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That I don't need to stare at a small, bright, distracting screen when I'm there to relax and enjoy time with friends. Add to that that most restaurants have te

That I don't need to stare at a small, bright, distracting screen when I'm there to relax and enjoy time with friends. Add to that that most restaurants have terrible accessibility in these digital menus, like PDFs with tiny fonts, poor zooming capabilities, etc. Paper menus don't waste my data and battery. They are also inherintly private and don't communicate my personal data to others.

filoleg 5y ago
I think you might have misread the parent comment, because you are agreeing with them, but it feels like you are arguing against them. The parent comment was stating that they don’t see much extra benefit to QR codes over paper menus, so they are asking if they are missing any potential benefits and why anyone would prefer QR codes. And you say that the benefits include not having to stare at a small screen instead of enjoying time with friends, which sounds like a benefit of paper menus, not QR codes. I am fully with you on your points btw, i vastly prefer paper menus over QR codes myself. Especially given that every single time i dealt with a QR code at a restaurant over the past year, it was always just a URL to their website. Which suffers from bajillion different issues (in addition to the inherent ones, like having to stare at your phone screen and attempting to navigate it, instead of having it all in one place on a large piece of paper), pick as many as you want from this list: * poor website layout rendered on phone * bajillion different menus (brunch menu, weekend menu, happy hour menu, dinner menu, etc.) without any clear indication which of them is currently active (“oh, you want item X? Too bad, we are currently on our lunch menu at 3pm that switches to happy hour menu at 4pm until 7pm, but normally it would be dinner menu at 4pm, but today is friday, so it is different, but on weekends you can pick from both happy hour and dinner items after 4pm”) * outdated items on the website, some of which aren’t available None of those are imo inherent problems with qr codes/online menus, but so far I’ve seen exactly zero establishments that put any thought into this. Theoretically, online menus could offer tons of advantages over paper menus. Two very obvious examples off the top of my head: * for restaurants that tend to run out of certain menu items throughout the course of the day, they could update the availability status for those items in their online menus, so that customers could easily see what they can actually order. Instead of wasting waiter’s time with “I want to order item X. Oh, it isn’t available right now? Can you come back in 5 mins, I need some time to pick another one.” * they could at least show “current active menu”, instead of having to make you figure out which of the bajillion menus is the one that applies right now (weekend menu, brunch menu, dinner menu, happy hour menu, or some mix of multiple ones?) * stretch/bonus goal: ordering items to the table and paying the check through the portal, though this is actually a significant task/feature to implement, compared to the previous two But as it stands now, my personal experience with QR codes at restaurants have been largely unfavorable compared to that of paper menus. EDIT: reading other comments in the thread, it seems like there are quite a few places that implemented payment and ordering through QR codes, which tells me that it can definitely be done the right way. I have a feeling that me not encountering those in real life might be due to my location (Seattle), but here the situation with that has been abysmal.

filoleg 5y ago

I think you might have misread the parent comment, because you are agreeing with them, but it feels like you are arguing against them. The parent comment was stating that they don’t see much extra benefit to QR codes over paper menus, so they are asking if they are missing any potential benefits and why anyone would prefer QR codes. And you say that the benefits include not having to stare at a small screen instead of enjoying time with friends, which sounds like a benefit of paper menus, not QR codes. I am fully with you on your points btw, i vastly prefer paper menus over QR codes myself. Especially given that every single time i dealt with a QR code at a restaurant over the past year, it was always just a URL to their website. Which suffers from bajillion different issues (in addition to the inherent ones, like having to stare at your phone screen and attempting to navigate it, instead of having it all in one place on a large piece of paper), pick as many as you want from this list: * poor website layout rendered on phone * bajillion different menus (brunch menu, weekend menu, happy hour menu, dinner menu, etc.) without any clear indication which of them is currently active (“oh, you want item X? Too bad, we are currently on our lunch menu at 3pm that switches to happy hour menu at 4pm until 7pm, but normally it would be dinner menu at 4pm, but today is friday, so it is different, but on weekends you can pick from both happy hour and dinner items after 4pm”) * outdated items on the website, some of which aren’t available None of those are imo inherent problems with qr codes/online menus, but so far I’ve seen exactly zero establishments that put any thought into this. Theoretically, online menus could offer tons of advantages over paper menus. Two very obvious examples off the top of my head: * for restaurants that tend to run out of certain menu items throughout the course of the day, they could update the availability status for those items in their online menus, so that customers could easily see what they can actually order. Instead of wasting waiter’s time with “I want to order item X. Oh, it isn’t available right now? Can you come back in 5 mins, I need some time to pick another one.” * they could at least show “current active menu”, instead of having to make you figure out which of the bajillion menus is the one that applies right now (weekend menu, brunch menu, dinner menu, happy hour menu, or some mix of multiple ones?) * stretch/bonus goal: ordering items to the table and paying the check through the portal, though this is actually a significant task/feature to implement, compared to the previous two But as it stands now, my personal experience with QR codes at restaurants have been largely unfavorable compared to that of paper menus. EDIT: reading other comments in the thread, it seems like there are quite a few places that implemented payment and ordering through QR codes, which tells me that it can definitely be done the right way. I have a feeling that me not encountering those in real life might be due to my location (Seattle), but here the situation with that has been abysmal.