I don’t often agree with boomer takes, but I agree with this one.
I don’t think wanting a physical menu to look at is unreasonable for any generation.
or spend like 30 minutes making a decent website i swear online menus are the most asinine thing at every restaurant.
i don’t even require a menu just give me a list with name, price, and ingredients im good. maybe a touch of heirarchy but like then im good.
Yeah sorry, if I can view the menu from my phone instead of touching a menu that 6000 other people have touched, without having to deal with either the server taking it away or it being in the way on my table, I don’t see why I would want or need an actual physical menu
I don’t see why I should need to pull up my phone to order food at a restaurant.
I don’t think you should “have to”. I think physical menus should always be available. But if both are available, I certainly think the digital is superior in every way
Fair enough. Both is better
The option still seems pretty nice to have.
QR codes as menus are a security risk. A bad actor could make up some stickers and put them on the table in place of the menu QR code. The code could then take the user to a malicious site, that they think they should be able to trust.
I see your point, but that seems highly improbable. That a bad actor would be willing and able to successfully create a QR Code that looks enough like the restaurant’s QR and that neither the patrons nor the establishment itself would notice. Not only improbable, but the roi for the scammer seems very poor.
No one working at the restaurant is analyzing the pixels in a QR code to see if they are in the right spot. A QR looks like a QR code. Show someone 10 QR codes and ask them to pick the one from their restaurant, no way anyone is getting that right based on anything more than dumb luck.
The fake one could even forward on to the normal menu after it does the nasty bits, assuming it’s just installing something that will run in the background. This seems like a great way to get some malware out into the wild, especially if it can’t self-replicate.
They might not be analyzing, but its not like restaurant’s qr codes are just plain generic qr codes. They are branded, so effort would have to be put into making them appear to be authentic. And I think it’s improbable that staff wouldn’t notice. And again, the roi for the bad actor seems incredibly poor.
They are branded, so effort would have to be put into making them appear to be authentic.
Not really. Branded QR codes are just regular, unbranded QR codes but messed up— You basically just stick the the branding right on top, and then let the built-in error correction take care of the rest. Should take all of 5 minutes to set up, or maybe 20-30 if you wanna be a stickler for detail.
And I think it’s improbable that staff wouldn’t notice.
If I were working at the restaurant— I think I’d notice after a couple weeks— They’d have impunity up to then— But even then, I’d just assume the management switched it out or patched it up because they wanted to change the link for metrics or messed up something backend or something like that.
The staff is paid to wait tables, not to audit cybersec from the perspective of the customers.
And again, the roi for the bad actor seems incredibly poor.
Probably highly variable.
If the restaurant has a lot of patrons that are wealthy and technologically illiterate, with banking apps on unupdated phones with known exploits, then you’d think “ROI” is basically everything in the bank accounts of the patrons.
Same if the online menu includes online payment options for whatever reason.
I’ve seen places with generic QR codes, and at best most would just have a logo in the middle the sticker could easily go around, if that particular target would lead to a big enough pay off. I don’t know what the ROI would be. I don’t know how these hackers make money, but they seem to make enough to make it worth their time.
Your phone is 10x dirty as a toilet seat
You’ve never seen my phone. And I don’t use it as a toilet seat.
That’s not a menu! That’s a QR code!
So I threw it on the ground
and then said, That’s no QR code, that’s my wife!
Sorry wait, I’m getting it mixed up with an old boomer joke my neighbor used to tell.
The moral of the story is
You can’t trust the system!
Man!
(Very Lemmy take, there)
It’d be just as easy to slap the menu on the wall as opposed to a QR, but I’ve noticed a couple places near me that did this are constantly jacking up the prices an item or two at a time, so it probably helps to keep things flexible with QR as opposed to printing out a new menu every 3 weeks
Alternatively, they could stop manipulating their prices so much.
I think that’s a huge reason places have kept the QR codes. It’s not entirely their fault. Their costs have unstable and constantly increasing lately. Reprinting new menus with pricing adjustments on a regular basis isn’t free in a industry that’s already slim margins.
Related pet peeve: restaurants that have a million items for a million prices, all of them basically the same. Example: sandwich shop not far from me. Every sandwich is +|- a dollar, same with every item. Takes forever for them to ring it up and the variance is pennies. Just charge $X per sandwich and maybe markup a few premium items (roast beef, avocado, bacon whatever).
When in doubt: simplify
What drives me up the wall is when it just links to a scanned image of the menu they used to have, so instead of a full sized menu, you have to pinch and zoom and swipe around on your phone. What’s the fucking point? I went to one and the menu was FOUR PAGES LONG like that! If I hadn’t been promising my daughter I’d take her, I would have walked out.
It shouldn’t be on the customer to have the tech to view a menu. If you’re gonna run a restaurant, have a paper menu available to customers somewhere, even if your primary menu is behind a QR-code.
I love and seek out restaurants that use online ordering and payment. I don’t need someone waiting on me. I’m in the US and they are not paid a living wage, the work is difficult with little reward. Now there is a place in my neighborhood where you sit down the QR code is table based, interaction is simple, clear and designed to work (uses Toast as the backend iirc). You order, the order stays open till you pay it’s a restaurant/bar so if you need another you don’t have to do anything but tap on your phone. They have amazing helpful servers that are paid well. You pay on your phone and leave when you are done. It’s amazing.
I think this is more about power dynamics than currency and menus. I think many people just want or more accurately demand that others (with less power) to serve them. I’ve even heard people say “it’s not my job to check me out or take my order.” Those same people treat their waitress like shit, when those waitresses are paid basically nothing to take the abuse. Then they try to weasel out of the bill. Seen it time and time again.
Now, some restaurants do poor a poor implementation of modern menus and it’s frustrating. However… long term those that do it well will win. It reduces friction and costs leading to lower prices higher margins and quicker more accurate service.
I hate them. Will never go to a place that uses them.
Nobody will win. The waitress stays or will return and still get paid shit. The menu will get digitised because it’s cheaper. You know what less costs mean?
Higher profits.
The end.
Wake up.
You might want to reevaluate who needs to “wake up”. Right now the only difference I see between you and Jeff Bezos is who has the money.
There are many other successful ways to run a business. Co-ops are one example… The legal and regulatory framework of our society should encourage and reward making and encouraging pro-social ethical decisions not discourage them. I think our problem is how we treat each other - not how we order food. Ordering food is just the symptom of the greater ill.
As long as you think like Bezos, nothing will change and more of your money will flow to the rich.
Thus, why I suggest the “waking up” that needs to happen is to realize we are in an increasingly unstable dream/nightmare (depending on whether you have money or not) that we collectively need to choose a different way that truly does benefit everyone.
I don’t know why but the QR menus just piss me off in a service restaurant. I won’t use em (been bailed out by a date more than once).
For a counter place where they are just slinging me the food? Ok I guess. But if we’re out paying for a dinner that’ll hopefully lead to nookie, phones should be the last thing on the table.
I feel that. I can’t stand this crap and I get you wanna save paper but some of us don’t bring phones everywhere we go or we just have a flip phone or a phone without service. If you really wanna save paper instead of using more paper to print out a QR code just get a chalkboard or whiteboard
It would be nice if this was about saving paper but a website is being powered and that likely isn’t a good ecological trade. You could say it’s easier to change prices but it’s also easier to track you; your browser cookies are like a membership card.
God I hate this world
Oh yeah. I absolutely hate this new trend.
I use a LightPhone II which has no camera. It gets me out of this bullshit all the time.
Wait staff: “oh god, here’s the dude with the cameraless phone again 🙄”
“How insufferable and low tipping do you think he’ll be today?”
I was visiting family and we went to a restaurant in NC that did this and the waitress just shrugged and said “We are environmentally friendly, we don’t have paper menus. Borrow someone’s phone” and then walked away.
Questions I didnt get to ask… Like how much environmental impact does a dozen menus have? Also before you walk away… can I borrow your phone? I am not asking some stranger for the phone.
My sister ended up having a smartphone with her. We wanted to leave, but my mom wasn’t having none of it because “it would be impolite, they have already served us water”.
If I was forced to stay in a place that said that by family, I’d start getting really petty judging all the things they’re doing which have a bigger environmental impact than some menus.
Like how about the data center running the website to host the menu? Are they using paper napkins? Is anything disposable on the plate I get with my food? How does the bill arrive, is it paper? Is there food waste in the kitchen, what happens to it?
I am serious. And don’t call me surly.
deleted by creator
You can call me Shirley!
Well, duh. I know. But the original joke works because it exchanges “surely” for the homophone “Shirley.” With “Shirley” already in the title I can’t do that, so swapping it for the not-quite-homophone “surly” seemed like the next best choice.
You didn’t get it.deleted by creator
What’s meshurley’s phone number?
At my age my phone is too small sized for me to be able to view a menu properly.
Now if they want to loan me a tablet to review the menu I’d be fine with that.
Regardless of age, I think you could probably argue that the small, glowing rectangle in your palm is an inferior reading and dining experience compared to an actual menu.
That’s not even to mention the unholy abomination of a tech stack that a system like this would be— Camera, QR decoder, web browser, WiFi/cellular, their web server— That signal might travel hundreds of miles to your ISP, their host, and then back— Probably a couple layers of outsourcing/contracting/helper apps they used to set it up— Though it’s apparently normal to take all that for granted these days, it’s still sorta ridiculous.
They keep trying this in our small town, and they find out.
Image Transcription:
X/Twitter post by user john is toast @johnistoasted reading: My dad and I went to a restaurant and the waiter pointed at the QR code on the wall and sad “thats our menu” and left and my dad looked at it really close and said “Is this some kind of joke”
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I’ve been to a dine-in movie theater that had QR codes for the menu. Problem is, I typically don’t bring my phone to a movie AND since you can order during the movie, who wants people turning their phones on to read a menu?
I first read that as a “drive-in” movie theater and was like “that sounds awesome” and “how is that the most annoying part of your experience” lol.
