Guide
The digital menu, built so it can be read
Almost every QR menu is a PDF put online, and almost all of them are awkward for the same reason: they were designed for paper and then hung off a code. A digital menu done properly starts from the other end, from the screen in the customer's hand.
Why a PDF is the wrong choice
A PDF designed for an A4 sheet, opened on a six inch screen, forces pinching and sliding left and right to read a single line. It downloads instead of opening, it is heavy, and on the venue's connection it sometimes never arrives. Search engines also struggle to read its contents as part of the page, so the dishes inside it help nobody find you.
What belongs there instead
An ordinary web page, where the text wraps itself to the width of the screen. Sections scroll under a thumb, prices sit next to the dish rather than lined up with dot leaders, and anyone who needs to can enlarge the type on the phone without breaking the layout. It opens in a second and does not download.
The QR must point at an address that does not change
The mistake that forces you to reprint the tables is pointing the QR straight at a file. When the file is renamed, the code dies. The QR should point at a stable address on your own site, the menu page for instance: from there the content can change as often as you like and the printed code stays valid forever.
Allergens and required information
In Italy allergen information has to be available to the customer, and a digital menu is a convenient place to do it properly: written beside each dish instead of in a footnote. It is worth marking what is frozen too, as the rules already require on paper. A web page makes all of this easier to keep current than a reprinted sheet.
The benefit nobody uses: the menu helps people find you
A menu written as a real page contains the names of your dishes as readable text, and those names are things people search for. Someone looking for a particular dish in your town can land on your menu page directly. That is a source of visits a PDF never produces, because text inside a downloadable file does not work for you in the same way.
Keeping the QR and changing the menu
The test of whether the setup is right is trivial: change one price and see whether you have to reprint anything. If the answer is yes, the QR is attached in the wrong place. On the sites we build the menu page has a fixed address, the QR points there, and we make the edits: send us what changed and it is online that evening, with the same code on the tables.
In short
A digital menu done properly is a web page with a stable address, not a PDF hung off a QR. Change the content whenever you like, the printed code stays valid, and the names of your dishes become one more way to be found.
Frequently asked
Can I keep the menu as a PDF and just put a QR on it?
You can, and it works in the sense that it opens. But it reads badly on a phone, it does not help people find you, and every time the file changes you risk having to reprint the code.
Does the QR need redoing every time the menu changes?
Not if it points at a stable address on the site rather than at a file. In that case you print the code once and change the content as often as you want.
Do people need an app to read the QR?
No. The camera on any recent phone recognises it on its own and offers to open the link.
What about customers without a smartphone?
A digital menu does not replace paper, it sits alongside it. Many places keep a few printed copies for anyone who prefers one, and use the QR to stay current without reprinting at every change.
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