How to create a QR code menu for your restaurant

A QR menu requires no hardware. No kiosk, no tablet, no terminal, no particular till. This is the point most owners discover last, often after requesting a quote for equipment they will never have to buy.

What you don't need to buy: tablets for waiters, a touchscreen, a networked thermal printer, or an app your guests must download. A QR menu that requires an app isn't a QR menu — it's an app with an extra step.

• A phone or a computer, once, to enter your menu.
• Your dishes and prices. That's the real work: about an hour for a thirty-dish menu.
• Printed stickers or table tents, one per table. A local print shop does it for a few hundred dinars.
• Signal on the guest's side. They use their own mobile data; your wifi is a convenience, not a requirement.

Order matters. Many start by printing the codes, then rearrange the tables and have to reprint everything.

Keep the paper menu for the first week. The goal isn't to remove it on day one — it's to notice nobody asks for it any more.

• Enter the menu: categories, dishes, prices, and a photo for the dishes you most want to sell.
• Name your tables the way your floor already names them — "Terrace 3", not "Table 14" — or staff will translate in their heads on every order.
• Generate one code per table and get them printed. One per table, not one for the whole restaurant: that's what tells you where an order came from.
• Test it with your own phone, sitting at a table, before service. Scan, order, and check the order lands in the right place.

QR menus rarely fail for technical reasons. They fail because the code is badly placed and the guest never sees it.

Check the contrast. A code printed in light grey, or laminated on a glossy surface, resists scanning. Black on matte white always works.

• At the eye level of a seated person, not flat in the middle of the table where plates cover it.
• A table tent rather than a sticker on tables that get cleaned hard: stickers wear away within weeks.
• One line above the code saying what to do: "Scan to see the menu". The code alone isn't enough for a guest who isn't used to it.
• Big enough: roughly 3 cm across scans at arm's length; 1.5 cm forces people to lean in.

The gain isn't saving paper. It's elsewhere, and it shows up in three places.

Staff don't disappear from the equation: they stop transcribing and running to check, and spend that time on the floor instead.

• Prices change on screen, not at the print shop. A supplier increase applies in a minute, across every table at once.
• A sold-out dish is removed with one tap. Waiters stop coming back to say it's finished after the order.
• The order arrives written, exactly as the guest entered it. What used to get lost verbally between floor and kitchen stops getting lost.

• A PDF behind the QR. A PDF has to be pinch-zoomed, never updates itself, and takes no orders. That's a scanned paper menu, not a digital one.
• One code for the whole restaurant. You lose the originating table, so ordering becomes a verbal round trip again.
• Requiring an app. Every download you ask for loses guests; a menu should open in the browser.
• An incomplete menu. If a guest can't find three dishes out of ten, they'll ask for paper and the trial is over.
• No photos. Dishes with photos sell noticeably better; on a long menu, the photo replaces the waiter's explanation.

Two questions come up every time, and they deserve a direct answer rather than a brochure.

Language: your menu needs to exist in Arabic and French, because your dining room is bilingual. A digital menu in one language excludes part of your guests — and translation shouldn't become your job with every new dish.

Payment: the order goes through the phone, the money stays with you — cash at the counter, exactly as today. No online payment is needed for a QR menu to work, and nothing moves through a platform.

Qweko was built for this context: Arabic, French and English with instant switching, no commission on orders, and no hardware to buy.