Bring back menus, QR codes are terrible

I gotta say, I disagree with this piece. I, for one, love QR code menus. I can pinch zoom rather than squint at a menu with small/unreadable fonts in dim lighting. I don't need to badger the already exhausted wait staff on a busy night when they forget to drop us a menu or two. When orders are taken online, rather than awkwardly force a friend to not go to the bathroom (or take their kid to the bathroom) until a server can take their order, they can just order and then go. I do think restaurants should handle payment themselves and have the option for paper menus or menus posted on a wall if needed, but otherwise I'm a fan.

You’ve built a beautiful straw man that I’ve never seen in real life, rarely if ever have I encountered a menu with tiny font that is unreadable, I’ve never been to place that seated me and didn’t bring the menus at the same time. I’ve not experienced the bathroom thing either even in large parties, but it doesn’t sound awkward… if someone says they have to go to the bathroom they go, just tell the waiter this person will order a little later… or they call tell you what they want if they already know.

Just because you have good eyesight doesn’t mean everyone else does

Why do you assume he's built a straw man and not just had a different experience from you? Service levels vary across the planet. I used to live in Europe and restaurant service was always dreadfully slow, it could take ages to get the menu and order and pay, having a digital system in many of those restaurants would be fantastic

If you have something that can read a QR code you also have something that can magnify text.

I dated a girl with poor eyesight, and absent a digital version her method was the phone flashlight and holding the menu very close to her face. So the physical version was workable, but a pinch to zoom is still more dignified.

Ugh. Why can't we have both?

First of all it takes a shitton of steps to scan a QR code if you don't have WeChat. On a default Android device you have to click 7 or 8 times to get into the QR scanner thingy inside Google Lens. I carry a 2nd phone with WeChat and I can scan things in 0 seconds flat, but most people don't have it around here in the US.

And then many restaurants' QR menus just redirect you to their website with a terrible experience, and sometimes no pictures.

And then it's annoying as hell to try to read a phone screen in daylight outdoors.

If you can print a QR menu just print the damn menu also. Put the QR code on the menu cover for people who really want that.

These days I often just ask wait staff what they have because I don't want to look at my phone.

Normal camera app scans QR codes...

Firstly, amoung my friends I have the worst eyesight, it’s not legally blind thank god, but genetically I got pretty unlucky, my dad is legally blind and my mom’s eyesight is only slightly better than mine. But guess what, someone 400 years ago invented a great device that helps alleviate 80% of the issues that come with poor eyesight and it’s great. Anyone with poor vision can wear glasses, specifically reading glasses can be had for about $5 from any drug store (in the US). Ruining the experience of restaurants to only slightly convenience a minuscule demographic (those who have poor eyesight but for some reason refuse to acknowledge it and acquire corrective lenses) is idiotic. Bec even then, as the author pointed out you’re excluding another demographic.

The default camera app on both AOSP and iOS phones will scan QR codes, so it's really just a single step.

I have to swipe to the rightmost tab in normal camera app and then hit Google Lens and then hover over it while trying to top the tiny tooltip that pops up with my huge finger.

Horrible experience.

It should just open the web page with zero taps if I point at a QR code in ANY camera mode, even portrait or panorama or movie or whatever the last mode I was on. I shouldn't have to tell it "I'm going to scan a QR code", it should always be looking for one, because it's computationally very, very cheap.

> First of all it takes a shitton of steps to scan a QR code if you don't have WeChat Not really, on most real devices.

> On a default Android device you have to click 7 or 8 times to get into the QR scanner thingy inside Google Lens.

Perhaps, on stock Android with no manufacturer special apps. But the Samsung, Google, and LG Camera apps, at least, have “point at a QR code and the camera reads it”, so it takes as many clicks as opening the Camera app.

On the iPhone, you literally just open the camera app, point it at the QR code, and a drop-down notification will prompt opening it in the browser. Thus, it is absolutely looking for one always as you describe.

Hm, I have a Pixel 5 and it most certainly doesn't do that. Nothing happens.

https://i.imgur.com/kjFEwiR.jpg

Then again, starting about 5 weeks ago it also stopped responding to "OK Google" and 3 weeks ago it stopped announcing turn-by-turn directions during GPS navigation so I guess this is the state of tech in 2021 :-/

(Definitely don't want an Apple device though, massive privacy issue for me to use a closed source kernel and that I can't easily introspect and MITM SSL requests on to see what data is being sent about me, I do like Android for the fact that I can more or less much hook into any part of the OS and execute custom code to monitor what the hell apps are doing behind the curtain, and even give them fake-but-realistic sensor data to even further protect my privacy.)

Firefox Android can scan directly from the URL bar of a new tab.

How do you do MITM SSL when pretty much every secure app use key pinning.

Exactly, on iOS it's not easy, on Android it's far easier because the OS listens to you, not Apple or Google, and it's far easier to root Android than it is to jailbreak iOS, or run an open source fork like LineageOS and run the same apps on that.

You can (a) decompile the app, mod it, recompile it, sign it, and then execute it (b) modify the OS to not care about app signatures (c) bypass it with Xposed hooks, ... lots of ways.

I am sure there are plenty of web-based alternative UI disasters to replace menus with fonts that are too small to read properly.

I find hard to believe that you can decompile any app that has bothered implementing key pinning (which I always assumed is done at app level, not OS).

I think you have this backwards? Its much easier to bypass cert pinning and MITM a local process on an Apple device. Disable SIP on Mac OS or jailbreak an iPhone (15 minutes on almost the latest iOS), ‘lldb attach’ and away you swizzle.

Pixel user here too. You have to enable "Google Lens suggestions" in the camera settings for it to read QR codes automatically.

Drop down menu > Camera Settings > Google Lens suggestions.

Speaking of https, I will give my own example. I can get to the cockpit (local ip:9090) of my fedora machine on my android phone if I continue past the scary warning but not on my iphone.

Same on my OG Pixel.

This must be a very personal experience as I recognize none of this and never heard this from anyone either. I think you just simply need a newer phone. I have a cheap Samsung and I live in a place where the sun is always on and usually no clouds, and yet I walk kilometers every day doing work on my phone. No issue reading anything. And like the others say: the camera app automatically and very robustly pics up qr codes when you wave it past it.

I like qr codes anyway: I don't like dead tree printing or touching stuff that is not mine but had a million hands on it (I had that before covid).

on iPhone it is a single gesture from a locked phone to scan the QR code

I also really love how many restuarants put a QR code on the receipt that opens Apple Pay

You just blew my mind!

This isn't necessarily the case. If restaurant service in a region is slow as a rule, it's probably a matter of different priorities. There may well be less pressure for such a system to speed up the process of ordering, because a more relaxed system is seen as a good thing, and the system that gets implemented in practice might be worse (e.g. perhaps the staff don't like/trust the online order system and they will not even check it, or when they do check it they still confirm with you).

It is almost certainly better to address the actual problem (in this case: a disagreement about priorities and service speed) than to implement a technical measure that one party thinks will fix a problem that the other party considers a feature. By failing to actually address the problem, it could cause some people to feel threatened and result in other problems.

Yes, but you still need to click the link, open in the browser. I don’t trust the average restaurant to make correct security decisions on their online menu/payment system. So pass.

Offering both options has no significant downside, and improves accessibility of your restaurant. I don’t think most restaurants have a Braille version of their menu, but having a digital version with VoiceOver-like functionality gets you something similar.

You can most definitely bypass the invalid certificate warning on iOS (I also have a device that uses a self-signed certificate and listens on a local IP, I can open its web interface just fine on iOS)

> I think you just simply need a newer phone.

“yeah I'll get right on that”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpQQohcHk9Q

I can bypass the self-signed cert error on my iPhone 8 on iOS 14.4.2

That aside, what's the point? There's no practical threat model where https makes what you're doing more secure. If you have neither a domain name that can use a real TLS cert nor your own CA added to the mobile device, it would be trivial for someone to MITM you. Just configure your Fedora dashboard to use http if you don't care about security

Most restaurants I’ve been to have their QR code link to a PDF and not an ordering website with payments.

I stopped trusting Google to put out bugfree products right around the time the Chromecast 2 came out.

It's been a downhill expectation on experience since.

I found the original: https://www.patreon.com/posts/just-buy-new-one-16961122

Wait, restaurants are making you order from an app too?? So now you don't really need your 'exhausted wait staff' so much. Hire less wait staff as a portion are now are underutilized. Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard, with less service comes less tips. Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff.

Any efficiencies you are seeing will be refactored and stretched out as any business cannot afford to carry fat if they want maximum profit and competitive edge (price).

This whole inconvenience of a friend going to the bathroom is an incredibly weak argument for foregoing the tradition and ceremony of interacting with a person who will provide you with a meal. If you want to live in a McWorld where every step of your dining experience is as sterile, efficient, and touch free as possible then I am sad for you. That's not what a meal with friends and family means to me, it's not just about eating for sustenance.

Why do you draw the line at taking payment?

Yes, that or taking photos of each page and then browsing them on the phone. Either way it's worse than a good phone menu.

Personally I'd rather have a paper menu, but digital ones can definitely be more accessible for low vision.

I say can because half of the digital ones are godawful UX disasters.

>The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard

The reason they get tips is because they are waitstaff, it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff.

Most employees work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking the food).

Maybe for you, I tip extra for working hard to keep my meal hot on delivery, water topped up, checking in at appropriate times. I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard.

> Most people work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking thr food)

Most people get paid a real wage which isn't backfilled with charity from their customers.

At many good restaurants tips are distributed to the kitchen staff too. Obviously I have no control over that, and the world isn't fair either. None of this changes my argument.

> I tip extra for working hard to keep my meal hot on delivery, water topped up, checking in at appropriate times.

Those are things happen with good management, they have little to do with how hard an individual employee is working at a given time.

Besides the claim wasn't waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard, the claim was that waitstaff is tipped because they work hard. Don't move the goalposts.

>I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard.

I tip the same if my service is shitty, I am not going to put an individual employee in a position of taking a pay cut when I can't know the exact reason something went wrong. I don't know enough about their operations to be punishing individual employees. Even if I could tell if it were an individual employee's fault, most places pool tips, so I'd be punishing the other employees working at the same time. So everyone gets the same tip from me.

I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom.

Again, you get good service with good management, simple as that.

That’s a worse user experience.

Perhaps you are unaware, but in the US, tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr in most places (tipped minimum wage). These people need tips in order to make any money. Nobody is working hard for 2.83/hr.

This is changing since now people are refusing to work those jobs. And yes, the entire industry is dumb and corrupt for having this practice in the first place, but it is what it is.

Yeah, I find it very very sad. I am so isolated after 15 months of lockdowns that I literally go to a restaurant for a tiny bit of social interaction, just smalltalk with a waiter. Just about 4 out of 5 times they insist on ordering online. It gets me quite angry, I can just as well stay home if I have to look at the screens even more after looking at the screen the whole day.

> Perhaps you are unaware, but in the US, tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr in most places (tipped minimum wage).

Perhaps you are unaware, but:

(1) US federal tipped minimum cash wage is $2.13, not $2.83, but also

(2) Most US states and territories have a tipped minimum wage above the federal tipped minimum (and also, though by a smaller margin, most have a tipped minimum above $2.83, which is PA’s tipped minimum.)

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

> waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard

All tips are 'extra' that's the whole concept. It's money on top of what I am obliged to pay.

> you get good service with good management

Good management would pay a good wage and negate the need for tipping.

> I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom.

Low blow. You are implying that I am less than you because I have some kind of financial control over waitstaff that I enjoy. A rather bad faith position to be in given how pious and understanding you are striving to come across as.

> most places pool tips

So now you agree kitchen staff get tipped too

> I tip the same if my service is shitty

Good for you. I don't think many people operate like this, so I'd say you are an edge case.

> it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff

Again, this is how you operate. Wikipedia lays out the common perception of tipping

"The customary amount of a tip can be a specific range of monetary amounts or a certain percentage of the bill based on the perceived quality of the service given."

I've experienced living in the UK without tipping, and in N.America with tipping. All I can say is it's night and day. Very few make a career out of working as waitstaff in the UK, plenty of people have a career in the service industry in N.America. Working hard for large tips can give you a living wage. In the UK because everyone is treated the same, waitstaff do the minimum for the minimum wage (there are exceptions, of course) and then find a better job. Since I left the UK this has begun to change, it's now reasonably common to tip in nicer restaurants, and guess what? The service is better and the waitstaff I assume are happier with more money in their pockets for their effort.

Outside of high end restaurants, I'm not sure that I've ever once been provided with useful information by a server. "See if you can get our server's attention when they come by, we are ready to order/pay" is a fairly common occurrence, even at solid places.

Does this reduce the need for waitstaff at most places? Yes. Is that bad for waitstaff. Yes. Is that a reason to want a person to physically write down my order and type it into a machine in the back? Eh.

When I go out to eat with friends and family, the important part is spending time with friends and family (and sometimes strangers, but that’s usually other patrons). I don’t mind interacting with waitstaff, but it’s not adding any value to my experience, either - as long as I get my order I don’t really care about the tradition and ceremony, as you put it.

We went out recently to a place where we ordered with our phones and had a great time. It was simple and painless, orders were served quickly and it didn’t matter that the only thing I ever said to staff was ”thanks” - I focused on my people instead.

Sorry, you're right, a quick google search revealed my state's wage, not the fed (forgot to check the difference, which is so negligible that it's insulting).

This does not change my point in the slightest, which is that wait staff need tips to survive because the tipped minimum wage is unlivable basically everywhere.

You mean a PDF hosted on a squarespace site? Or one of the many many apps that integrate with POS systems to do scan and pay?

To each their own, but to me this ceremony provides zero value. Waiters take the order and may comment on the weather, it's not like we're developing a deep friendship here.

The "tradition" is to sit, wait for a waiter to appear. Ask for purpose (lunch? big meal? just a drink?). Then you wait again for the correct menu to appear. Then you get asked for a drink. And wait for the drink. And then comes the longer wait where the waiter tries to detect when you are ready to order, if they see it at all.

Combined, that's some 20-30 mins in and the prepping of your meal hasn't even started yet.

Now if you're the kind of person that's going to be in there 3-4 hours anyway, the ritual doesn't harm, but it doesn't add much value either. It's needlessly slow and inefficient.

Your future dystopian nightmare is already here, and it's fine. In the Netherlands, some sushi restaurants work as follow. You are seated. There's an iPad for everyone, and people just tap what they want. Some minutes later, your food arrives. This supposed cold-hearted efficiency means I get to spend more time engaging with my friends, the very point of the visit.

By the way, you're not doing restaurants any favors with a slow and long visit. It means they can't use your table twice. So finish your meal in 1.5-2 hours and if still not bored with your friends, go to a damn bar.

Than what? A printout of the same PDF? I mean if you prefer paper then yeah, I get it but it's such a small difference.

> This does not change my point in the slightest, which is that wait staff need tips to survive because the tipped minimum wage is unlivable basically everywhere.

Its the same as the general minimum in several places, and at or above the federal general (not just tipped) minimum even more, so if its unlivable “basically everywhere” that's more than just a tipped minimum problem.

This made my day. I always love finding out about super-useful features I wasn't aware of in software I use every day. Thank you!

"Wait, restaurants are making you order from an app too?? So now you don't really need your 'exhausted wait staff' so much. Hire less wait staff as a portion are now are underutilized. Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. "

Not around here, no. Was out eating yesterday. That place we went to has the exact same number of wait staff as before QR codes, the difference is only that they're not exhausted, they are not stressed when interacting with us (showing us the table, bringing food, checking in on us if we need something else, etc). We don't have to wait for them to get the bill or to pay. The overall atmosphere is much more relaxed now. And yes the other places I visit also keep the same number of staff as before, as far as I can tell.

Maybe you are not aware, if the tip is not enough to match the non tipped minimum wage then the employer has to make up the difference.

I will admit that I gave a really shitty tip the other week. I ordered the salad bar. All she had to do was refill my pop and settle the bill. She dropped the check off and didn't come back for 15 minutes. I walked over to the bar area to find someone to run my card and she was bullshitting with another employee. Yeah, no. I make it a point to tip well and just consider that part of the cost of my food. Not this time. I rounded up to the next dollar and I don't know why I even did that.

In addition on my pixel 3 you can open camera app and long press QR code. This works with or without enabling lens suggestions.

So, double press power button, long tap QR code, and click link to visit site.

Oh certainly. Put the QR code on the paper menu.

> Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts.

This is a lot to unpack. I'm always surprised by people in the tech industry, where we seek to automate so much to make things better... be against innovation?

If a QR menu can tangibly provide a similar or better experience, for less cost, then it is objectively a better value for everyone involved. We shouldn't keep manual jobs around "just because." If that was a valid mindset, then we should get rid of all cars and have large caravans of people to trade across the country to ensure more people have jobs.

In this case, the question becomes "does the QR code provide a similar, or better, experience?" Only time will tell - but if it does, overall, then it will replace the wait staff, and this is a good thing.

This is why discussions of UBI take place, because we shouldn't intentionally do things less efficiently just to save jobs.

> The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard, with less service comes less tips. Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff.

I don't disagree here, but tip culture is an absurd concept and I wish it would die in America. Just bake it into the price of the menu, and pay workers better.

Also, you can do a text search.

For me it's an automatic yes as long as the restaurant has wifi that is easy to access. Mostly because I get to avoid germs from all the previous hands who held the menu. Most people's hands are far more germy than a toilet seat if they haven't been recently washed.

Sure, and go back to having to reprint all the menus every time you want to change something or update prices, needing extras for when menus get destroyed, paying people to wipe menus down if you have them laminated, etc.

As much as I prefer paper menus, I don't think the restaurants that have switched are going to go back to it. Would have better luck pressuring them to have less shit electronic menus.

3-4 hours is a long time. That sounds like a leisurely dinner set on "Italian Mode" [no offence] with a reservation, not a work lunch on Tuesday in the US.

This ritual or ceremony of waiter, menu, waiting, ordering, signalling for the cheque that you apparently find vile... I enjoy it. Any inefficiency you have declared is part of the experience of going out to eat.

You want fast food? Go get fast food.

You want a butler and cook? Hire them.

You want to go out to dinner? Here's a waitress, menu, and some time for walking back and forth between their station and your table and their other tables in their zone.

All of this is, or at least should be, factored in to the restaurant's business. It's been 100 years, at least in the US. If they don't get it by now, at least you should.

I have one interesting observation about one part of what you said: I wouldn't say that tips will go down. If anything, COVID has shown us that tips actually go up the less service that we get.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tipping-for-online-orders-becam...

Then you should continue patronizing restaurants that have the traditional method, and whoever doesn't want that can seek out restaurants with more efficient methods. Forcing your definition of what a restaurant "should be" is detrimental to everyone, more choice is better for everyone.

It’s much better. It’s easy for people to see even with visual impairments. Everyone sets up their phone to accommodate their own needs.

You can always take the time to ask for a menu and I’m sure someone will bring you one, but it’s my opinion that you’re making too big of a deal out of something that’s such a small part of the dining experience.

It's the same as the general minimum in only 7 states.

Yes, the general minimum wage is a problem too. But in 43 states the tipped minimum is a greater problem.

In practice, tipped employees typically get 0 dollar paychecks from their employers; the business assumes that your tips bring you up to the minimum wage, whether true or not, and they pay taxes on your behalf accordingly. This is also typically calculated on a pay period basis, rather than by hour or by day, which results in overstaffing during slow periods to the detriment of all employees, because as long as you get up to the general minimum wage via tips (which is a paltry wage), the business still pays you peanuts.

Thats not true, tipped employees typically do get >0 dollar paycheck from their employers. That is their base hourly wage.

general minimum wage is peanuts, yes. but tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr is not true. If the employer did not make up the difference then they risk being fined/shutdown.

It didn't say any of those steps are vile. I said that in my opinion, they are needless steps that don't add value to guests or the restaurant itself.

A restaurant wants to know your order. Why does this simple thing take 20-30 mins? Whom benefits? How does it enrich your experience exactly, this useless waiting and pointing at a menu?

> Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff.

There is a ton of abuse in the food service industry in America, not the least of which is paying servers less than 3 bucks per hour, and thats one of the cushier jobs. I was a server a long time, and sometimes you make the money in tips, sometimes you don't. I knew a lot of servers who put up with workplace abuse because of the illusion of easy cash the job creates. BOH staff work harder and usually take home even less.

Ordering from an app is great. No mistakes, no forgotten orders, and nobody abusing the machine.

Trust me, the wait staff doesn’t appreciate your “ceremony.”

Paper menus on request seems like the obvious middle ground. Not defaulting to putting menus out reduces the scale of all those problems, while also not alienating customers who for whatever reason don't want to or cannot use the digital menu.

Definitely agreed. I still know a couple of people who don't have smartphones, and even with smartphones you might have a dead battery, a low battery that they don't want to waste on a menu, a busted camera, or for whatever other reason be better off with a piece of paper. Keeping a few real menus handy would be the best way to handle it.

And same on my mid-range 2020 Samsung. I think GGP is chasing windmills here...

How does a pdf of a menu help a vision impaired person?

> Thats not true, tipped employees typically do get >0 dollar paycheck from their employers. That is their base hourly wage.

This is not true. I’ve been a service employee. Your employer withholds taxes on estimated tipped earnings, typically resulting in literal $0 paychecks. This is the norm in states with lower tipped minimums (might not hold true in states like CA). In fact, getting actual cash on your paycheck means the business was so slow that they needed to pay you to make up the difference (or close to it). In which case, barely over $7 is still abysmal to deal with the bs in that biz, and obviously far too little to actually live a decent life.

That's not true. I've been a service employee too. You typically get your hourly wage in the paycheck resulting in >$0 paycheck, even with tax withhold.

>In which case, barely over $7

Right, so tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr is not true.

> general minimum wage is peanuts, yes. but tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr is not true.

True, tipped minimum is $2.13/hr.

> If the employer did not make up the difference then they risk being fined/shutdown.

Employers make up reported shortfalls in tipped jobs, but they also often treat shortfalls as a negative performance indicator, justifying termination. In jobs where there are cash tips (not everything through a payment system), this incentivizes enployees to assure that there are no shortfalls.

>True, tipped minimum is $2.13/hr

Tipped minimum is 2.13/hr is true but tipped waitstaff only make 2.13/hour is not true.