Contactless Menu

A contactless menu is a system in which you scan a QR code placed on the table with a smartphone and view the menu in a web browser. Triggered by the spread of the novel coronavirus in 2020, it spread rapidly among restaurants as a way to avoid the hygiene risk of paper menus touched by many different people.

Besides hygiene, contactless menus have several practical advantages. First, menu updates are reflected immediately. Adding seasonal items, hiding sold-out items, revising prices, and so on can be completed just by editing a web page, which eliminates the cost of printing / replacing paper menus. Second, multi-language support is easy. If a translated version is displayed automatically according to the browser's language setting, the cost of serving inbound tourists can be reduced significantly.

On the other hand, there are also challenges. Many stores also use paper menus alongside them out of consideration for older customers and customers unfamiliar with smartphones. In addition, if the QR code's link destination is a heavy page, it takes time to load and spoils the ordering experience, so a lightweight web page design is required. It is realistic to design a contactless menu not as "a replacement for paper" but as "coexistence with paper".