Everything you need to make a QR code menu for a restaurant — the free way, the good way, and how to turn the same scan into a full contactless ordering system. Written for owners and managers, not marketers.
Before you generate a QR code, decide what guests should see after the scan. There are three common answers, and only one of them scales past opening night.
Write out categories, dishes, descriptions, prices, allergens and photos before you upload. A well-structured digital menu takes 30-60 minutes to enter and pays that back within a week of service.
Upload the menu to a QR menu platform and you get a stable URL. The URL is what the QR code points to — so once it's set, you can reprint the QR once and never again.
With Poredai this step is: create your venue, paste the menu, publish. Your restaurant gets its own subdomain (or your custom domain on paid tiers) and every menu edit goes live in seconds.
The per-table QR is what makes the QR menu a real restaurant ordering system. When the platform knows which table scanned, it can group everyone at that table into one shared cart and route the round to the right ticket.
Free QR generators (QRCode Monkey, qr-code-generator.com, GoQR) work fine for a PDF menu — paste the URL, download a PNG or SVG, print. For a proper QR ordering setup, use a platform that generates the table QR codes for you so each one carries a table ID.
How you present the QR matters more than how you generate it. A hidden or scuffed QR code is a table that doesn't order.
Before the first real service, scan every QR yourself. Confirm it opens the right table on the staff dashboard, add a test item, send a round, and watch it hit the kitchen ticket.
With Poredai the entire staff workflow is: the table sends a round, the waitress scans the round QR, the kitchen sees the ticket. No app, no tablet, no new login. New hires are useful on shift one.
Good for a pop-up, a food truck, or a two-week test. Guests can read the menu, nothing more.
The QR opens a live digital menu, a shared table cart, and a full restaurant ordering system that hands rounds to the waitress in one scan.
Upload your menu as a PDF, paste the public URL into a free QR generator (QRCode Monkey, qr-code-generator.com, GoQR), download the QR and print. You'll have a working contactless menu, but guests can only read — they can't order, and every menu edit means a new upload.
Use a QR ordering platform, not a QR generator. Poredai gives you the digital menu, per-table QR codes and a staff dashboard from one €39/month subscription.
At least 3 cm (1.2 in) across at printed size, with high contrast and a small white margin around the code. Bigger is safer in dim rooms.
One per table if you want ordering. One per venue is fine if the QR only opens a read-only PDF menu.
With a real QR menu platform the QR points to a stable URL — you edit the menu in the dashboard and every phone updates in seconds. Static PDF QRs are the ones that need reprinting.
No. They scan the QR with the phone camera and the menu opens in the browser. That's the whole point of a contactless menu.
About an afternoon with Poredai: 30-60 minutes to enter the menu, 15 minutes to generate and print QR codes, and a short staff run-through.
Poredai gives you the digital menu, table QR codes and staff dashboard in one afternoon. 14 days free, no credit card.