Bring back menus, QR codes are terrible

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.