is how to build vulnerable systems.
brokenmachine 5y ago
Sounds nice until your menus have pop-unders and you need adblock to order food.

melomal 5y ago

It's odd because it almost seems like a middle ground of having both options is unacceptable. It's chalk and cheese, black or white. You can literally have both physical and digital menu's and cater to everyone's needs. No harm done. People who loathe the idea can carry on, people that love the idea can carry on.

jasonlotito 5y ago
That's what I'm seeing at restaurants around here, both options. Default to digital, with the offer of a physical menu if you need. It's nice. Is that not common?
- melomal 5y ago
  Going from the mass hate for QR code menus you would think not? Honestly, what's up with these polar opposites on HN. Never a middle ground.
Kaze404 5y ago
Having both could cause issues, as the digital menu is much easier to update than the physical one, which can lead to inconsistencies. Not that it means it shouldn't be an option, it's just something that needs to be considered
- melomal 5y ago
  This is very true. I wonder how often restaurants change their menus. I live on the coast of Poland and 5 years later of living here, I can probably tell you what the menu is for the 5 'hot' locations to go to because it literally hasn't changed.
  - matz1 5y ago
    Then you might wonder whether the restaurant can't change their menus often because paper menu is hard to change!
    - FalconSensei 5y ago
      I would think a paper menu will be easier to change?
  - fragmede 5y ago
    Depends on the restaurant. Cooks are human too, so some will get bored after making the same exact thing for a year. Others might never get bored after a decade, or decide to keep making a dish because it sells well.
- dmurray 5y ago
  Inconsistency between the digital and physical menu isn't really the problem. We care more about consistency between either menu and the single source of truth, which is what the chef is able to prepare today.
  - Kaze404 5y ago
    Depends on what the inconsistency is. You order something from the menu and later find out it's more expensive and the updated price is only shown in the digital menu. Depending on where you are that'd be an instant win in court I believe.

sdevonoes 5y ago

Main downside: I don't always take my phone with me. I don't hate QR code, but adding a "backup" menu that is accessible without phones is a must I believe.

zucked 5y ago
Agreed - I actually don't mind the QR thing when done elegantly (it often isn't but that's not the QR's fault) but what about travelers without a phone plan? Or folks who don't want to carry a phone? If you're going to print out a half dozen menus, you're pretty much right back where you started.
paiute 5y ago
this whole pandemic thing really worried me. I leave my phone at home on purpose all the time. I really struggled with everything from food to doctors. phones are becoming a requirement.
FalconSensei 5y ago
I still have my phone with me when I leave the house, but because now I work from home and don't need much mobil data, I downgraded my data plan to 250mb per month. I can see at some point I'll try to open a menu but won't be successful
xster 5y ago
On the flip side, I don't always take my wallet with me. It seems a lot easier to go phone only (especially in China) than wallet only.

andrepd 5y ago

> The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge. "Huge" might be a bit of an overstatement relating to such a minor convenience.

infecto 5y ago
So you are speaking for my opinions and feelings now? Y'all are crazy.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I guess passing accusations of hyperbole are violence now.

alisonatwork 5y ago

This process was one of my most hated "innovations" in food ordering in China. It turns every restaurant into a production line fast food operation, exactly like American chain restaurants. At that point, why even bother going to a restaurant at all? Might as well just order a Sysco-equivalent microwave meal at the supermarket or 7/11, because the flavor and the service will be exactly the same. For me the best restaurants in China were the mom and pop joints where the person who takes your order is also the person who cooks your meal, or at least where you can see into the kitchen from the dining room so you can call out a request or ask a question as they're preparing it. This way it's much easier to figure out what's in the dish, see if the food is fresh, ask for it a bit more spicy, add another side, whatever. It makes the meal into a more of a social experience, and something that feels homey and satisfying rather than mass-produced. Ironically going to these sorts of Chinese chain restaurants with the QR code menu, they also tended to be twice the price of the mom and pop joints, so whatever money they might be saving by eliminating a server is definitely not passed down to the consumer.

datavirtue 5y ago
Yeah, QR code menus are superior, until you have to use them. They never have instructions and every device does it differently and not in obvious ways. The only instructions you get from a stressed out server is "just scan it." Ok, how? This is a great way of making tech look stupid to luddites and it reminds me of modern UX trends that expect people to just know how to do some mysterious thing--and developers rely on most users assuming they are the stupid ones because they don't know how to use an app's hidden functionality. Not. Accessible. Every restaurant used to have the same UX, now they are all different. Stupid.
- jscheel 5y ago
  It's also super fun to download a 45mb menu on your cellular data plan every time you want to look at the menu.
  - ff317 5y ago
    Exciting positive answers to this problem would be: 1) All such restaurants offering free open wifi + 2) A commercialized system that hosts the menu PDFs on tiny https servers on the restaurant's wifi router and serves them locally (potentially avoiding issues with far-away outages and also saving on the internet bandwidth for the common case).

thomascgalvin 5y ago

My big issue, which should be easily correctable, is that every menu QR code I've scanned results in a PDF that I have to download. Nobody wants PDFs. On desktop sites, it's common to add a (PDF Warning) to links that lead to PDFs. And on a phone, PDFs are even worse. They're almost always sized for the desktop, which means you have to pinch and scroll to see anything, and I don't download stuff from Firefox often enough to know how to find and delete the menus for every single restaurant I eat at. If the menu QR code led to a responsive website, I'd be fine with it. When the QR code leads to a PDF, it makes me angry. If the QR code led to an app I had to install, I'd walk directly out of the restaurant.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
benhurmarcel 5y ago
Which mobile browser downloads PDFs instead of just rendering them?
- datameta 5y ago
  DDG is one example. I prefer it this way because I can choose how to view it, and not have to redownload it in case I lose the page or the cache for the file.
- WhyCause 5y ago
  All of them. The data still needs to be downloaded to be rendered.
- clon 5y ago
  Firefox Mobile
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  Maybe there's some setting I'm missing, but the default android experience seems to be Chrome downloads a pdf which then is read by Google drive.
- 5y ago

fouric 5y ago

> It's really interesting to see how a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way are so quick to attack and be negative. This statement is utterly useless. It provides no value to the discussion, doesn't make any interesting points, and tries to emotionally manipulate the reader. > Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible. HN readers seem to be bearish on these technologies because they're usually implemented poorly, and there's very little reason to believe that the situation will substantially improve anytime soon (or at all). People generally discriminate between restaurants based on price and food, not menus, so there's little incentive for restaurants to improve electronic menus - similar to business websites - meaning that if QR code menus gain wide adoption, we're extremely likely to see significantly worse experiences near-universally.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dsr_ 5y ago
Even more so: "a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way" are professionally engaged in using, critiquing and developing user interfaces. These are the people you hire to tell you "this wasn't a good idea, here's a better one". Super-thin phones. Touch-screen controls in automobiles. QR codes instead of menus. All of these things seem nifty to marketing departments, may be accepted by consumers, and are detrimental to actual usage.
- acituan 5y ago
  > Even more so: "a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way" are professionally engaged in using, critiquing and developing user interfaces. “I don’t like it” is not a critique though. The people you would want to hire could try to answer “here is an imperfect solution, how would you improve it?”
  - adamdusty 5y ago
    The article gives reasons why it is an imperfect solution.

Grustaf 5y ago

That's a bit like saying "why bother serving wine from bottles with impractical corks, each table should just have a wine hose with a tap". Going to a restaurant is an experience. A waiter, a physical menu and lots of other inefficiencies are part of that experience.

infecto 5y ago
Definitely not the same so please don't imply as such. Everyone has a different taste for their dining experiences definitely. For me, the normal I need something to eat experience does not need a waiter. But definitely if I a going to a nice place to sit, relax, enjoy the service, yes a waiter, paper menu is a nice experience. These are very different segments in the dining market imo. Kind of like how your normal restaurant is not going to use Tock for reservations.
jjgreen 5y ago
"Wine hose" you say, I'm interested ...
jdmichal 5y ago
> why bother serving wine from bottles with impractical corks, each table should just have a wine hose with a tap To be fair, you just 100% described a keg. It's just not common -- or is even non-existent? -- for wine to come in kegs.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  Wine is stored in barrels, which is pretty much the same thing, and there is of course the barbaric bag in box, but it’s not served that way in many reputable restaurants…

samstave 5y ago

A little while ago, I was making labels for cannabis products. All cannabis products need to be tested by a lab to show their constituent properties (pesticides, THC, CDB, etc) One of the things I did was create a QR code on the labels such that they pointed to a bitly address which then redirected to the PDF of the lab results for each product. This allowed for the consumer to actually read the Lab results, and it provided an litmus to the interest in each product by count of scans. I loved it, it worked really well - but the company wasnt too fond of showing the direct lab results for the reason that the PDFs had the manufacturing facilities address on the PDF... Could have done it better, but the overall idea was sound and was very easy to implement. An admin assistant could build this out. Thought of also tying it to slack or something such that we could just have a product interest channel and get an alert any time the products were scanned into that channel... There were actually a number of creative things that could be done using QR codes. This is great for very small packaged goods, such as pre-rolls, wax, diamonds, etc - where you have very little space on the package, and are already regulated on exactly what information you must include on the packaging, so if you wanted to provide more detailed product info, this would work well..

infecto 5y ago
I love this. It reminds me of transparency from amazon. Products have a QR code on the outside of the packaging to have some minimal effort prevention on counterfeits. Includes some metadata like manufacturing date and location. https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency
- samstave 5y ago
  Huh, yeah the basic intent is the same as with Transparency (hadn't heard about that service until today) -- but its super simple to build out, and any company can easily do it... There is a bad-ass product from Seagull Scientific, called "barTender" (as in Barcode Tender) -- which is free to use, and does any and all barcodes/QR codes - and label document design. The only cost is a $500/$600 license for actually connecting it to a printer - but it makes it a breeze to create awesome labels, and print them out en-mass (like many thousands on the high speed printers)... You can hook it up to a DB or a spreadsheet for pulling all your product labeling info easily to fields so they auto fill for the products you are printing. Also, with using bitly - you also get a map of the geoip location of each scan - so you can see where interest is high geographically...

kerkeslager 5y ago

> It's really interesting to see how a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way are so quick to attack and be negative. It's really interesting to see how a different crowd to tech workers who are constantly in contact with the myriad of ways in which technology can be harmful to human interaction and happiness can be so quick to downplay any legitimate criticisms. > Go to a restaurant I just get shown where to sit and don't need to waste time with the host/server giving me menus or telling me anything. ...in which you view a human being as a hurdle to be surpassed rather than a human being. Conversations with waitstaff are often some of the most rewarding parts of a restaurant experience. Even just focusing on the food, the best way to find out about dishes you haven't tried is by talking to waitstaff. And I've formed great friendships with waitstaff at places I go regularly.

infecto 5y ago
For sure, I guess for me there is a time and place. Sometimes I am eating because I am hungry and sometimes I eat for the experience. For the former I like the idea of using a QR code. I never had troubles in China talking about the food when I used a QR code. I don't have romantic ideas about it though, I still was able to interact with the owners or wait stuff just as easily. Reminded me of the use of vending machine tickets in Japanese mom and pop restaurants.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  I see any system that requires people to have and use a smart phone to be negative for inclusivity and accessibility. Use this technology for progessive enhancement, not as a replacement.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Yeah, I could see something like an open restaurant where you come in, scan the QR code, place the order, and get/pay for your food all without really interacting with someone. That'd be great, but I'd want a "push for server" button on every table for people without smart phones or people that don't know how to interact with QR codes. It certainly could be made super slick (embedding the table number, for example, in each QR code). But with all that, it'd cost money. So pretty much the only places you'll see do this well are big chains which tend to have crappy food.

dimmke 5y ago

I give it about 3 months before these QR code menus start asking for your email "for deals" before they'll display the menu. And I'm sure some great new YC backed startup will be created to collect all the data and aggregate it with other data broker information.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

> Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works As does a physical menu. I don't want to take my phone out when dining.

ar_lan 5y ago

> I say this as a westerner but perhaps the west is not ready for it yet This seems like an odd take. I'd be interested in tangible data, but I'd be inclined to believe that most tech-affluent people are probably OK with QR codes being the norm, in general. It saves money, paper, and isn't really a hard step for anyone with a phone. In general the west is pretty pro-tech.

djrogers 5y ago
> I'd be inclined to believe that most tech-affluent people are probably OK with QR codes being the norm, in general Everyone I know, "tech-affluent" and tech-savvy alike, hate them. Next time you go out for a meal with a large group, ask for physical menus and gauge the reaction of those around you - likely that most of them will ask for one too.

enriquto 5y ago

> Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works This is false. A QR-code based menu does not work for people that do not use a smartphone.

asah 5y ago

Already in the US, I'm seeing some restaurants where you pay right at the table as well. In NYC, you can see this at World's Wurst [1] in SoHo. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/World's+Wurst/@40.7279645,-74.001491,20z https://www.google.com/maps/place/World's+Wurst/@40.7279645,...

Camillo 5y ago

This setup seems beneficial to both restaurant owners and customers in China. The faster ordering process saves time for servers, which reduces labor costs, and the savings can be passed on to customers. But it cannot work in America because of the tipping culture.

RHSeeger 5y ago

> The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge But the negatives are also huge. - My phone is slow, so it's painful to navigate the menu - Half the restaurants have horrible UI for their menu - You can't casually peruse the menu, you have to go item by item down the list. At least to me, it's an awful experience.

rytcio 5y ago

The current state of tech is pretty horrible. The web is a terrible platform for how it is being used today. There is little to no innovation happening anymore, and everything driven purely by advertisements and user-hostile practices to increase revenue over usability. It's very difficult to not be pessimistic about tech.

weaksauce 5y ago

> Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible. for a good example of this look at the iPhone's predecessors and the iPad's predecessors... before those the PDAs were basically awful and internet phones were junk. the iPad basically created a wide-spread tablet market.

nyghtly 5y ago

I think this is more than just a difference in technology. The entire culture of restaurant dining is different in China. The greatest example of this is the fact that servers in China will always wait to approach the table until they are called over. This is quite different from the American approach in which the servers always come to us without being asked.

allenu 5y ago

I suppose for me, going to a restaurant is not a matter of "efficiency". I go there to socialize with friends, to enjoy the atmosphere, to interact with people. If service is slow, then, yes, I get annoyed. However, I don't think I ever go into a restaurant thinking, "I wish they would make restaurant ordering more efficient." If I want that, I go to a fast food place or place that does takeout.

unethical_ban 5y ago

I don't think it is bad as an option, but I resent it as the only method. * Homeless/poor may not have phones * Old people don't have smartphones or know how to use them * I don't want to have my phone with me at all times. I actually leave my phone in the car when dining sometimes. * Something as simple as a listing of options, which is often static for weeks or more at a time, now depend on a WAN connection! It's meatspace dependency hell. I know "menu costs" are such a thing that it is taught in accounting and business classes. Nevertheless, the idea of getting rid of a hard menu, even as a backup, is absurd, unnecessary, and dare I use a buzzword I hate, "privileged".

ryantgtg 5y ago
We went to a restaurant last week for the first time in a year, and sat there for 10 minutes waiting for a menu. The person who seated us didn’t tell us about the QR code. I discovered it after idly looking at the piece of paper on the table (which previously I assumed was an ad for drink specials). A few minutes later I witnessed an elderly couple experiencing the same thing. They sat for 10 minutes expectantly waiting for menus to be delivered. Lame experience.

giancarlostoro 5y ago

I agree with the efficiency sentiment. Nothing worse than waiting on a waiter for what feels like hours at a restaurant when the chef could just be preparing my meal. I would also be okay with an NFC approach or both NFC / QR code approach, NFC stickers are cheap and can do similar to QR codes.

SllX 5y ago

I’ve had experiences ordering through a QR code in San Francisco which were even more seamless: pre-pay for your food with Apple Pay right off the website, tip included. Scan again if you want to order something else. Everyone at the table can order separately. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it. It was like a custom web-DoorDash for one table with only one restaurant option. Probably someone could run with that and scale it up to a food court without much difficulty and a willing mall partner. Efficient, but if I gave a damn about the economics I would cook at home and this definitely removes some of the hospitality of the hospitality business.

barry27 5y ago

"The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge." Come now. Let's not get carried away.

RGamma 5y ago

You're saying it's okay to require the entire stack of technology of 50+ years of CS and hw/sw engineering to be able to order something at a restaurant at negligible benefit is something desirable? Requiring an inordinate amount of technological sophistication/complexity for simple things is how to build vulnerable systems.

brokenmachine 5y ago

Sounds nice until your menus have pop-unders and you need adblock to order food.