There was a curry place that opened up next to my office that went one step further. The QR code redirected to an app you had to install to place your order. After a month of no customers they almost went out of business, but finally the owner gave up and went to a printed menu. Now they’re doing all right, but I was talking with the owner and he was grumbling about the massive amount of money he wasted on it.
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That bullshit and menu items you can only get through an app.
Went to Taco hell with a bunch of friends. We went inside to get our order because I’m not an asshole and didn’t want to hold up the drive thru with our large order. We asked for something my friend wanted and they said it could only be ordered in app.
We all said fuck that and left. The Managers face was priceless.
good! that just sounds fucking ridiculous. there’s literally 0 legitimate reason to restrict orders to an app only
Money wasted on prints?? What about the money wasted on the app no-one used???
ah nah, he meant the money wasted on making the app that no one wanted to use
oh yea. that makes more sense
I think that’s what he means
I’m trying to picture the slick-talkin’ salesman (tech consultant or whatever) convincing people about this
enshittification“Way Of The Future™️”.
I don’t mind if this is offered but at least let me use a paper menu…
I will say I kinda like it when the QR code allows you to order directly to your table. It’s nice to not have to talk to the server if you don’t want to and it makes splitting the bill a non-issue.
Digital menus and ordering is great as an additional option.
Oh, I would love that. I hate having to wait for the server to bring me the bill so I can leave. When I eat alone, I often ask the server to bring me the bill with my food or so, in hopes of paying for it before I’m done eating. For whatever reason, the norm is for the bill to not come until well after you’re done eating. That can be fine when you’re with a group and want to spend time chatting after you finish, but if you’re in a hurry, you’ll be waiting a long time.
I want it to still be an option to live a phoneless internetless life
I did it for a few months on my last deployment because my phone broke and I couldn’t get a new one without paying a shit ton.
It was peaceful. It was a great release of stress because my chain of command couldn’t reach me whenever they wanted to text or call. I loved it so much I kept up with that - I flat out refused to join any group chats that they use to pass info.
Personally always prefer the digital menu, at least the good ones with pictures of the food and that you can zoom in on. And you just know that very few places regularly clean their physical menus
Be honest, how often do you clean your screen?
Certainly more often than many menus I have seen. Modern water resistant devices make it easy to just use soap and water. And if it is gross, at least it’s my fault and I can do something about it on my own time (I probably wouldn’t take a restaurant manu to the bathroom to wash it before I look at it).
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Yeah standard soap you would wash your hands with. Haven’t had any problems for many years, and can’t think of why I would 🤷. Smells nice too, definitely better than alcohol wipes
soap can and other cleaning products can actually damage the phone’s water seals making it less waterproof, so its probably better not to do that
Guess I have been lucky then, but honestly I don’t really think I’ll stop… To add, even the glue for the skin I have on it hasn’t been dissolved, so I think the seals are probably OK at least for now.
About as often as this dog gets cleaned.
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Do restaurants actually give out QR code menus on request? I’ve only ever seen them taped to the table or a nearby wall.
It’s the default mode for some restaurants. If they update their fare relatively often, a digital menu saves a lot of money versus printing new versions for each update.
But it depends entirely on the restaurant. Some don’t have a digital menu at all.
For anyone wondering, the QR code directs to youtube.com (the frontpage, not any specific video).
My hero.
Not true, it links to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
If I took a tablet to the restaurant, I’d be okay with the QR code, but I’m not okay with taking a tablet to the restaurant. The tablet stays at home.
Samsung fold owners suddenly feel justified in their purchase.
My autistic daughter likes to quietly play with my phone when we eat out. If that doesn’t happen everyone in the immediate area suffers. This has always caused me a bad time.
In my country, we have a system called UPI where qr codes are used for payment(tied to our upi wallets tied to a government system called BHIM which is tied to our banks)
So if this was India, she’d be getting ready to leave after paying
I went to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere that had a QR code menu as default. None of the major cellphone carriers have service there and the only way to get cell coverage in the town is through a local cell carrier. I was so confused as to why they decided that was the solution for their restaurant.
It’s a Brave New World, time to get used to it.
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fuckin luddites i tell ya
Nah dawg, I’m a Dev. The websites for the menus are usually fucking aweful, and are, ironically enough, not optimized for mobile.
Usually you can request a physical menu, as to not look at the webdev gore.
I think my real complaint is that I’m using my data to pay them more money for services they should already be offering customers. It feels like we might as well end with a step-by-step self-cooking restaurant and we pay them to cook the food ourselves.
Sshhhh!
Don’t give them ideas!
If it meant I didn’t have to clean, and they prep all the annoying stuff, I feel like I’d totally try a restaurant where you cook your own meal
If they design the online menu well, I’m all for it. In theory, an online only menu should improve the quality of the menu, by making it much easier to keep it up to date (eg, there should never be an “ask your server what the soup of the day is” in an online menu – update that you lazy schmucks) and it’s also easier for them to have pictures.
The fact that not every food item has pictures drives me crazy. Show me what the dang food looks like. Unless it’s something you never sell, it’s so dang easy to get a picture when someone orders it. I don’t want a fake picture anyway; I want the pictures to be representative of how it will really look. With physical menus, it’s understandable because printing is so expensive and pictures would make the menu extra long. Online menus don’t have that issue or excuse.
But yeah, if their online menu is gonna be a mediocre PDF copy of their former print menus clearly designed for 8x11 or whatever, it’s a downright worse experience using a digital menu. That’s the case for a shocking number of restaurants I’ve been at. You’d think mobile devices are some new fangled fad or something, cause they sure don’t think mobile is something someone will view their menu on.
That and it’s usually hosted off some slow ass, janky website where I hit refresh three times to get all the assets to load without timing out.
“Uhh, yes, I’ll have the 404 not found, dressing on the side, with a 504 gateway timeout, medium rare. Oh, and could we get a round of 500 internal server error for the table, please?”
In my experience over half the time it’s a PDF, and the rest of the time it’s usually a *decent* website with at least responsive design.
At any rate it’s usually far better than the GrubHub et al menus which are often out of date and mis-organized.
MF I am posting this with a freaking phone wdym ludites? I have lightbulbs.
Also the ludites weren’t even inherently anti technology
