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Solutions · Restaurants and cafés

Four bits of paper a small kitchen actually needs

Most “QR for hospitality” pages are written for a hotel group with a marketing department. This one is written for a place with fourteen tables: a menu code you can repoint when the specials change, a WiFi card nobody has to type out, a review card that asks while the plates are still on the table, and layouts already drawn at A6.

Every export format — PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF, EPS and transparent PNG — is free on every plan, at up to 4096 px. There is no watermark to remove and no file type to unlock.

Make a menu code Open the print templates

The jobs, and the thing you make for each

Each card names the tool that does it and what it costs. Where something needs a plan, the card says which one.

  • Job 1

    The menu that changes on Tuesdays

    A printed code with today’s menu URL baked into it is a reprint waiting to happen. A dynamic code encodes a short qrcodeharbor.com address instead, and you edit where it points from your account — the printed squares never change. A free account keeps 2 dynamic codes forever, and editing the destination is free on every plan. No menu page at all? Build a hosted one with the menu-items and opening-hours blocks, or upload the PDF you already send to the printer — up to 15 MB, served from qrcodeharbor.com.

    What you make Menu QR code generator
  • Job 2

    Guest WiFi without reading the password out

    The WiFi type encodes network name, security type and password into the code, so a phone joins on scan instead of getting the password wrong three times. It is a static code: no account, no slot used, nothing to expire, and the network details are turned into a code in your browser rather than sent anywhere. Print it on the A6 landscape guest WiFi card, 148 × 105 mm, and leave one per table.

    What you make WiFi QR code generator
  • Job 3

    Asking for the review while they are still in the room

    A review funnel is a page we host at qrcodeharbor.com/rf/your-slug. A guest taps a rating: at or above the threshold you set, they go straight to your public review link — Google, Tripadvisor, wherever you send people. Below it, a private form opens instead, and only you can read what they wrote. A signed-in account gets 5 funnels on any plan. The A5 review stand card is sized for a counter.

    What you make Review funnel builder
  • Job 4

    Paper that is already the right size

    Twelve layouts drawn in real millimetres, five of them for a dining room: A6 table tent (105 × 148 mm, folds to stand up), A4 window poster, 90 × 90 mm counter sticker, DL wine-list insert (99 × 210 mm) and the A5 review stand. Put your own words in and take a 300 dpi PNG, a vector SVG, or a PDF at the exact millimetre size that a print shop can use as-is. Every finished layout is rasterised and decoded in your browser first, so a template that would not scan never offers you a file.

    What you make Print templates

See it in action

From the menu on the table to the page on the guest's phone, and what happens when you update it.

A table-tent QR code opening a restaurant menu on a phone
Worked example — invented, not a customer

Harbour Bistro, fourteen tables

An invented café, used only to show the order things happen in and what each step costs. Nothing below is a customer, a case study, or a measured result — it is arithmetic and a sequence of clicks.

  1. Sign in and create one dynamic code pointing at the menu — a page you already have, or a PDF uploaded here. That uses 1 of the 2 dynamic codes a free account keeps.
  2. Open the A6 table tent, paste the dynamic code’s short URL into What the code opens, type the café’s name, download the PDF. Fourteen tables means fourteen tents — two fit on a sheet of A4.
  3. Make a static WiFi code for the guest network and print the WiFi card. Static, so it costs no slot and needs no account.
  4. Build a review funnel, set the threshold at 4, paste the Google review link, and print the A5 stand for the till.
  5. When the specials change on Tuesday, edit the dynamic code’s destination. The fourteen table tents stay exactly where they are.
  6. One dynamic slot is still free. That is the one to keep back for whatever gets printed next — a Christmas menu, a delivery link, a hiring notice.

What this costs

The split is deliberate. File formats, resolution and print quality are never the paid part — a file type is not a product. What the paid plans add is scale: more codes, longer history, and the controls a busier room needs.

No account

Free

  • 37 static QR types — WiFi, vCard, calendar, phone, the lot
  • PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF, EPS and transparent PNG at up to 4096 px, with no watermark
  • All twelve print templates, each decode-checked before the download unlocks
  • Up to 3 short links a day without signing in

A free account

Free

  • 2 dynamic codes, kept forever — the menu and one spare
  • Editing a dynamic code’s destination, on every plan
  • 500 scans a month counted; the day-by-day chart covers 30 days, while totals and breakdowns cover the code’s whole life
  • 1 hosted menu page, with a “Powered by QR Code Harbor” line at the foot
  • 5 review funnels, and a menu PDF hosted here up to 15 MB

Pro

$9.99/mo or $95/year

  • 50 dynamic codes — a code per table, per branch, per campaign
  • A year of day-by-day history instead of 30 days
  • Pause a code out of season, give it an expiry, or put a password on it
  • 5 hosted pages with no “Powered by” line, and 15 saved designs

Business

$39/mo or $348/year

  • 500 dynamic codes and three years of history
  • A check every six hours, and an email when a menu link stops answering
  • Lead-form submissions exported as CSV
  • The developer API and 50 hosted pages

Before you send anything to a printer

The six things that actually break a restaurant’s QR code, in the order they go wrong.

  • Print one and scan it. On the real card stock, under the real lighting, with the oldest phone in the building. A code that scans on a monitor can still fail at 2 cm on matte paper.
  • Keep the pale band. The margin around the code is the quiet zone. Scanners need it, and trimming into it is the most common reason a printed code stops working.
  • Shorter links make sturdier codes. Fewer characters means fewer, larger squares. A dynamic code’s short URL is usually the shortest thing you can encode.
  • A static code cannot be repointed. It carries the destination itself, so if that URL changes, every printed copy is dead paper. That is the whole argument for the dynamic one — the long version is on the blog.
  • We notice a dead destination. On Business, every dynamic code is checked every six hours whether or not anyone scans it, and you get an email if it fails twice in a row. On every plan the check also runs when someone scans the code, at most once every six hours, and whenever you press Check now in your account — here is exactly what a scan records.
  • A dynamic code depends on us; a static one does not. The short qrcodeharbor.com address is only a working code for as long as this site answers it. That is the real trade for being able to repoint it, and it is why the WiFi, vCard and calendar codes on this site stay static — those need nobody. The honest version of “never expires”.

Pages worth having open while you set this up

All of these are tools and guides on this site.

Start with whatever gets printed most

For most kitchens that is the table tent. It takes about five minutes, costs nothing, and unlike the menu URL it replaces, you can point it somewhere else on Tuesday.

Make a menu code See what the paid plans add