It is fairly obvious now that we have a new standard in restaurant service.
From now on most restaurants will use a QR reader for the menu. It will take longer for the very high end restaurants to use this tool.
Why?
The QR menu is a profitable innovative mechanism.
I’ve consulted many restaurants beginning with one in 1960s San Francisco, Victoria Station, that was made up of railroad cars. It became a successful global chain with 100 stores, following my guidance for the opening of the first one. I told them to open with a wall-to-wall crowd of young people for the entire first month and to be very generous with drinks.
That advice was the basis for great success. The three owners two decades later lost a bundle when trying to open and run a high- end eatery on the top floor of a Hollywood venue. They didn’t understand that new market and never sought my advice.
I was also the father of Greens restaurant at Ft. Mason in San Francisco, which was the first high-end vegetarian restaurant in the U.S. Still full with over 180 seats nearly 40 years later.
A QR reader menu offers the following benefits:
- When the kitchen runs out of ingredients for a dish it can immediately be taken off the menu. Much less waste in meal planning for the kitchen which usually over orders.
- Many menus are expensive to produce; not true for a website which can be changed at will.
- The website can offer high quality and appetizing color photos of dishes, not possible or too expensive with printed menus. Videos are also possible.
- New and seasonal dishes can be added to the menu quickly and inexpensively.
- Price changes can be immediate.
- Vast background information can be available through the menu for select customers.
- In some cases ordering is possible without the use of as many wait staff.
- The same or a similar menu can be used for pick-up ordering and delivery.
Those are just a few of the profitable reasons that QR menus are here to stay.