A QR code for a café menu: the table card that opens today's menu
Print one dynamic QR code on a 50 mm table card that opens a single mobile menu page, and change the menu behind it as often as you like without reprinting.
A café menu is the use that QR codes were made for. The menu changes, the card on the table does not, and a guest already has the one device that reads it in their hand. Done well, a guest sits down, points a phone at a card, and the menu is on screen before the server arrives. Done badly, three people at a table are squinting at a code the size of a stamp under a glossy laminate. The difference is a handful of decisions made before printing.
What the code opens
A QR code opens something. It does not hold the menu; it holds the address of a page, and the phone goes there. So the first decision is the page, not the code.
The page should be one mobile screen that loads fast on café Wi-Fi: the menu as text, grouped the way the counter thinks about it, with prices as rupee figures. Not a PDF of the printed menu. A PDF is a 2 MB download that opens in a viewer and needs pinching to read; a guest on a slow connection gives up at the spinner. A plain page with the day's items is under 100 KB and readable at arm's length.
If the café has a hosted page, the code opens that. If it has only a PDF, the code can open it, but the better plan is a page built once and edited from a phone.
Dynamic, so Monday's menu is free
A static code bakes the address into the pattern itself; if the page moves, every printed card is dead. A dynamic code points at a short address that the café controls, and that address is re-pointed from a dashboard. The card never changes. The special changes every morning, the winter menu replaces the summer one, the page moves to a new site in a year, and the same fifty cards keep working.
The dynamic code also counts scans. A café learns which tables scan and at what hours, which is a small thing until the owner is deciding whether the window seats need a second card.
How big to print it
The rule of thumb is distance divided by ten. A guest scans a table card from about 30 cm, so the code wants to be 30 mm across at the very least, and 40 to 50 mm is comfortable for an older phone or a shaky hand. On an A6 table card, a 45 mm code leaves room for the café's name above and one line of instruction below.
Leave a clear margin around the code equal to about four of its small squares, with nothing printed inside it. Designers trim this margin to fit a border; it is the single most common reason a code that scanned on screen fails on the table.
Keep it dark on light. Black on cream or dark brown on white both read; white on black and any code printed over a photograph do not, reliably.
Matte card, not gloss. A gloss laminate throws the overhead light straight back into the camera, and the guest ends up tilting the card to find an angle. Matte card with a matte laminate scans flat on the table.
The instruction line
One line under the code: "Scan for today's menu". Guests who have never scanned a code need the word scan; guests who have need the word menu. Skip the paragraph about opening the camera app. Phones made in the last six years open a code from the camera directly, and the one guest who needs help will ask.
Test before the print run
Make one card at full size on an ordinary printer. Put it on the table, in the seat, in the café's actual light at midday and at eight in the evening. Scan it with three phones: a new one, an old one, and the server's. Then open the page on the slowest phone and read a price. If any of that fails, fix it now; a reprint of fifty laminated cards is the expensive way to learn that the margin was trimmed.
Keeping the printed menu too
Some guests want paper, and a café is allowed to keep two printed menus at the counter for them. The QR code does not replace the menu; it replaces the thirty copies that got coffee rings on them and were out of date by Thursday.
A dynamic menu code is the first thing most cafés make with us; the sizes and the table-card templates are on buyqrcode.com. Use code STARTUP10 for 10% off one order per account. It is valid until 31 December 2026 or for the first 100 uses on this site, whichever comes first.