In recent years, particularly during the pandemic, restaurants have begun scrapping tangible menus and opting to have patrons scan a QR code on their phones to access a virtual menu. However, amid growing criticism of digital menus, restaurants are beginning to return to classic handheld menus.
Reports indicate that customers have begun to complain about the impracticality of using their phones to order, such as difficulty reading the menu or concerns about privacy. One restaurant patron, Oz du Soleil, explained to the Wall Street Journal that he immediately walked out of a restaurant upon discovering he would have to use a QR menu. Du Soleil claimed it was laborious to navigate QR menus. “It’s like self-checkout or putting your own IKEA stuff together,” he said.
Teddie King, director of operations at Zuma, a Japanese restaurant chain with several U.S. locations, claimed that digital menus are now considered a “tacky” restaurant feature. “In the restaurant industry, the QR code menu is seen as a little bit tacky,” King said.
Nicolas Geeraerts, the COO of New York’s John Fraser Restaurants, told the WSJ, “We found we were starting to alienate people.” He also illustrated that it isn’t just older consumers who are rejecting QR codes; younger tech-savvy customers are also expressing disdain for virtual menus.
However, there are still some who prefer a frictionless experience that QR code ordering capabilities can offer. 38-year-old Phil Armstrong explained that using his phone to order online without the need for waitstaff makes his dining experience more convenient. “I don’t necessarily need someone to ask how I’m doing nine times,” he said.
However, data suggests that the dominant opinion among consumers is that physical menus are far superior to digital ordering options. A 2022 survey found that 88 percent of consumers preferred paper menus over QR code menus during a dining experience at a traditional restaurant. Furthermore, half of the survey participants indicated that QR codes would not encourage them to eat at a restaurant.
Fox 5 New York reported on the seeming return to pre-COVID dining norms, highlighting the abandonment of QR codes in favor of the preferred paper menu. Lizzie Barnes told the outlet that when the Saltaire Oyster Bar and Fish House reopened, customers were more comfortable with QR codes coming fresh off the pandemic. “People felt comfortable with it at the time. No touching. No contact,” she stated.
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Mark Plumlee, the senior content manager for Must Have Menus, noted that digital menu scans have plummeted nearly 27 percent compared to two years ago, showing heightened demand for physical menus.
“Now that we are accessing that and kind of returning back to hospitality as it was in 2019, I think people really like having a menu that they can hold. They can feel they can open it up and explore or hand it over to someone else, make them look at it,” Plumlee said “They want to browse it. It’s part of the experience. It’s part of the dining. It’s part of the romance of the restaurant,” Barnes concurred.
Featured image credit: Sharon Hahn Darlin, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QR_code_menu,_Restautante_Kinich,_Izamal,_Yucatan,_Mexico.jpg