Oh, you’re giving me Covid nostalgia. I know, right? Nothing says Covid-era dining like a QR-code menu, other than giant Perspex partitions and the

Off the menu: why restaurants are ditching QR codes

submited by

Style Pass

2023-05-24 03:30:03

Oh, you’re giving me Covid nostalgia. I know, right? Nothing says Covid-era dining like a QR-code menu, other than giant Perspex partitions and the unremitting fear of infecting yourself by touching the cutlery.

But I like QR-code menus. No, you don’t. What you like is getting to order and pay for your food without having to endure human interaction.

Same thing. No, it isn’t. Anyway, you’re in a rapidly diminishing minority, because it has been reported that the QR-code menu is on the way out.

No! I’m afraid so. A report in the New York Times says that scans of restaurant QR codes have fallen by 27% in a year. Plus, fewer restaurants are creating new QR-code menus and about 75% of all restaurant QR-code menus were scanned fewer than 90 times in the past 12 months.

But why? Maybe people want to experience the tactile comfort of a paper menu when they go out. Maybe they want to talk through their options with a flesh-and-blood waiter. Maybe they want something more glamorous than repeatedly trying to aim their smeary phone at a peeling, ketchup-stained sticker on the corner of their table.