I lived in China and I thought it sucked there too. I always found it an epic cop-out by the restaurants and cafés who refused to answer questions about their dishes or allow a simple additional request like adding more spicy. Invariably the restaurants with QR code menus were also the ones that featured pretentiously-named menu items so you had very little idea what it was going to be until after you ordered it. Fortunately while I lived in China (up through the early months of COVID) the vast majority of small restaurants still kept their classic red-and-yellow menu board that literally just says in the name of the dish exactly what you are going to get. And it was no problem to ask a question to clarify an ingredient or ask for something special.

What I don't understand is if you're just going to order off an app, what's the point of even going to the restaurant in the first place? That no-human-contact experience already exists in delivery apps, so why bother leaving your home or office if when you go out you just end up with the exact same experience? It's not like most of these restaurants are snazzy KTVs or tea houses where you get a private room and bottle service, they're just bog-standard food court style restaurants with hard chairs and dirty floors. You could just as easily order online and eat the food on a park bench. To me the whole thing just came across as inconvenient at best and actively destructive of local communities and their social restaurant culture at worst.

We go to restaurant with friends, not for social interaction with waiters, I don't miss the human-contact experience at all. I don't know why it is part of experience of restaurant, I am interested in food, and chatting with friends. I don't care about the service, except the speed of the service. Additional bonus of the app is that it has pictures of everything you order, and also you can order at your own pace. The restaurant owner don't have time to entertain you, they are selling at a reasonable price which doesn't including entertaining you, and you don't tip them in China as well.

In my experience going to a QR code restaurant with friends means everyone spends their time fiddling with their phones instead of discussing with one another the food that they are actually at the restaurant to eat. The pictures are useless, since in China the vast majority of them are stock photos that don't depict the reality of what you get. It is much easier to choose from a menu board which just says "dry fried green beans", "red cooked eggplant", "celery and dry tofu" etc than get the (much more common on QR code menus) "house special secret recipe greens" plus a random blurry photo that doesn't even make clear what green it is.

I don't expect a restaurant owner to entertain me, but I do expect them to be able to tell me what is in a dish, suggest a suitable equivalent if the restaurant doesn't have exactly what I'm looking for, tell me what's good or fresh that day or bring me something with more or less spicy depending on my preference. Any of these very short and simple interactions about exactly the product they are selling are much easier to have in person than trying to express every possible branch of a back-and-forth conversation in a tiny text box on your phone - and that's assuming there even is a text box.

I've walked out of several restaurants where they had real humans "serving" who either were completely ignorant about the food they had on offer or too lazy to bother engaging with a potential customer. "Just check the app." (Which doesn't have the answers.) What's the point, then? If all you care about is talking to your friends and not getting restaurant service, then just order online from a delivery service and enjoy your meal with friends in the park, in a square, in your office kitchen, in a hotel room, at home, wherever.

And please don't think I'm asking for American style "service" where you practically have servers begging you for tips every 2 seconds. There is a comfortable middle ground, and pretty much every small restaurant and da pai dang in China does it perfectly fine without a QR code menu.

> And please don't think I'm asking for American style "service" where you practically have servers begging you for tips every 2 seconds

It’s not like this at all. Servers don’t talk about tips or beg for them. You just tip at the end of the meal, whatever amount you want.

No but they do introduce themselves by name, ask you how your meal is going and check in every now and again. That’s not a bad thing, but it is different, and seems in my mind related to tipping culture.

Generally they check in only once a meal and in the better restaurants, they are better about when to approach your table. There is a way that the tipping system helps - my boss tips massive amounts every time we have lunch (once a week or so). Like close to 15-25%. Especially in Indian restaurants (we are both Indians in the US). But in return, he hates waiting and expects top service. At least since I joined his team, we have gone to one new restaurant that opened up where he got pissed at the service and made them hurry up and serve our table better, then tipped them 22% or something cos he was like the food isn't bad so I'm coming back here and I want good service.

I, on the other hand, am content with waiting for the food if it takes too long and don't need any special service and would prefer to leave the (societally required) minimum tip of 10%.

15% is the socially required minimum tip in the USA. The signal sent by 10% is “I want to insult you by implying that I know tipping is required, but I’m going to make the tip so small you will know I didn’t like you”.

Tipping is a terrible system I would prefer we dispensed with, but abusing the very poorly paid people enmeshed in the system is unkind, if you can afford to eat in US restaurants.

May be true elsewhere but not in New York. I can play off the uninitiated immigrant card. The system is bad but that doesn't mean I comply with it. I know one of the consequences of my action is a poorly paid wait staff. But it is the right game theoretic move at scale. If everyone did it, we could shame restaurants into charging higher food prices and paying their staff more money in a fixed amount.

All this is beside the point that I don't eat outside in general. I prefer take out so I tip only rarely.

I hate having waiters keep pestering me every 5 minutes while I'm having a conversation with my friends but I wonder if it's as much due to the tip culture as due to the fact that it's considered impolite to wave a waiter over when you need them.

At high end restaurants with better trained wait staff- they are looking for visual cues on when to approach your table. Empty glasses, napkin on plate, menu down on table when you're ready to order, one customary check on the food shortly after it arrives, not so early that you haven't tried it though. But this is learned behavior on the part of the customer as well.

I hate that it's impolite to wave waiters over as well though. That would make the whole process a lot easier.

>I hate that it's impolite to wave waiters over as well though.

Depends where you are. In a lot of restaurants in Singapore, not only do you have to wave at waiters, you have to go to extremes to get their attention.

Yes, waiters wait on you.

And they run you down the street when you forgot to tip. This was such a bad experience when I went to NYC.

American restaurant servers definitely have a habit of interrupting your meal, compared to France at least

Guests fiddling with their phones is not QR-dependent from what I experienced.

Also, waiters can be helpful, and friendly even when there's no paper menus. In my current city most restaurants are QR-enabled, and they serve food as nicely (or not) as paper-based. Absolutely the same experience except how you looking into menu. I just stopped noticing the difference.

EDIT: Maybe important note that I'm neither in US, nor an EU country.

I have to say, you are not the typical customer of a Chinese restaurant. A good restaurant is busy, the chef will not change the recipe for your taste bud, you go there for exactly what they are famous for :)

America is weird because you can actually make a lot of money waiting tables.

But in the Netherlands nobody tips so it is not exactly a very desirable job. Restaurants have to literally close because they can't find staff. Automation is the only possible future for the industry whether people want it or not.

I was in Amsterdam a few years ago and said a few words in Dutch to the waiter, who was really amused by it. He asked where we were from and ended up sitting down and chatting with us for like half and hour, and drew us a map of his favorite spots nearby. We also met a few really chatty bartenders, including a guy how ducked behind the bar and came back up holding kittens. I’m not sure why we had such good experiences, but it was great.

Restaurants are hardly the only industry in the Netherlands having trouble finding staff at the moment. There are quite literally less trains because the train operators can't find enough staff.

Thanks for this comment. I love experiences like this and this makes me want to go to Amsterdam even more at some point. I've experienced this in random small towns in the US, but they are few and far between.

Last time I was in Amsterdam I couldn’t even speak Dutch to the waiters. Pretty ridiculous. I don’t think that happens in U.K. or US unable to speak English to the waiter of a chain restaurant

It's not true that nobody tips in NL, but it's not mandatory; I still tip if the quality of the experience merits it. That goes beyond the responsiveness of the waiting staff, but also the ambience. If I'm eating in a glorified mess hall, which most restaurants devolve to if they optimize for number of seats, I don't tip. To me, a real restaurant also takes care of acoustics and privacy: you shouldn't have to raise your voice to be heard over the noise of the tables around you (or worse, the muzak).

It's also why the whole concept of QR-code menus is antithetical to my idea of a good restaurant: if you're dining out, you're doing it to enjoy the company you're in. Having everyone at the table space out into their private phone world is not my idea of a nice evening.

Most of the time a service charge is included anyways

> America is weird because you can actually make a lot of money waiting tables.

Most do not.

Yeah, it's relative. Bartenders can make decent money in America, but I'm guessing it's a modest salary in most of the EU.

I just moved to the Netherlands and have no qualms with the service in most restaurants. At least in my region (Brabant/Limburg) everyone is very nice. If I had to complain about anything, it would be sitting for 20 minutes after the party is finished eating, waiting for someone to clear the table. The service has been excellent and I enjoy paying the price on the receipt with zero surprises!

There’s plenty of people going to the restaurant alone and I bet the human experience is a big part of their motivation. They may not be as noisy and visible as groups of cheering young folks but you’ll notice them for sure if you take time to scan around with your eyes and not your phone (pun intended, not disdain over techies). Think of old widows, singles, workers away from family/friends, peoples with difficulties to have social interactions.

> and I bet the human experience is a big part of their motivation.

Restaurant business is one of the rare where "free market" is really fully functional, and market will quickly self-regulate and award the good ideas, and punish the bad ones.

If your guess was right then the restaurants without it would loose the customers, and niche restaurants with the "human experience" would start popping out attracting those unsatisfied customers. Since this is not happening in China (yet?), then perhaps it's about the difference in the culture and your bet is wrong?

This is very culture dependent. In Spain almost no one eats alone in a restaurant or bar.

Yes? in Singapore they have Michelin stars.

While I actually like the food, I've found myself on several occasions just deciding that I don't want to go eat at Nandos because they've managed to make entire process so entirely hostile to basic human interaction. Just let me order my food from a real person please. It's so much easier that opening a digital menu and then needing to input my card info. It just makes me feel like I'm eating at a fancy McDonald's.

OTOH I have gone to McD's instead of getting real food just because I can order there without interacting with any people.

That hasn’t been my experience. (Living in a tier ome city since mid 2019.) Maybe it’s different now that QR menus are more the norm, or maybe we just go to different restaurants. If anything it’s easier to talk to a server, because they’re not handling the mechanics of order collection and bill payment for everyone else. I don’t miss having to get the server’s attention to try to settle the bill.

So if you lose your phone, forget your phone, if you don't have any battery, or if you have any internet issue, you can't order.

You cannot have the whole menu in front of you, you have to scroll and change sections. If it's cold, you can't order without talking your gloves off, if it's sunny, you better have a very bright phone or the menu will be unreadable.

As everything in China, you cannot pay without being electronically tracked, and you can't give a tip without going through a system that will likely take a cut. I will refrain to reach the Godwin point here since I assume it's been debated ad nausaum.

And of course, if something is not on the menu, you can't order it.

As usually with systems that are 100% digital, it gives you zero margin of maneuver outside of the happy path.

I don't want every restaurant to turn into a Mac Donald. If I want Mac Donald's, I go there.

McDonalds (and most of their competitors) are actually pretty good/ok for customizations. Usually what's missing is some edge cases like "no ice" or fully exhaustive lists.

This is not entirely correct, many places still do accept cash and allow you to order without your phone. It just so happens that most people prefer to order and pay by phone.

Just like they prefer having the great firewall protecting their internet connexion ?

We had a sushi restaurant (in Canada) that belonged to Chinese expat that worked with the whole QR code + order + pay on your phone and I did find it pleasant. I would go as far as saying that I prefer it.

It might be cultural, but I can count on a single hand the number of times I went to a restaurant and the interaction with the waiter/waitress improved the overall experience.

> It might be cultural,

Or it might be personal.

> And of course, if something is not on the menu, you can't order it.

... That's how it works right? The menu shows what they are offering and then you pay them. Why would you expect things not in the menu?

While it is not something common, it just happens.

In Australia the food culture is you can customize almost anything on the menu and customers expect to be able to pretty much choose whatever combination they want as long as you have the ingredient and they can pay for it.

In France, a menu may not contain something you can eat, but some restaurants will create a full dish for you on the spot. It's very common restaurants with a Michelin star for example: as a veggie and foodie, I get regularly this treatment since french cuisine is very centered on meat. Some restaurants have the menu changing every day (I ate in one this week) depending of the farmer's market. The waiter just let you what's available. I know of at least one restaurant with no menu: you express a theme, and the chief will try to invent something matching it.

In Thailand, there was a restaurant were I used to go that had a regular menu for tourists with high margin meals, and a secret menu for regular customers that was actually good.

In Mali and Argentina, some restaurant menus are fake. You can't order most items, while there are items that you can get pretty much everywhere (riz au gras, pollo a la milanesca) even if it's not in there.

Now, it's tempting to decide that one path is optimum and shape society to only provide it. However, you kill diversity, margin of security, innovation, charm, and so on.

Don't get me wrong. Making the happy path the easiest and proffered way is OK. Offering a digital menu and payment system as a main option is great.

But making alternatives close to impossible is, at best, a good way to end up with with a bland life, and at worse, will create a dangerously inflexible and intolerant system.

It's why we should keep cash, paper forms and phone support despite the automated main experience been more efficient when all goes well.

> In Mali and Argentina, some restaurant menus are fake. You can't order most items

How's that work?

They give you a beautiful piece of paper, and when you order something on it, the waiter tells you it's not available.

After the 10th item on the menu not being available, you start to understand that the menu is more like a checkbox a restaurant must have to appear worthy of the name, rather than an actual useful object.

Not all restaurants are like that in Bamako of course.

But it's a great fun to take new comers to diner, and let them be puzzled for a while until reality sink in. I still remember my first time, my colleague looking at me ordering ice cream with eyes saying "oh, sweety...".

I'll let you in on a little secret: you can order anything they can reasonably make without inconvenience. E.g. "Can I have a vegetarian version of this?" often yes, sometimes no, but you can ask.

I’ve never had trouble ordering a custom dish or special options. If there’s a price difference, the server tells us what to order on the menu, and tells the kitchen what to actually make. If it’s a family shop, sometimes they update the menu for next time.

I’m sure there’s places that won’t let you order off menu. I wonder whether QR menus increases the number of them, though.

I have similar experiences in Singapore. The QR code menus work just fine here.

And if you don't have a smartphone, you can still just talk to the staff and order with them.

I like that this lets restaurants improve their labour productivity and lower their labour costs. It's hard to run a profitable restaurant.

I agree it's hard to run a profitable restaurant, but I disagree it works fine in Singapore. I just had lunch at a QR based restaurant here and it was a bit painful. Staff shortages are a real problem though in F&B so something has to give. Thankfully printed menus are making a comeback. Even when the apps work fine I still prefer a printed menu.

I have a slight preference for having a printed menu available for browsing, _and_ also having optional electronic ordering.

> I just had lunch at a QR based restaurant here and it was a bit painful.

Interesting, which one? So far I didn't have too much trouble. But I can easily believe that there are many that don't work so well.

I hate them. It's 100x easier to browse a paper menu than the scroll through 2-5 dishes per screen, and often have to navigate sub menus trying to find what's available.

I didn't come to a restaurant to fiddle with my phone for 5 to 10 minutes

> You don't have talk to anybody in the whole process.

That's a negative not a positive.

It is a subjective matter anyway. I love menu with pictures, digital menu is very good, you can see what you are getting, even some descriptions if the menu is designed very well. Much better than the one page menu small restaurant offers. And you don't have to talk to anyone, meaning you don't have to rush because people are waiting, no need to hold your hand in air for very long, trying to catch the eyes of a waiter.

If there was no obsession with registrations, it wouldn't have been a problem at all.

For the menu no app is needed, the places I go always open a web page menu(provided by a service specialising in this particular niche).

The payment could be completed through things like Apple Pay, per table basis. So you scan a QR code, it instantly opens a session for you and you can start ordering things and once you are done you close the session by paying through some payment processor.

Also, the technology to open apps with temporary sessions without installing the app exist both on iOS and Android but for some reason it never got popular.

> and once you are done you close the session by paying through some payment processor.

It is my custom to withold payment for a restaurant meal until I've finished eating it and am ready to leave.

Simply close the session when you are about to leave the restaurant. I don't see why you have to be paying each time you add something to your order.

I think that's the custom in the vast majority of restaurants, but I don't think it's incompatible with the system described. It doesn't stream payments in real time, does it?

Same experience in Norway. Most day-to-day operations are handled using apps. Ordering at restaurants using QR codes, finding out bus routes and paying for a (digital) bus tickets, paying for a parking spot, using EV charging stations, etc. It is all done using an app. Apple Pay is a blessing. It takes a bit of getting used to. Especially as a tourist. But it works great. But I hate think what would happen if a loose my phone…

Was in Norway 2 weeks ago.

Went to several restaurants, took the train, stayed at a hotel. I didn't have to use my phone even once for anything.

As a tourist, the only adjustment I had to make was how comfortable things were and polite people were.

Interesting. As a counterpoint, I was in Norway a month ago on business and as a tourist. Did the Norway in a nutshell thing from Bergen to Oslo with time in Bergen, Flam, and Oslo. I used the Bergen and Oslo day passes for unlimited public transport in those cities. The later was especially handy, as it generates QR codes for both public transport and entry to most museums. My travel passes were handled via barcode docs on my phone. My tickets to a concert in Oslo was via an app on my phone. Route planning for site-seeing (which bus, tram, ferry, or rail) was via an app on my phone.

I paid for restaurants using credit cards directly to payment terminals.

I found the whole experience very easy and enjoyed how much I could handle on my phone.

The infrastructure and services are awesome. Everything is easy and simple, quality is top noch and communication is easy if you know English.

It was the most comfortable Python training I ever gave.

One app, or different apps for each task? I can see the latter getting annoying.

I don't know about Norway, but here in Sweden you'd have one app per task, but since they integrate with each other it really isn't a problem. For example, I have an app for my region's public transportation and when I'm buying a ticket it uses the Swish (peer-to-peer payment system everyone uses) app for payment, which in turn may use BankID (national identification service) for identity verification, which uses my phone's biometrics. It sounds like a lot, but since every part is well integrated the full flow is just: tap ticket, tap buy button, fingerprint/face id, done.

As for the first point, Apple has a solution called App Clips (https://developer.apple.com/app-clips/) however I have never seen it in the wild even here in the Bay Area. Some commenters last time it was mentioned said they’ve used it at gas stations? I’m not sure if Android has anything conceptually similar.

I think "Instant Apps"[1] are/were meant to be the Android analog, but I haven't seen them used anywhere.

Also can't find any proof that they are still a thing... except for this[2] sketchy looking app that has 1 billion+ downloads, offered by "Google Play Store"

[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7683278

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

I think this is the current developer page:

https://developer.android.com/topic/google-play-instant/over...

Now renamed to Google Play Instant, but still ok for apps (I think?)

I think Vimeo has one, whenever I click a link it always loads in a small app.

https://vimeo.com/761107839

that's because wether instant apps works is wildly inconsistent across phones. we learned that the hard way.

Ah, thanks for that. I had no idea how the following worked, but it was quite heavenly. Was at a restaurant who dropped the bill on my table after dining. It had a standard receipt on a black tray like you'd see anywhere in the US. But the receipt had a QR code along with a note about Apple Pay. I thought, "Hey I'd rather do Apple Pay than give them a CC so I scanned it.

I was prompted with one of those App Clip interfaces, double-clicked to approve the Apple Pay, and done.

It was such a nice experience, no nagging prompts forcing me to download some crappy App. Just a simple clean, Apple Pay checkout.

Note I agree with TFA about QR menus. But this level of phone integration was the perfect amount on top of a traditional dining experience.

The only time I’ve ever used this was trying to buy something in person at an Apple Store. Scan a QR code, something like the store app pops up, payment doesn’t work, staff can’t figure out what’s wrong. Waste 10 minutes and finally realize I’d deleted the full app because I never use it.

Not a great experience.

They’re extraordinarily convenient; a cafe I enjoy uses it for the total bill. Instead of handing off your physical card, the QR code presents your bill within the app clip, complete with apple pay (or enter your card details), done.

presents your bill for you, with the waiter splitting the tab for you.

I usually go solo, unless you’d like to join me sometime :)

I live in China and here's an anti-anecdote. I had a terrible QR code menu the other day where you'd sit down, order, but there was no pay button. This set of my alarm bells immediately. And indeed, for a dinner that was supposed to be around 200-300, we wound up paying nearly 100 in additional fees that were mystically added to our apparently open bill without declaration. I complained about this at the counter when leaving and they refused to engage. The food was bad too, it was clearly a scam. I left them a terrible review and immediately decided never to dine at a QR code menu only restaurant again, and have so far stuck to my guns. Incidentally, I also work in foodtech.

I built a web-app MVP which is basically a QR menu app, as a web-app with URLs for each menu in the format webappDomain/RestaurantName, for example my demo is at tearounder.app/TheLoremIpsum

My MVP solves quite a few of the grumbles people mention, and other grumbles either dictate the sort of venues that shouldn't adopt this tech, or show why this tech should always be as well as traditional service not "instead of". (There are also some grumbles that require more development to iron out)

Stuff my MVP does that solve grumbles mentioned in this thread: - simple URL format means you can use the URL rather than scan a QR code. If the restaurant name is long, a shorter version of the name should be used for good UX. I see QR codes that point to those URLs, as a good and easy option to provide for those people who now expect a QR code, but not the main way to access the menu. - web based means no need to install an app (I have also met some of the basic requirements for a "Progressive Web App" so some browsers will let you save it to your device once you are on the website if you want) - I keep file-sizes low, and put thought and effort into making it load and continue functioning smoothly even over slow and patchy internet connections. There are some things I could do to improve performance and smoothness on poor connections, particularly during building up your order, but it was easy to make it so that you can browse a menu to your hearts content even if your connection drops completely right after page load. Right now data for entire menu comes over at page load as JSON (that was created when restaurant last changed their menu), all UI up to placing order is handled in one page via client side JS, then as you add items to your order ajax calls add those items to a WooCommerce cart and tapping order sends you to a WordPress/WooCommerce checkout screen. Extra dev time to make a buffered version of that system, would get the connection need down to just the pageload and checkout/pay, but with the basic setup I have right now there is also need for a connection each time you add an item. The MVP setup would also require restaurants to have their woocommerce orders page up on some device behind the bar, which is not a great UI for their needs - so a "full" version of the web-app would need a custom page, and only use WooCommerce as a back-end if that made sense for that restaurant.

Another problem - you can't order a coffee without your data being harvested