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Having free WiFi might also be nice. But the physical copy is more versatile.
Or, just get a cheapo used tablet and keep that in reserve for people to view the menu if needed.
Oh yeah, right. Even better.
I’ve actually been to a restaurant in Prague that only handed out iPads as menus. 🤷♂️
Waiter stares at you waiting for you to return the tablet the entire time you all decide to order
CTRL-P
Well for certain restaurants it makes some sense. Like if your a nicer seafood place all that shit changes by the week in price, sometimes daily. You don’t want to have to print out menus on nice card stock everyday and you also don’t want shitty looking paper menus.
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It’s been so long since i had to print something, it took me a minute to remember what CTRL-P does lmao
Thanks for explaining that for me, I didn’t get it.
If the QR code was just encoded text or an image as apposed to a weblink, then this could have been avoided. Although, I’m not sure how many QR readers support images, and if your phone doesn’t have a built-in QR app nor you have a third-party one, then you’d be SOL anyways.
Wouldn’t it be easier to show the image than encode it in a QR?
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That’s exactly why I prefer qr. I don’t need to touch dirty menus and before anyone says that they clean them every night. Doesn’t matter, they use the same watery rag on all the menus, they may not be sticky but they sure as shit are still dirty. I’ve worked at plenty of restaurants, including ‘high end’ ones. The only way to guarantee they’re clean is to just print out a new one for each guest.
It’s possible to have a qr code menu while still having print menus avaliable, get the best of both worlds.
Your phone is definitely not sanitary, unless you sanitize it.
Your phone only contains your own dirt.
It’s like saying you’re okay with sleeping in someone else’s unwashed bed just because you’re okay with doing that with your own.
Your phone contains germs and bacteria from everything you’ve touched throughout the day, and every surface you have placed it on. You touch things and then touch your phone all day long. You wash your hands before you eat to get rid of all those germs, but if you handle your phone after that, then you might as well not wash your hands.
Remember kids: Every time you touch something, you get your germs on it. That also means that portion of your germs is no longer on your hands. So in lieu of washing your hands, consider touching every single surface you come across.
I don’t get how people go abroad and don’t just get a local sim. In most countries, a travel sim is something between 20 and 40 bucks. In my opinion, that’s pretty essential.
Extended layover. Not going to buy a SIM for a day in Lisbon.
Eh, guess so. I just never go for this extended layover kind of deal.
And, because I’m European, I do not even need a different sim for the whole of Europe. Unlimited data.
I’m Canadian now but kept my Hungarian SIM, still paying it to this day after seven years. It’s 9EUR/mo for some paltry amount of data, but mostly just using it for online services that require a Hungarian or European phone number for MFA. I just bought extra data that counted as EU wide roaming data when I last visited.
However the options for my wife were very limited as a non-EU traveller. I think it was €30 or something for ~5GB of data usable in Hungary only and limited to ten days (we stayed for 14) and added as an eSIM with the help of an app/website. It was not transferable to other EU member states, and this was one of the best deals we could find that did not require us to go to a physical store location. This included us checking offers for prepaid SIMs from the major providers (Vodafone / -Mobil / Yettel)
As a non European, prepaid sims in Europe are complicated. Some companies won’t sell sims to foreigners, some have little to no roaming. Some have activation fees that double the price.
Some examples: in Germany you need to do a video call to activate your sim, in Italy most providers require you to have an Italian tax number to buy a sim. In Romanian most of the plans have a paltry 1 GB of roaming.
Also most of the SIMs geared toward tourists don’t allow roaming.
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Related pet peeve: restaurants that have a million items for a million prices, all of them basically the same. Example: sandwich shop not far from me. Every sandwich is +|- a dollar, same with every item. Takes forever for them to ring it up and the variance is pennies. Just charge $X per sandwich and maybe markup a few premium items (roast beef, avocado, bacon whatever).
When in doubt: simplify
This makes me wonder whether there’s ever price discrimination going on. A system like this could give different prices based on what kind of phone you’re using if they wanted it to, and you wouldn’t necessarily know it.
How would this work though? You’re not ordering your food via the QR code link, you’re telling the waitstaff. Unless they ask you what price your saw, how are they going to correlate their variable price to a particular customer?
However, this would make it a lot easier to implement “peak pricing”. Their menu could automatically update based on time of day, or day of week, and certainly holidays.
In some places, the QR link redirects you to a page where you can order items without interacting with the staff.
Wh… why would they do that?
I guess maybe if a phone company is secretly paying them to, but why would a phone company go to restaurants to give their customers lower prices? And even if they did, what do they gain from that if they don’t want anyone to know?
And even if they did, the waiter would also have to take note of what kind of phone the customers use, and give them the respective price on the bill. One slip-up could reveal the scheme.
I saw an article on lemmy about this yesterday, though not sure whether I’ll find it again.
Hotels, flights, retailers already have an abundance of price discrimination. Target shows higher prices when your device is physically closer to a store and lower prices when you are further away. IPhone users tend to pay higher prices because they assume that since you had the extra money to pay for an expensive phone, you’ll be open to spending more at other stores.
Likewise, if they see your device or other devices on your network/near you making several searches for hotels/flights the price will increase.
It’s just another way to build greed into the system
That Target one sounds definitely illegal.
The idea behind price discrimination is that some customers will still buy the same product if it is offered at a higher price, while others will not. By figuring out which is which and offering them different prices, you can make more profit. For instance Uber is known to charge higher rates to customers with low phone battery, because they are probably more desperate and would be more willing to pay.
If a restaurant knows you have an expensive phone, they know you can probably afford more expensive meals and won’t walk out if the prices are high. If you have a cheap phone, they might want to tone it down a little to avoid driving you away. They might be able to make more money by doing this.
Also you wouldn’t need the waiter involved you can just check the user agent if all ordering has to be done through phones, the whole process would be automatic.
Wh… why would they do that?
If you’ve got a more expensive phone they’ll charge more because they assume you have more money.
Alternatively, if you’ve got a cheaper phone they’ll charge more so that they don’t have to cater to the “wrong type of people.”
Just use a browser that hides useragent
While a valid point, it misses the possibility of people who may not know what useragent even means; it misses people who may not know that a website can identify what browser or device you are using.
This would be noticed and called out the literal second two people go together and have different devices. We don’t all just travel in packs according to our mobile device brand or OS lol
If they notice the difference. They might be too busy socializing and not caring about the pricing that much.
That’s really reaching hard to try and make this valid. We have real examples of businesses taking advantage there’s plenty to worry about without making up more
Just spoke from real life experience. /shrug
I think that’s a huge reason places have kept the QR codes. It’s not entirely their fault. Their costs have unstable and constantly increasing lately. Reprinting new menus with pricing adjustments on a regular basis isn’t free in a industry that’s already slim margins.
Presumably you can place your order via the qr code to so less risk of human error transcribing it wrong or God forbid you get one of those annoying waiters that think they have a super memory and can hold more than 8 items in short term memory and don’t even write things down.
QR code menus and ordering systems are terrible IMO.
The tech often sucks, but more than that they make the entire restaurant experience worse.
I tried to keep an open mind when encountering them at first, but they often nullify any and all interactions you have with the waiters, and turn the restaurant from full service into something like a fast casual restaurant…yet they still prompt you for tips at the end of the meal and add additional percentage overcharge fees for “inflation” or whatever.
I don’t want a waiter to be over at my table every twenty seconds, but waiters shouldn’t be made pointless by a maître d’, a runner, and a busboy.
They’re anti-social shit dreamt up by the same kind of minds that gave us the horror that is self-checkout.
I think I understand your viewpoint, but personally have a different opinion. I’m not going to a restaurant to socialize with the waiter; although some of those interactions can be pleasant it’s still just a functional transaction to me that can go wrong and could be be optimized. My main focus is the people I’m going to the restaurant with and the food/drinks.
QR for the win for me, but I agree fully that most of those apps kinda suck. I hope time will fix that.
Eh, you sound like a bit of an extravert. I understand where you are coming from. I disagree and would rather have a good interface backed by an available and knowledgeable human only if trouble shooting or questions arise. I also love self check out😉. To each their own. Either of our preferred modalities can of course be implemented crappilly.
I’m just a person who likes to sit at a table and order like a person that paid to eat at a full service restaurant.
Neither you nor I should expect there to be “troubleshooting” in a full service restaurant. We’re not setting up a new iPad; we’re paying to be served.
Self-checkout is rife with not only anti-social vibes, but also involves possible legal trouble…and all so that the store didn’t have to hire a few extra checkout personnel.
Both of these “innovations” are largely for the benefit of the owners and largely at the cost of the people patronizing these establishments.
I don’t have a choice of stores, but I’m spoiled for choice in restaurants living in the city. I’ll vote with my feet.
I absolutely love self checkouts in shops, makes it more fast-in-fast-out kinda thing. But the very rare moments I have nowadays to go to a restaurant with my wife, I absolutely want to have a proper service and enjoy the evening as whole.
I can order McDonald’s with home delivery, don’t want that shit in a restaurant
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Alternatively, they could stop manipulating their prices so much.
I’m not an economist, but whlouldnt manipulated prices drive things more toward fair market value? A crusty menu meant to last a year is more likely to overshoot prices to cover market fluctuations that occur during that year. At least this is how I think of it.
Other than gasoline and expensive fish, we don’t really pay true market price for anything. That would be chaos and I’m not sure why any consumer would want prices to fluctuate that often.
If anything they will use corrections to drive the price up, not down. The only way prices would come down is pressure from competition, without that a reduction in business costs would just mean more margin for the owner.
Restaurants have notoriously low profit margins. Not every restaurant of course, but there’s a reason that restaurants regularly fail, especially in cities, and I don’t think it’s because the owners are spending it all on yachts.
Not every restaurant of course, but there’s a reason that restaurants regularly fail, especially in cities, and I don’t think it’s because the owners are spending it all on yachts.
I think a lot of them are in debt up to their eyeballs and that’s why they fail. They also usually make up for the lower margins on food with better margins on drinks, but there’s a margin on every item regardless.
Rent is also a factor. Commercial real estate is not cheap.
And some just plain suck. The food sucks, the prices suck, the service sucks, or the location sucks.
There are myriad reasons why restaurants fail, and I doubt it’s all because of low margins.
What drives me up the wall is when it just links to a scanned image of the menu they used to have, so instead of a full sized menu, you have to pinch and zoom and swipe around on your phone. What’s the fucking point? I went to one and the menu was FOUR PAGES LONG like that! If I hadn’t been promising my daughter I’d take her, I would have walked out.
Folding phone works well for this. Kinda sucks that you need an $1800 device to have a decent menu viewing experience. I’m more miffed that they expect my reception to be a given. Towers go down, congestion happens, give me a physical menu!
Am I the only one that doesn’t mind these? You’re all acting like you’re being asked to murder somebody.
Not everyone has a smart phone.
Or the eyes to read an eight and a half by 11 sized menu on a small cell phone.
I kinda like them. Anyone that’s worked in a restaurant doesn’t want to touch physical menus anyway lol
that I have had experiences with these websites having trackers and advertisements on the menu sites yes
Eta also what if my battery is dead or I got shit connection
Ask for a paper copy? They usually have them for people that don’t like digital
I guess I’ll have the dinosaur in the middle of the QR code
I ate at an airport restaurant recently that just had a QR code that let you order online. I do think the model works well in that one specific instance. On top of being more sanitary it lets the meal move at the pace you want it to, which is pretty important if you need to catch a flight in 45 minutes.
Newark does this. It’s interesting but I didn’t love it.
I think if they don’t have a printed menu at the next new place I go to I’m going to just get up and leave.
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Why not Zoidberg?
I’m not even going to a restaurant if they don’t have menu outside. I don’t want to buy a pig in a bag
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Or the ones that have no prices or “Market” next to each item
What if the menu is pig in a bag but it’s posted outside?
I’ll consider if the place looks fine and price is ok
I’ll have the 4 dots in an L shape, that looks good.
I use a LightPhone II which has no camera. It gets me out of this bullshit all the time.
Florida Man Asks For Paper Menu Without Mentioning That He In Fact Has A Phone With A Camera - “These idiots don’t even check!” He Says
Florida Man Crosses Crosswalk Without Waiting For The Light - Claims There Were No Cars
The onion has entered chat
I was visiting family and we went to a restaurant in NC that did this and the waitress just shrugged and said “We are environmentally friendly, we don’t have paper menus. Borrow someone’s phone” and then walked away.
Questions I didnt get to ask… Like how much environmental impact does a dozen menus have? Also before you walk away… can I borrow your phone? I am not asking some stranger for the phone.
My sister ended up having a smartphone with her. We wanted to leave, but my mom wasn’t having none of it because “it would be impolite, they have already served us water”.
I seriously doubt that a webserver running 24/7 has less environmental impact than printing 50 pieces of paper one time.
Could be running on a service multiple restaurants can subscribe to. Also, paper menus could have to be replaced, whether by updates or damage.
If I was forced to stay in a place that said that by family, I’d start getting really petty judging all the things they’re doing which have a bigger environmental impact than some menus.
Like how about the data center running the website to host the menu? Are they using paper napkins? Is anything disposable on the plate I get with my food? How does the bill arrive, is it paper? Is there food waste in the kitchen, what happens to it?
You know who else serves water mom? Prison, prison serves water. Is it impolite to leave prison!?
You gotta leave before your first cup of water. It’s one cool trick the prison industry doesn’t want people to know about.
Wait staff: “oh god, here’s the dude with the cameraless phone again 🙄”
“How insufferable and low tipping do you think he’ll be today?”
I don’t know why but the QR menus just piss me off in a service restaurant. I won’t use em (been bailed out by a date more than once).
For a counter place where they are just slinging me the food? Ok I guess. But if we’re out paying for a dinner that’ll hopefully lead to nookie, phones should be the last thing on the table.
I’ve been to a dine-in movie theater that had QR codes for the menu. Problem is, I typically don’t bring my phone to a movie AND since you can order during the movie, who wants people turning their phones on to read a menu?
I first read that as a “drive-in” movie theater and was like “that sounds awesome” and “how is that the most annoying part of your experience” lol.
I feel that. I can’t stand this crap and I get you wanna save paper but some of us don’t bring phones everywhere we go or we just have a flip phone or a phone without service. If you really wanna save paper instead of using more paper to print out a QR code just get a chalkboard or whiteboard
It would be nice if this was about saving paper but a website is being powered and that likely isn’t a good ecological trade. You could say it’s easier to change prices but it’s also easier to track you; your browser cookies are like a membership card.
God I hate this world
Doubly egregious when you have one of those annoying GDPR windows that make opting out a hassle just to view the menu. I’ve left restaurants over this.
for bonus points, the website uses 15 web frameworks and you have to click your way to a gallery of jpeg images for every page of the menu (obviously incompatible with half the mobile browsers so none of this even attempts to render).
“You need to enable Javascript to view this site.”
For when trusting them to not leak our credit card numbers isn’t enough.
Don’t they legally have to have gdpr options?
Not if they don’t track you. As far as I understand the fabled cookie law, you only need to have that notice if you’re using cookies in a way that’s not strictly necessary for the site’s functionality.
They do but lots of places make it a major hassle to set preferences. Like having “accept all” but rejecting has to be done one by one.
I’m not a 100% on this, but from what i remember, this is technically also not allowed. Something about refusing has to be just as easy as accepting. What is unfortunately not regulated (i’d assume, since nobody does it) is a refuse all option for legitimate interest, so they can give you an option to opt out of all cookies but leave all the legitimate interest options on and you have to turn them off one by one. Worst part is you might not even see that they’re on if you just say refuse all instead of going to the settings
Technically they don’t even have to give you the option to refuse cookies if they have a legitimate interest to collect them. The idea being that if a company’s business model depends on them collecting a certain data point then you shouldn’t be able to get the service for free.
All of this means, that if a site offers you to refuse cookies they have a legitimate interest on then it’s probably bullshit and they are just using the general confusion to get more data than nessesary.
Yeah. That’s standard asshat practice now I feel like. There needs to be a GDRP2 that specifies these settings can only pop up if standardized user defaults saved within the browser settings are not present. It’s gotten way out of control.
Tbh this is the reason I’m just using Firefox focus as default browser. Sure you can install your shit cookies, I’ll wipe them off after I’m done with your site
Only if they use cookies which frankly…why the fuck would they need to?
The mnalways dissapointed when a restaurant doesn’t have cookies.
I went to a restaurant that had the barcode menu. I prefer a physical menu, but fine whatever. The problem was, there was no reception inside the restaurant, and you couldn’t connect to their wifi for whatever reason.
This happened to me recently as well, but while traveling when I was low on data. Like ok, I will use your stupid QR code menu, but then you better provide free functional wifi.
Yeah I’d just walk out if the restaurant can’t afford menus
What if the restaurant can afford it, but don’t have it anyway?
The supply the tablet/phone with the digital menu. Sushi places here do it, I’m ok with that. Making me use my own device, ehhh no thanks. I might as welp provide and make my own food too.
Well, your own device is relatively more hygienic to you, in comparison with shared device. You may hope a restaurant will disinfect device after each guest, but it’s safe to assume they’re not.
Debatable…whens the last time you sanitized your phone. (Never…).
It is also possible to be too hygienic and actually making things worse for you and developing allergies, skin conditions, etc…
If you’re really afraid of menus, then don’t touch the door knob at the restaurant, or the seats, or the bottles of sauce, salt pepper shakers, etc…
Debatable…whens the last time you sanitized your phone. (Never…).
But it’s bacteria your body already familiar with and probably already have some immunity for.
So you’re saying the introduction to bacteria can help your immune system?
No, I’m not saying that. Please, read again.
Then I’d walk out, come back, and walk out again!
