Introduction

The current pandemic COVID 19 has impacted our lives beyond measure both personally and professionally. The food business has been no exception. Frequent visitors and foodies stopped dining outside due to movement restrictions and also the fear of catching the virus and falling sick in a scenario when there was no effective vaccine. People today are still reluctant to pay a visit to their favorite eating joint because of the crowd and also being wary of touching paper menu cards (which could have been touched by someone hosting the COVID virus), etc. It has been testing times esp. for single outlet food business owners. The only way out of the scenario has been contactless menus and subsequent online food deliveries for both big and small food businesses. 

In this scenario, the business owners were looking for a solution that can deliver a safe & secure ordering experience to their customers. There the concept of QR based menu comes in.

According to management consulting company McKinsey & Co, there is an 80/20 rise in digital payments. That means the digital payments user base has seen a 20% increase, where 80% has been registered during the peak of COVID 19. It is expected to remain for the long term even post-pandemic.

The Emergence of QR based menus

QR scan-based menu is a non-paper-based, contactless, digital system wherein the food items can be viewed and ordered by scanning the menu QR code. Nowadays due to the COVID-19 pandemic majority of the restaurants have adopted the concept of a QR-based menu that offers contactless & safe ordering.

Benefits of a QR based menu

• Contactless orders: The primary benefit of having a QR-based menu is that it provides safe & contactless ordering. Now customers can order any item without touching the menu, it also complies with the COVID 19 norms. Apart from that it also stops the spreading of viruses.
• Visual impact of the dishes & reviews: Customers can look at the actual dish and see its reviews & star ratings for an informed food ordering.
• Price updates from time to time: A restaurateur can now real-time update the prices as many times as he wishes with a clock of a few buttons or taps. Gone are the days when one had to order fresh menu prints or manually change prices on the old card or inform the customer while taking an order.  
• Marketing: Restaurateurs often use this technique to promote availability of specific dishes which are meant for festive occasions such as the Diwali, New year, Christmas, etc. They can now create their own promotion using the menu when need arises.
• Save time & efforts: Apart from its features it also saves the time and effort of the restaurateurs. The greatest benefit of the QR menu is that it can be accessed by multiple people at the same time by using only one QR code. The same code is re-usable as many times as required.

How has the market adapted to this new change?

As the concept of QR code was new to the market, many restaurants were feeling reluctant to adopt QR based menus, but due to the outbreak of COVID-19, there was a drastic increase in the number of QR code downloads that have soared 750% over the last 18 months, according to Bitly.

At present, not only the 5 stars rated hotels, restaurants, pubs, and bars are using QR based menus but even the small restaurants, cafes, bakeries, dhabas, and other food businesses have adopted the concept of QR based menu and even some restaurants have removed once and for all physical paper-based menu cards.

The impact of COVID 19 has forced restaurant owners to switch to the QR menu and many tech experts in Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) believe that it will continue even after the end of the pandemic.

Nowadays to stay updated in this digital world, it is mandatory for a restaurant to have a QR menu as people have become habituated to that since it is fast, quick, & delivers a great customer experience with minimal user interaction and gives an opportunity for restaurants to do more sales.

Key takeaways

Hence, it is proved beyond any doubt that the concept of QR based menu is COVID 19 safe, time, money, effort-saving, and delivers a great consumer experience.

In line with this trend, we at Nukkad Shops have introduced DinO, an app that is available for both Android-based POS and Android-based mobile phones to facilitate the food and beverages business owners to run their operations seamlessly. The app also enables restaurateurs to create a QR-based menu to offer a great user experience to their customers. With the Dino app, you can create your own QR code and upload your menu within a few steps without any barriers.

Apart from that it also offers other important features such as Inventory management, Table management, KOT management, Menu management and helps in keeping track of all orders like table, delivery, or takeaway.

Currently, we are offering the mPOS app for a 30-days free trial, it is a great opportunity for you to get to know our app!

Click here to install and experience our DinO mPOS app!

Please feel free to contact us at 7997095678 or you can fill out the form below, we would be happy to answer your queries.