QR Menu Maker

The Build, Step by Step

1. 01

   Decide your categories before you type anything

   This is the only decision that is painful to reverse. Aim for five to eight top-level categories. A phone shows category tabs in a horizontal strip, and past about eight the strip starts scrolling sideways — guests then miss whatever sits off-screen. If you have twelve, look for two that merge honestly rather than shipping a strip nobody reaches the end of.

2. 02

   Enter items with prices, shortest description that earns its place

   Two lines maximum on a phone. Descriptions exist to sell the dish or to disclose something material — an unexpected heat level, an allergen, a portion size that surprises people. A description that just restates the dish name in longer words is dead weight the guest scrolls past.

3. 03

   Add photos to the dishes that sell, not to everything

   A menu where every single item has a photo reads like a catalogue and scrolls forever. Photograph your signature items, the high-margin ones, and anything whose name does not explain it. Shoot in daylight near a window, from slightly above, with the plate filling the frame — a modern phone camera is entirely adequate.

4. 04

   Fill in the fields you are not legally required to fill in

   Calories, ingredients, dietary labels and allergen marks are optional for most US independents. They are also the single most-appreciated thing on a digital menu by the guests who need them, and the cheapest liability reduction available to you. Do it once at build time; it is tedious to retrofit.

5. 05

   Add your address, hours and phone

   The menu is a public web page. Putting your location and hours on it means the page can answer “are they open and where are they” as well as “what do they serve”, which is most of what a hungry person on a phone is actually asking.

6. 06

   Download the code and print exactly ten

   Not two hundred. Ten proofs, placed at the real tables, tested with the oldest phone on the premises, at the worst-lit table in the room, at the time of day the room is busiest. Then order the full run.

Modifiers, Sold-Out Items, and the Two Things Menus Get Wrong

Two operational realities break more digital menus than any design decision: options that change the price, and items that run out mid-service.

On options — a coffee with three sizes, a steak with two cuts — resist creating a separate item per variant. Three sizes across a dozen drinks is thirty-six items and a menu nobody can scan visually. Put the variants in the item description with their prices, or split only where the difference is genuinely a different dish rather than a different size of the same one.

On sold-out items, the advantage of a digital menu is that you can act. When the special runs out at eight, hide the item. It takes ten seconds on a phone from the pass, and it removes the conversation where a server explains four times an hour that the thing on the menu is gone. This is the single most-underused feature of any digital menu, and it is the one that most changes how a shift actually feels.

The third thing worth planning: who edits it. Give the person who runs service the ability to hide items, not just the owner who is off on Tuesdays. A menu only stays accurate if the people watching the pass can change it.

Before You Print: A Launch Checklist

Almost every bad QR menu launch traces back to skipping one of these. They cost about twenty minutes in total.

Frequently Asked Questions