The Little-Known Roles of QR Codes Printed on Pizza Boxes

Have You Ever Scanned the QR Code on a Pizza Box?

When you ordered pizza delivery, have you ever noticed a QR code printed on the lid or side of the box? People tend to ignore it, thinking "it is probably just a coupon for next time," but what is placed at the link is not only coupons.

The motive for putting a QR code on the box in the first place is that the printed surface never has enough room for everything that needs to be written. The surface of cardboard has low print reproducibility, and even if you line up small text, it is hard to read. Moreover, information such as nutritional content, allergens, and the origin of ingredients needs to be rewritten when the menu is revised or suppliers are switched, but boxes that have already been printed cannot be corrected until they are reprinted. If you move that information to a web page through a QR code, you can replace only the content without throwing away your stock of boxes.

If you route the link through a redirect, you can also switch the destination by store or by period while keeping boxes with the same design. If you serve Japanese and English pages according to the browser's language setting, you can make the guidance multilingual without adding a single character to the box's surface. Put the other way, if boxes whose link management has been abandoned keep circulating, all that remains is a QR code that shows nothing when scanned.

Delivery Person Ratings and Feedback

There are also designs that connect the box's QR code to a survey page about the delivery. The format asks a few questions such as "Did it arrive on time?" and "Was the pizza in good condition?", and if you embed the order number in the link URL in advance, you can match each response to its order without making the customer enter it.

For orders placed through a delivery app, the rating is completed within the app. As with Uber Eats and Demae-can, the common flow is to give stars on the screen after the delivery is completed. On the other hand, orders taken through the store's own website or by phone have no such place for responses. A QR code printed on the box works as a path for collecting feedback even from customers who have not installed the app. Because the box stays in front of the customer until they finish eating, there is also the timing advantage of getting answers while the memory is fresh.

However, the responses collected through this route are skewed toward people who took the trouble to scan. Responses are hard to gather without strong dissatisfaction or strong satisfaction, and if you treat the average score as is as an indicator of delivery quality, you will misjudge. If the design includes the order number or address in the URL, you also need to assume that the link can fall into the hands of third parties simply when someone takes a photo of the box and shares it.

Guiding Box Recycling with a QR Code

Pizza boxes are cardboard, but cardboard soaked with oil or cheese cannot be recycled as waste paper. This is because if oil gets mixed into the fibers during the papermaking process, it lowers the strength and appearance of the resulting paper. For this reason, some municipalities advise that oily cardboard should not be put out for resource collection but disposed of as burnable waste. How much counts as soiled differs by region, and in some regions only the clean lid can be sent for recycling.

This condition of "differing by region" is a poor match for printing on the box. If you print "lid is recyclable, bottom is burnable waste" on boxes distributed nationwide, it becomes incorrect guidance in regions with different rules. With a QR code, you can have people select their postal code or municipality at the link and show an explanation that matches that region's categories. Even when ordinances or practices change, you can keep up without reprinting the boxes.

The content of the guidance usually comes down to the simple task of "cutting the box into top and bottom." The lid and sides, which oil rarely reaches, go to recycling, and the bottom, which has soaked up sauce, goes to burnable waste. Just placing one diagram removes the time spent wondering how to throw it away. The moment of throwing away the box is also the last moment of contact between the store and the customer. Whether the store can place correct information there is also seen as a reflection of the store's attitude.

The Pizza Box Becomes the Stage for an AR Game

In March 2021, Pizza Hut ran a campaign titled "Newstalgia" in the United States. The lid of the limited-design box had a Pac-Man maze printed on it, and scanning the QR code on the box launched an AR (augmented reality) version of Pac-Man in the browser without installing an app, letting people play on top of the printed maze. At the same time, a prize drawing for a retro arcade cabinet was running for posts tagged with the hashtag "#PizzaHutARcade."

After the pizza is eaten, the box usually goes straight into the trash. However, if there is an AR game, the box is "reused" as a little bit of after-meal entertainment. Especially in households with children, the added fun of "after we eat pizza, we can play a game" adds one more reason to order from the same place next time.

A QR code gives new value to a pizza box, "something destined to be thrown away." This idea can also be applied to other food packaging.

QR Codes on Food Packaging Become a "Proof of Trust"

Not only for pizza, QR codes on food packaging are becoming a proof of trust that says "this food is safe." The origin of ingredients, the manufacturing process, the results of quality inspections, a detailed explanation of the best-before date. Information that cannot all be written in the limited space of the package is supplemented by a QR code.

Especially for people with food allergies, a QR code is a life-critical source of information. Simply writing "contains wheat, eggs, and milk" in small letters on the package may not be enough. Scanning the QR code shows a detailed list of allergens, the risk of cross-contamination (mixing on the production line), and even suggestions for alternative products. We are in an era when the richness of this information determines the trustworthiness of food manufacturers.