Please don't make me use another QR code restaurant menu
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
The one place we usually go to has no phone signal at all anywhere in the ~150 seat restuarant. Its part of the reason I like going there.
We turned up last weekend to see they had put new QR code menus on all the tables. I had no intention of using them so I ordered from the counter as I usually do, knowing they wouldnt even work because of the lack of phone signal.
I spent over an hour that day silently chuckling as I watched pretty much every single customer pick up the QR code menu and try to use it. I saw a few get really annoyed and end up leaving. Im not sure how much damage the place did to their clientel in a single day, but I went back yesterday and they had all been removed.
You couldnt make it up!
The idea that there could be hucksters selling these door to door to bad managers explains so so much.
And V40 is not something I've seen(1) in the wild :)
0: https://www.qrcode.com/en/about/version.html 1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qr-code-ver-40.svg
I'm talking <15 employee businesses.
I'm talking about places that can't get an internet connection that can support the VOIP systems they're sold.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quali...
^ The above is precisely my experience and is a large part of why my workplace hasn't moved to VoIP yet, despite needing the features.
AT&T, CenturyLink and other telecoms have ceased making ADSL and often VDSL2 readily orderable, and jacked up the rates on legacy customers to push them off old, slow connections on their aging DSLAMs.
https://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbn/documents/how-we-ar...
Are you trolling, misinformed, or do you have access to some data I can't find?
I definitely had better than that in Perth, and Kalgoorlie, and I had surprisingly good speed in Ceduna - maybe even 10mbps. It was pretty good in the Barossa, too - it's fine if you happen to be near a city.
But the places with good internet represent perhaps 1% of the area I covered.
Where in this self-reporting and not-at-all-independent pdf that you've linked to does it talk about what percentage of rural customers are on this fixed wireless service you speak of?
Seems to me they're saying that 92% of fixed wireless users are above 25mbps, but I don't see anywhere where it says what percentage of rural users have that service, as opposed to e.g terrible long-haul adsl connections getting a couple hundred K if they're lucky.
If they're saying that 92% of users are over 25mbps, and you believe it, then my response is a simple chortle. Maybe 92% of fixed wireless have it, but if that's the case then about 5% of people in the outback are on fixed wireless, it would seem.
A couple of places I visited told me "oh, no, there's no phone or internet at the moment, hasn't been for a couple of days"... like it wasn't at all unusual or unexpected.
If the restaurant isn't smart enough to compose an HTML menu which is very friendly with mobile devices, then they should not be using QR codes.
If you're forcing me to look at your menu on my tiny screen, optimise for that. Do !not! optimize for fricking print when you're not going to give me the printed version! Grrrrrmbl.
edit: 2022 discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36174607
Things that admittedly make this worse:
- Using an older phone.
- Not saving credit cards to your phone.
It's just slow and clunky, and -- it feels like work.
I don't want to file a JIRA ticket to get my appetizer. I don't want to fill out a form. I just want to sit down and tell somebody.
Another way to look at this is that it's the "self checkout" version of dining out. Self checkout is slow, because it's different at every store, and you will never be as fast as a cashier who has some practice with their particular system. Same deal here.
Why not a paper menu plus order online? You could even have the order QR code and URL printed on the menu.
QR code to PDF improves both these scenarios.
There are a few places (usually burger joints) where the menu is a piece of paper that actually serve as a placemat that the waiters won't take back from you. I doubt a lot of people are changing their mind. I've rarely seen that.
Source: waited lots of tables in lots of restaurants.
[1]https://sumupchile.com/products/lector-air?variant=399949779... [2]https://sumupchile.com/products/lector-solo [3]https://sumupchile.com/products/punto-de-venta
Edit: apparently this was a thing even back in 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/27/busking-joins-...
Bringing a reader to the table is gare though, mostly a thing at the large chains that are pretend to have ethnic food, but it is really poor quality-
In the US, most credit card transactions are simply "(swipe or chip)". If you have the card, you can use it. Gas stations seem to be the slight exception in America -- they generally require "(swipe or chip) and billing zipcode". This is quite funky and not at all secure against fraud.
With NFC card payment I just hold my card to the terminal and that's it.
vs
Try to flag down waiter (x5), ask for the bill, wait for waiter to return with the mobile POS, fiddle around in your wallet to find the card, tap card, decline tip, write PIN code, finally get to leave.
The QR option is nice, as long as it's just an option. A physical menu is, generally, much nicer to use. That being said, sometimes you want to go back and reference what you ordered, or other options (like for drinks) and ... the menus have all been taken away.
Your credit card already identifies you by name, and your precise location is known because you're at the restaurant by definition.
Your phone's dynamic IP. Which is a redundant, and much weaker, identification than your payment info.
> it becomes possible to calculate how long you've been in the restaurant
Also doable by the staff.. using their eyes. And most restaurants will use some form of system anyway to track the orders and payments, because that information is vital to running a functioning restaurant.
Your credit card transaction is bundled and sold. Because it has value in establishing a consumer profile for marketing.
The fact that you visited some restaurant PDF or webpage from a dynamic IP address is not.
Like the parent commenter said, any information about how long the table is being occupied comes from the POS and reservation system. But that data is for the restaurant -- there's no market in selling it, though it absolutely has value to the restaurant for its business decisions. But your phone isn't being used for that part.
Data collection is certainly a thing. But it happens in specific ways for specific purposes.
Using a credit card tied to your identity, but then worrying about revealing your phone's IP address while ordering, doesn't make any sense.
With QR? Just scan it an order. Done eating? Just leave, having already paid in the app. Also removes the whole stupid tip thing.
I go to a vegan restaurant with a 3 course 10,95€ meal deal and they have excellent menus.
This is exactly the thing I loathe about QR code menus. It normalizes having phones out at the table, with everyone looking at their own. Defaults are powerful, and "phones out" as a default leads to increased distraction and inattention among the people you're dining with.
i hang out with and eat out with my partner almost every day all the time. i don't need to be present 100% at every single moment, and if i or he wants to be during a meal, we will simply share that thought. i've never had issues having normal social interaction with people when out, even with some phone usage. it's normal.
At its best, a menu can be a nice leather "book". At its worst, it is a one page plastic menu that has been touched by hundreds of people before you and never cleaned, it is also probably ruined or broken on the corners and in the middle, and has also a lot hand-made corrections to ingredients and prices that makes reading it way more frustrating.
At the same time, a digital menu can be easy to navigate (with sections based on first courses, second courses, appetizers, etc.), it can show you the pictures of the food you're going to order and, sometimes, allows you to order without waiting for someone.
Even at their worse, I still prefer the digital version as it is more hygienic and I don't have to wait 15 minutes for a waiter if they forget to bring one to the table (and then we also have to share that between 6 people).
Physical menus can include photos and be easy to navigate. Most physical menus have separate sections for appetizer, side dishes, main course, etc.
It's possible to incorporate ordering online into a paper menu (QR code/codes) for folks who don't want to wave at a waiter.
In addition, a physical menu does not require you to use data or log on to the restaurant's wifi, is guaranteed not to track your browsing through the menu, can take up far more physical space than available on a phone screen, and won't start the dinner by everyone looking at their phones (and someone forced to help out the technically-challenged party member).
Ordering without waiting is nice. Navigating a digital menu is too often a pain. Want to add a drink? That's on another tab, please wait while we load&render, no it's further down, oh you wanted non-alcoholic? Want to change your main? Okay, let's first remove it (load basket), go back to ordering, go back to main dishes... Oh didn't you want that appetizer? Load again and scroll to see if your memory triggers... etc etc etc. sigh.
Or they'll just implement the standard business playbook, which is "do what we really want to do and claim it's what the customers demanded"... or the new twist post-2020, "do what we've been desperate to do for years and claim it's for health reasons"
Not accepting cash is against the law[1] but sadly there is no penalty defined. The argument is always it costs to much to deal with cash. You know what also costs money? Cleaning the kitchen, I wonder what other laws these companies think are ok to ignore.
I can see why it isn't generally honoured.
The law needs an update for sure.
Think I am going to pay you in my house when you pay me money for said house? Ha! By this law, I can simply give you your money back. You are obligated to accept it since you must always accept money as payment, and now the house you lived in prior is gone. Seems incredibly problematic for the vast majority of transactions.
Which is no doubt why nobody actually follows it.
Any big money laundry is done digitally today.
No. That would be a violation of your sales agreement. That is a contract to transfer ownership of a property.
Likewise after six months on a waiting list a surgeon cannot then say to their patient "Haha! No actually here's a cash payment instead. It's cash and you are obligated to accept according to Swiss law!". There would be legal consequences. It's not a contract to exchange a monetary value. It's a contractual obligation to provide a service and it is regulated.
At night a kiosk or petrol station or similar might only accept cars.
> Everyone is obliged to accept up to 100 Swiss regular issue coins in payment. Regular issue coins, commemorative coins and bullion coins are accepted at nominal value without restriction by the Swiss National Bank and the public cash offices of the Confederation.
Nowhere does this imply that you can trade working for paying an equivalent cash amount of your labour.
Yes, that's right, labour offered in a trade is a form of payment. All trades sees both sides of the transaction make a payment. In the most common case as it pertains to employment, I pay you labour, you pay me money, at which point the trade is settled.
But since the law states that money must always been accepted as a form of payment I can also pay you money in place of my labour. Per the law, the employer has to accept it. Thus, any time you don't want to go to work you simply have to offer money instead of labour, which you will get back since the employer is still obligated to fulfil their side of the trade.
It's an interesting approach. But doesn't seem tenable in the real world, so it is not surprising that it is oft ignored.
> and says you can’t accept credit card and not cash
Exactly. Credit cards don't offer money, but instead offer tokens that you can later trade for money. Practicalities aside, no different than accepting chickens and then trading those chickens for money. Or no different than accepting labour and then trading that labour for money. It's all the same. A trade is a trade is trade.
The law here requires that the cash must be accepted as a substitute in a trade.
Colloquially, in English, one could think of "labor" as a form of "payment" in the way you describe.
In the legal context, things like "labor" and "payment" and "trade" have specific meanings. These meanings cannot be interchanged with any other "technically not grammatically incorrect" definition of the same word as it might be used in spoken English.
Misunderstandings like this are also leveraged by, for example, the Sovereign Citizen movement, with similar levels of validity.
You've made three different comments now smugly pontificating on the implications of a law that you made up in your head and acting like it's equivalent to an actual law that we have the text of. What's going on?
And, well, if nobody here knows, at least I get to enjoy the button presses. Imagine people taking time out of their day to press a button just for me. I feel the love, for sure. That's worth something.
Any unauthorized leave, whether paid or unpaid, would be a violation of your employment contract. The terms are set by employment law and your employment contract.
For somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about, you sure do press a lot of buttons.
the equivalent to your example would be them accepting cash even if they don't legally have to. Which is literally the opposite of what they're doing.
If you were told before you ordered, its not cool to (implicitly) agree to pay via one method and then change your mind later.
Privacy. I'm not opposed to using my card at restaurants or other stores, but I don't at all want a future where every single transaction is tied to an identifiable account.
You were already caught up in the Panopticon. Refusing to use a credit card at the restaurant is a completely empty gesture and provided you no extra privacy.
I'm not saying give up on privacy or anything but pick your battles.
I don't want my purchase habits ending up in a database located who knows where and as a merchant I don't want to pay x percent to middle men handling the transaction.
I also don't want foreign companies deciding what I am allowed to purchase or sell. As we have seen many times visa/mastercard will prevent you from selling and/or buying items legal in my country.
The central banks job is to provide a currency for payment and I want them to keep providing this service.
Back in my he states, I avoid any business that takes only cash, because I’m not carrying anything but my phone and a backup credit card in case tap to pay isn’t accepted. I also think businesses should be allowed not to accept cash given that those that do are targets for armed robbery these days (a problem I expect Switzerland not to share).
Different strokes for different folks :)
I used to think this was an old person thing, but I see a lot of younger people who seem to resent their phones lately too. I got into tech because it was and still is fascinating and full of potential, but it's hard to deny that tech companies have become the poster child for this monopoly-sludge economy that is making so many people persistently miserable.
That's how I read this article: A person who views even a pretty minor aspect of an experience (The florid prose and descriptions the author likes in menus could easily be on a QR-accessed menu too) as tainted by the presence of tech. It's a weird little tic of a complaint without that context, but in our current cultural moment it's not that strange, and says a lot about said moment
Plus half the time I forget to even enter my own order trying to get everyone else's and double checking it's all correct. So my meal comes out late.
The paying and getting up and leaving without having to wait for the waiter to bring the check is nice, but the ordering part is not worth the hassle.
Funny, in my experience it's precisely the opposite.
It means I never have to feel awkward because there's no longer any uncertainty over whether I said the wrong thing or the server wrote it down wrong.
If the food or drinks come out wrong, there's irrefutable proof I ordered correctly, and it's the kitchen's job to fix it.
(And in my experience in restaurants, 95% of the time something has come out wrong, it's been the server's fault, not the kitchen's. So with QR ordering the problem almost goes away completely.)
I (obviously) have no particular insight into your situation, but I can't help thinking that in the situation you describe, QR code ordering isn't the root cause of your stress, but is maybe triggering stress related to other issues within your group dynamic?
Consider a generic family group: in general, on most occasions, should they be able to work out how to order food together without too much stress being generated? I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation.
And if you're not able to do this, maybe it's time to both introspect and discuss (with your partner, and/or children?) why - and consider new approaches to the situation and the problem.
Smart phones are typically less than 7" across. Best case scenario is they learn from McDonald's (which uses like a 35" screen...) with big categories to click and then a few items per category. But it'll still be tiny.
You do lose a bit in the personal interaction. There's also no chance to ask the waiter questions about the menu or ask for recommendations.
It feels insulting that I need to spend my limited Data package just to help you earn money. Even when the waiter offer to show me the menu on his phone, it felt overcomplicated process and I cannot imagine a business delibrately making it that difficult to order without expecting profits to decrease.
However it can also go the other way and lower prices to incentivize demand during slow periods like middle afternoon.
Can't say I blame restaurants for this. As many other comments mention, it is all about having good UX
Why not both? Online ordering via table-unique QR if you want it, otherwise wait for service. They're all going through the same system so you can mix and match.
I think digital menus are accommodating of the restaurant owner, in this regard. But they sure suck for customers, or at least, for this customer.
Don't waste your time and money there.
You should see a QR code as indicating the opposite, actually: that the menu is refreshed often enough that paper is impractical.
The QR code thing happens more often than not at chain restaurants, which are just reheating frozen slop, rather than bistros that are changing their menu daily.
> The QR code thing happens more often than not at chain restaurants, which are just reheating frozen slop, rather than bistros that are changing their menu daily.
This is the opposite of my experience. I can't think of a chain that uses them. Chains have enough money to print laminated menus, and their menus don't change.
That said, I find the kiosk app at Panera Bread a much better experience than ordering from the menu simply because there’s a lot more information. Options, bread types, ingredients, etc. You can claw that out of the clerk, but it’s a bit arduous.
So it can be done well. It just isn’t. And it’s don’t really blame the restaurants either. A comprehensive digital experience is really not their ballywick.
Then there was a time I went to an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. There, we had no menus.
The server came up, “What do you want?”
“Well, what do you have?”
“We’re an Italian restaurant. What do you want?”
And I told him, and I got it. I mean, indeed, it was an Italian restaurant.
Otherwise, totally agreed.
You should never use your home carrier and roam when traveling internationally, unless you have something like Google Fi which explicitly states that your data allocations apply worldwide.
It's wild that the IPhone barely existed when I finish high school 15 years ago and that now I'm asking myself if 5 years olds all have ones.
OK, but there are so many great uses for them!
Wifi passwords... just let people scan a photo to join the network. Duh!
Sharing your contact details... why are we messing with Bluetooth when both Apple and Android support QR codes?! Next time you're at a convention, just set your contact card (Vcard QR Code) as your phone home screen image... so much easier to share details vs. watching people try and bump between devices not knowing if it'll work. "Did you get it, I don't know if I'm bumping in the right place... did it send? Do you have airdrop on?" Ha. It's silly. No clue why Apple and Android don't just have a QR share option. =P
Sending SMS... I love the "vote for X with this code, vote for Y with this code" options. Just an easy way to network people, again, regardless of what device they are on.
QR codes are great! Maye not if you want to go to Italy and feel a paper menu, maybe not so much... but there's still plenty of great uses for QR codes.
Often times it’s just a pdf or image that results in unnecessary pinching/zooming.
I’ve used great “qr code” menus but the plethora of shit implementations make it unattractive as a whole.
They either try to cram too much on one page, or require too many pages. It's not even necessarily that there are too many items, but that the design is shitty. Extra turd points if the page wastes the margins with noisy decoration or stock photos of drunk people smiling wielding margaritas or whatever and half of it is redundant ads for their specials. Don't get me started about glossy paper that's impossible to read under the glare of the accent lighting festooning the tables.
I'm on the computer and mostly by myself all day, if I'm out I actually want to not be on my phone and be interacting with humans?
If I am out with a group, the last thing we want is to all by on our phones ordering (and being distracted by notifications etc)
Solves all the problems this QR code thing does, while being cheaper, more convenient, and reliable.
You can show your menu in every language imaginable. You can let guests filter for allergies or dietary restrictions. You can easily update your menu's if something runs out or changes.
There are many benefits. But please, people. Have a normal menu, too. You are not McDonalds, and if you want to be I expect McDonalds pricing too.
QR codes aren't novel in their approach to information; they are rather applicably similar barcodes. I think generally speaking most would agree.
This is the disconnect for most of humans. Generally speaking, when instituting out-of-the-norm operating standards in a generally selective common environment, most tradition is bonded with rather than against.
Such as a QR code as an example in replacing physical menus with physically-required experiences. Such as; walking in to physical place, sitting down or standing somewhere, picking up or looking at a written menu, speaking to someone (perhaps soon enough to be, some thing), ordering something to eat, eating said items, paying for said items, maybe a visit to the loo or not, and leaving the physical establishment.
When you insert a new method that (generally speaking) detracts from societal norms, it isn't a question of whether it works or doesn't work it's purely a matter of fucntion for the experience.
Example:
If there were a true 'ghost kitchen' which also had a (let's just say hypothetically) street-facing counter window due to (again, hypothetically) extremely small real estate space for the transactional process of obtaining the food, like a 2x2' window where you pickup the food - and the entirety of the transactional process from the financial arm of this experience, were to functionally as such: scan QR code above window, place order, pay/send order, wait nearby window, pickup food as ready.
That'd make sense.
But not so much when you or you and a group or more are interested in sitting down inside a physical space, expecting a physical experience.
The two are not equal and should be used as the experience is required, in my very humble, 25+ years of experience in this very industry, opinion.
Then I order a meal for pickup, and it's all specified and paid in whatever app I used.
Then I arrive at the restaurant and my meal is all bagged up to go, then I tell the counter girl that this meal is "for here" and may I please have a knife? "No, we don't have knives anymore." How about a tray? "No, due to the COVID-19 pandemic."
So far they have tolerated my presence as I sit at a table and eat the meal on top of the paper bag.
It also kinda breaks the etiquette "when in a restaurant you're not messing with your phone" because all the phones end up on the table and stay there.
There are of course a few advantages to having a menu available immediately, including for ordering something afterwards, but I got into the habit of always asking for a menu to be left at the table. Not only for this reason.
In general I also enjoy interacting with the personnel when ordering, having a real menu definitely helps with that.
This QR code thing is just another mine in the field of trying to live in society today without a smartphone. Other notable mines being online banking, apps to access government issues documents.
A lot of this nowadays require an app. If i want to find out my health insurance status? it's an app, no website. Heck even checking my grades at uni requires i install some sketchy app! it used to be posted at the department entrance...
Funnily, I have an unfounded hunch that making price hikes so easy have in fact helped speed up inflation by a small bit.
i love and appreciate the world greatly, and physical objects too, but i've never once felt a thrill from touching a paper menu which outweighed the convenience of using a QR code and mobile system to order food. the joy of dining out comes from social interaction not holding a menu
The less service part is I have to scan the QR code.
In the US, at least here in New England a menu QR code is a link to a PDF or a nightmare website (recently saw one that was a canva.com presentation formatted for a desktop computer or a TV) — a paper menu is almost always better around here.
People Hate QR-Code Menus. Now Restaurants Are Ditching Them - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36094653 - May 2023 (16 comments)
The QR-code menu is being shown the door - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36065666 - May 2023 (368 comments)
Off the menu: why restaurants are ditching QR codes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36053661 - May 2023 (1 comment)
The Restaurant Industry’s Worst Idea: QR Code Menus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33387760 - Oct 2022 (636 comments)
QR code menus are the death of civilization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31758817 - June 2022 (11 comments)
Ads on QR code menu of the restaurant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30391754 - Feb 2022 (8 comments)
Show HN: An app to create QR Menus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305129 - Nov 2021 (29 comments)
QR codes have replaced restaurant menus. Industry experts say it isn’t a fad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28259474 - Aug 2021 (23 comments)
Ask HN: What's been the best usage for QR code apart from restaurants menus? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27815545 - July 2021 (30 comments)
Bring back menus, QR codes are terrible - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27671392 - June 2021 (710 comments)
Show HN: I built a simple QR menu creator for restaurants to avoid Coronavirus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847657 - Oct 2020 (4 comments)
QR Menu Creator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847588 - Oct 2020 (2 comments)
This guy talks about appreciating the weight and realness of a physical menu, but the proceeds to write an article about it that I'm reading online and not in a paper newspaper or magazine.
Why can't my phone just read a printed URL by now? There's no reason the same information can't be human readable as well as easy for my phone to scan.
I suppose it would require some kind of design paradigm to really denote text that could also be scanned, maybe a specific font style.
Anyway it seem likely to me QR codes are eventually replaced by simple text.
Also most QR codes seem to include a text url nearby the code anyway, so there goes the "compactness" argument. In that case it's redundant information as well.
Not to mention colors, fonts etc. QR avoids all these issues. Maybe something better will come along but will have similarities.
I'm not sure about this compactness idea, especially since the text url is usually right there with the QR code, in the same space.
Go ahead and call me stubborn: I have a 0-tolerance policy for broken tech, and that bridge is already burnt.
For me, though, I use it as an opportunity to ask the wait staff what they recommend.
Question for people who prefer QR: how do you know you're not getting priced higher than other customers?
It seems people are mixing up qrcode linked menus with online ordering. These are 2 different things.
I'm not aware of any place doing this but it's a simple example that wouldn't even require any type of dynamic pricing setup just a second or third version of the menu with a unique link.
1. Stand up, say to cashier "I'm going somewhere that has an actual menu" 2. Go to another restaurant that has an actual menu 3. Order Food 4. Eat Food
We should start to encourage some online menu standards though to welcome it in.
The really fancy restaurants even have the waiter verbally tell you their menu, or at least their special(s) of the day.
Now, having to listen to a waiter recite a menu from memory is just plain bizarre. I've been to a lot of fancy restaurants and I've never seen this. The specialty of the day? Sure. But never the whole menu. Worse than having a written menu in a format you don't like would be having no written menu at all.