Bring back menus, QR codes are terrible

It's really interesting to see how a crowd of tech workers who generally are trying to pave the way are so quick to attack and be negative.

Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible. I still think there is room for this to be the future though. I say this as a westerner but perhaps the west is not ready for it yet but I really enjoyed the experience of using QR codes in China. Go to a restaurant I just get shown where to sit and don't need to waste time with the host/server giving me menus or telling me anything. If I have questions they are there to answer the but I can also just sit down, scan the QR code, menu opens up and I can order food. Food just shows up minutes later. When I am done I go to the front and pay with Alipay.

The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge. From the business perspective there is less interaction time necessary to serve a diner. Sure if this is an upscale high touch experience physical menu is where it stays BUT the majority of dining experiences are not like this. The menu is up to date and easy to modify. Possible to include multiple pictures and information about the food.

I might be wild but I really like the experience and wish more places would adopt it. Like all things I think here in the west its still too new so we have a mixed bag of good and bad implementations. Give it a few years and I think it will be narrowed down to the POS providers who offer it as a feature.

This process was one of my most hated "innovations" in food ordering in China. It turns every restaurant into a production line fast food operation, exactly like American chain restaurants. At that point, why even bother going to a restaurant at all? Might as well just order a Sysco-equivalent microwave meal at the supermarket or 7/11, because the flavor and the service will be exactly the same.

For me the best restaurants in China were the mom and pop joints where the person who takes your order is also the person who cooks your meal, or at least where you can see into the kitchen from the dining room so you can call out a request or ask a question as they're preparing it. This way it's much easier to figure out what's in the dish, see if the food is fresh, ask for it a bit more spicy, add another side, whatever. It makes the meal into a more of a social experience, and something that feels homey and satisfying rather than mass-produced.

Ironically going to these sorts of Chinese chain restaurants with the QR code menu, they also tended to be twice the price of the mom and pop joints, so whatever money they might be saving by eliminating a server is definitely not passed down to the consumer.

Yeah, QR code menus are superior, until you have to use them. They never have instructions and every device does it differently and not in obvious ways. The only instructions you get from a stressed out server is "just scan it." Ok, how?

This is a great way of making tech look stupid to luddites and it reminds me of modern UX trends that expect people to just know how to do some mysterious thing--and developers rely on most users assuming they are the stupid ones because they don't know how to use an app's hidden functionality. Not. Accessible.

Every restaurant used to have the same UX, now they are all different. Stupid.