QR menus stopped being a pandemic thing and stayed for a practical reason: changing a price no longer costs a reprint. In a country where prices move, that alone justifies it.
The mistake that ruins half of QR menus
If your QR opens a PDF, your digital menu is broken. Full stop.
A PDF on a phone forces zooming, scrolling in two directions and waiting for a full download. On a saturated Saturday-night wifi, that is thirty seconds staring at a blank screen. A proper digital menu is a web page: it reads top to bottom and loads in under two seconds.
Step by step
- Organise the menu before touching anything digital. Clear categories. If a category has one dish, merge it.
- Write short descriptions. One line per dish.
- Decide what gets a photo. Not everything. Only the dishes you want to sell more of and that photograph well.
- Prices in guaraníes, editable by you.
- Add the WhatsApp order button that builds the message from the selection.
- Generate the QR pointing at your own domain, never a free link that can expire.
- Print it on durable material and put it where a seated person can see it.
Your own delivery vs the apps
Delivery apps charge a commission on every sale, straight out of your margin. Multiply your monthly app orders by your average ticket by the commission rate: that is what you pay per month. Compare it to the one-time cost of your own menu with WhatsApp orders, where the commission is zero.
The sensible conclusion is not to quit the apps, but to stop depending only on them.
What it must survive on a Saturday night
- Loading on mobile data, not the venue wifi.
- Light photos. A 4 MB phone photo takes forever.
- Text readable without zooming.
- Marking a dish as sold out in thirty seconds, from your phone.
What it costs
A digital catalog or menu starts at Gs. 750,000, with the starting price depending on how many products need loading and organising the first time. After that you add or remove dishes yourself.