Are Paper Menus Making a Comeback?
QR Code menus may be falling out of favor, according to a report.
Tatiana Maksimova/Getty Images
For a while, those QR codes that pull up restaurant menus when you hover over them with your smartphone seemed nearly ubiquitous. During the pandemic, as we returned to eating out after fearfully wiping down our groceries, they seemed to make hygienic sense.
But now, many of us have begun to tire of them.
According to a recent survey of nearly 2,400 U.S. consumers conducted by data analytics firm PYMNTS Intelligence and customer-engagement platform Paytronix, only 31 percent of diners said they had positive feelings about viewing menus with QR codes in restaurants.
A survey conducted by Technomic, and recently cited by the Wall Street Journal in a recent story, found that 88 percent of diners would rather be given a paper menu than a QR code when they sat down at a table at a restaurant.
Still, as recently as 2022, the QR codes seemed as if they were probably here to stay. A Hospitality State of the Industry Report released that year revealed that 87 percent of restaurant owners said technology like online and QR code ordering had been critical to their business’s survival in the face of staffing shortages.
Of course, QR code menus can vary greatly. Some of them can have unappealing or wonky interfaces, and that can be a frustration point for consumers.
They also open up the possibility of phishing via fake QR codes slapped over real ones: Last year, the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning to consumers urging them to be wary of scammers who use QR codes to lure people into spoof sites and steal their info.
Yet, in the Journal article, one restaurateur said the industry was beginning to see them as “a little bit tacky;” another said they were “starting to alienate people.” And a diner unfavorably compared QR code menus to self-checkout or having to put together your stuff at IKEA on your own.
So have we arrived at an inflection point? Will QR codes recede and paper menus make a comeback?
Commenters in a thread on Reddit on the topic seem divided about the prospect.
“I thought they were great in the Covid days. Now I hate them. Last time I used one, my cell reception was too lagging for it to work,” wrote one person.
“Printed menus or both. Never just QR code,” another weighed in.
“I’m fine with them as a supplement to physical menus, not as a replacement for them,” a third shared.
Some commenters objected to glitchy interfaces or spotty cell-phone service. Others hailed the convenience and speed of ordering; the positive environmental impact of forgoing paper, no matter how small; and the sanitariness.
“I love the QR menu,” wrote one.
Yet several said that QR codes “suck.”
“You can’t just take a menu PDF and slap it on a phone and expect it to be easy to read,” wrote one QR code hater. “Also you shouldn’t have to have a smartphone in order to eat.”
“I honestly don’t always have my phone when I go out. That alone makes this annoying for me,” another said.
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