Paste your menu link, download a print-ready QR code, and put it on your tables. Free, no sign-up, no account, unlimited scans, and the code never expires.
Print it, pop it on the table — customers scan to open your live menu. Free, no sign-up, unlimited scans.
A QR code is not a menu. It is a printed shortcut to a web address — nothing more. When a guest points their camera at it, their phone reads the address encoded in the pattern and opens it. That is the whole mechanism.
Which leads to the single most important thing to understand before you print anything: the code is permanent, the page behind it is not. The pattern you print encodes one fixed address. If the page at that address changes, every code already sitting on your tables now shows the new page. If the address itself changes, every code you have printed becomes worthless.
Almost every QR menu mistake comes from getting that the wrong way round.
The most common and most expensive error is linking a QR code to a PDF — a file named something like menu-spring-2026.pdf sitting in a folder. It works beautifully until the day you change a price. Then you upload menu-spring-2026-v2.pdf, the address changes, and every code on every table points at a file that no longer exists or, worse, at last season’s prices.
The second most common is linking to a third-party menu service. The code works, the page looks fine, and then the service raises its price, changes its URL structure, or shuts down. Your printed codes are hostage to somebody else’s business decisions.
Link to a page on your own website instead. A permanent address like yourrestaurant.co.uk/menu that you control means you can change every dish, price and allergen behind it as often as you like, and the codes already on the tables keep working. Print once, update forever.
That is exactly what DineKit is for. Your menu lives on your own WordPress site, you edit it in the menu builder, and the same printed QR code always resolves to today’s dishes, today’s prices and today’s allergen information — with no reprinting and nobody’s permission required.
Most codes that fail in the wild fail for the same handful of reasons.
A rough rule: the code should be about a tenth of the distance it is scanned from. On a table tent at arm’s length, 3 cm across is comfortable and 2 cm is the practical floor. On a window or an A-board people read from a few metres away, you need something far larger than feels necessary.
QR codes need clear white space around all four edges — roughly the width of four of the little squares. Designers routinely crop this off to make the code fit a layout, and it is the single most common reason a printed code will not scan.
Dark pattern on a light background, and nothing behind it. Reversed codes, brand colours with low contrast, and photographic backgrounds all cut the scan rate — often only under the dim lighting of an actual dining room, long after it looked fine on screen.
Gloss lamination and shiny acrylic table stands throw glare straight back at the camera. Matt finishes scan far more reliably under downlighters. Test one under your real lighting before you order two hundred.
Print a short line beneath it — “Scan for our menu”. A bare code is ambiguous, and a surprising number of guests will not point a camera at something without knowing where it goes.
Use the download button above to get the actual image file. Screenshots are low resolution and print soft and fuzzy, which costs you scans at exactly the small sizes where the code has least margin for error.
Tables are the obvious place, but they are not the only one. Table tents and table stickers are the workhorse and get the most scans. The window or door lets people read the menu before they commit to walking in, which matters more than most restaurants realise. An A-board on the pavement does the same job for passing trade.
Beyond the room: on the bill or receipt pointing at a review or loyalty page, on takeaway packaging so a delivery customer can reorder direct next time instead of through a commission app, and on flyers and business cards. It is the same free tool for all of them — just change the address you encode.
The generator above is free and always will be. If you want the menu behind it to update instantly, carry allergen information properly and take orders at the table, that is what DineKit does — free, on your own WordPress site.
Get DineKit — Free How QR menus work in DineKit
See also: menu builder · allergen menus · online ordering · QR menu setup guide · all free tools
DineKit is free, self-contained and live in minutes. Own your menus, your bookings and your data.
Get DineKit — FreeWe use essential cookies to run this site and, with your consent, Google Analytics to see how it's used. See our Cookie Policy.