QR code menu for restaurants

What you are actually paying for

Search for a QR menu and every result is a platform with a monthly price. They are not selling you the QR code. A QR code is a public standard that any tool generates for nothing, this one included. What they sell is the menu behind it: an item editor, photos, categories, translations, and in the better ones, ordering and payment at the table.

Those are real products and worth the money if you want guests ordering without a server. But if what you wanted was for people to read the menu on their phone, and your menu already exists as a page on your own site, you need a code and nothing else. That is the part nobody selling a subscription is going to put on their landing page.

Where the code should point

The code is the easy half. What decides whether a guest reads your menu or gives up is what opens when they scan, and the four common answers are not equal.

• A menu page on your own website

  Opens instantly, reflows to the phone, and you can edit a price without touching the printed code. The link is short, so the code prints small enough for a table tent.

  Somebody has to keep the page updated, and if the site goes down at Friday dinner service the menu goes with it.

  The right answer for anyone who already has a website. This is a code, not a platform, and you do not need to buy one.

• A PDF of the printed menu

  Zero work. The file you send to the printer is the file you upload.

  It is the single worst thing to put behind a menu code. A PDF opens in a viewer, arrives zoomed out to fit a page designed for A4, and asks a person holding a phone in one hand to pinch and drag around a document. Prices in three-point type at that zoom are unreadable.

  Avoid unless there is genuinely no alternative. If you must, export it at phone width rather than A4, so it opens legible.

• A hosted menu platform

  Item editor, photos, categories, sometimes ordering and payments. Worth paying for if you want customers ordering from the table.

  A monthly fee for hosting a page, and the code points at their domain, so leaving means reprinting every table tent. Several of them price per location.

  Buy it for ordering and payments. Do not buy it just to have a QR code, which is the thing being sold hardest.

• A Google Doc or an image file

  Free and quick. A Doc set to anyone-with-the-link opens on a phone and reflows better than a PDF does.

  It looks like a Google Doc, which reads as unfinished on a table in a restaurant. Sharing settings default to restricted, which shows guests a permission wall.

  Fine for a pop-up, a food truck or a specials board. Check it signed out before printing.

The PDF problem, in detail

Pointing a menu code at a PDF is the most common mistake in this whole category, and it is invisible to the person who set it up. On the laptop where the code was made, the PDF opens crisp and full-screen. On the phone it is opened on, it arrives as a page laid out for A4 paper, scaled to fit a screen a fifth of that width, with body text at three or four points on screen.

The guest is now holding a phone in one hand, pinching to zoom with the other, and dragging around a document to find the starters. In a dark room. Some viewers reflow the text and most do not. A plain web page, even an ugly one, is readable the instant it loads, and that single difference decides whether the code was worth printing.

If a PDF genuinely is the only option, export it at phone width rather than A4, with type set for a screen. It will look wrong to you and right to everybody scanning it.

What the link costs on a table tent

A table tent has a fixed footprint, so the length of the menu address decides how small the code can be printed and still read at arm’s length. Each row below was encoded and decoded when this page was built.

The dated upload path is the one to watch. A file called spring-dinner-menu-final-v3.pdf is longer than the entire address of a page on your own domain, and it also guarantees that next season’s menu lives somewhere else, which breaks every table tent you printed.

Printing for a table, not a screen

• Go above the measured minimum. That figure assumes a close, square read in decent light, and a table tent is read at arm’s length, at an angle, in a room lit for atmosphere.
• Laminate reflects. A gloss finish bounces the ceiling lights straight back into the camera, which is a common reason a code works on the proof and fails on the table. Matt laminate if you can.
• Keep the quiet zone clear. The blank margin around the code is part of the symbol, and a designer filling it with a border is the other common cause of a dead table tent.
• Print the address in text underneath. Guests whose camera will not scan can type it, and it also tells people where they are about to go before they scan.
• Take the SVG. Table tents get reprinted at different sizes for the bar, the terrace and the window, and vector art survives that.

Seasonal menus without reprinting

If your menu changes with the season and lives at a new address each time, a static code is the wrong tool: every change means new table tents. Either keep one permanent address and change what sits behind it, which is the simplest answer, or use a dynamic code and repoint the same printed square whenever the menu moves.

For a set of codes across several locations or tables, the bulk generator takes a spreadsheet column and prints the table number under each code.

What this page does not do

• It does not host your menu. There is no item editor, no photos, no categories and no translations.
• It does not take orders or payments. If you want guests ordering from the table, buy a platform that does that properly.
• It does not know your prices, so nothing here can be out of date. The page behind the code is yours to keep current.

• QR code menuTable tents for a restaurant menu, printed as a sheet at an exact millimetre size.
• Museum QR codeLabel codes sized for the distance a visitor actually stands at, measured against real caption widths.
• QR code generatorMake a plain QR code for a link or text, with colour and error-correction controls.

• 

  Comparisons

  Static vs Dynamic QR Codes

  What the redirect actually buys you, measured on real encoded codes, and which payloads are worse off for it.

  3 August 2026·16 min read
• 

  Printing

  QR Code Sticker Size: The Circle Costs You 30%

  The usable square inside a round sticker is 70% of its diameter. Measured minimum sizes for real links, against every common sticker size.

  7 August 2026·8 min read
• 

  Reference

  Offline QR Code Generators for Every Device

  What each platform already ships, the measured cost of each payload type, and how to check an offline claim yourself.

  4 August 2026·26 min read