Guide · service
QR code ordering at the table: when it helps your restaurant, and when it costs you
A code on the table lets guests order the moment they are ready, instead of waiting to catch someone's eye. Used for the right moments it takes pressure off a stretched floor; used for everything it can take the hospitality out of the evening. The real question is which orders the code should take, and which belong to your staff.
Published · For restaurants in the UK and Ireland. The legal points are UK rules, from the CMA and FSA guidance named below; an Irish restaurant answers to Irish rules instead, which this guide does not cover.
What changes when guests order from the table
Three things move from the waiter to the guest: reading the menu, choosing, and sending the order. What stays with your staff is everything around it — the welcome, the recommendation, the allergy question, the moment someone spots that table nine has been waiting too long for the bill.
Seen that way, QR ordering is a way of giving your floor staff time back at the moments when they have the least of it. It works when the time saved goes into the conversations that matter, and backfires when the code is used to run the room with fewer people than it needs.
Where it helps
The second round
The guests have been welcomed, they know what they like, and they want another glass of the same wine. A code turns a five-minute wait for a waiter into a few taps, and the drink arrives while they still want it.
The terrace and the far corner
Tables outside or round a corner are the ones staff pass least. A code there lets the table order even when nobody has walked past for a while.
The big table
Ten people ordering through one waiter is ten minutes at one table. Each guest adding their own dishes, with the waiter checking the round before it goes, is quicker and clearer about who had what.
Guests who read better in their own language
A menu on the guest's phone can be read in their own language, with the allergens beside every dish, at their own pace and without asking for a translation.
Where it costs you
The welcome. The first few minutes at a table are when a guest decides what kind of evening this is. A code that greets them instead of a person sets that tone, especially in a restaurant that charges for service as much as for food.
The recommendation. A waiter who suggests the special, the side that goes with it or the wine for the main adds to the bill and to the evening. A menu on a phone suggests whatever its layout puts first. If the second bottle and the dessert matter to your margins, keep a person in the first order.
The allergy conversation.The UK FSA's guidance says written allergen information supported by a conversation works best for consumers. A phone can carry the written half; it cannot ask the follow-up question about cross-contact in the fryer. A guest with an allergy should still talk to someone before ordering.
The kitchen. Twenty tables ordering at once is a surge that a waiter taking orders one table at a time used to smooth out. If the pass struggles when a coach party sits down, codes on every table will give it that coach party every night.
The guest without a phone, or a battery. Someone always needs the printed menu and a person to order from. Plan for them rather than apologise to them.
In the UK, the menu behind the code is a price list in law
In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority's guidance on price transparency lists a restaurant menu — paper, or a digital one reached by scanning a QR code — as an invitation to purchase (CMA209, paragraph 2.2). The prices on it are held to the same rules as any other price shown to a consumer.
Two consequences matter at the table. A mandatory cover or service charge counts as a mandatory charge and belongs in the total price (paragraph 4.4). A genuinely optional charge may be shown separately from the headline price, but calling a charge optional on the menu does not make it so if the guest cannot in practice decline it (paragraph 4.3). The code's menu should say exactly what the paper menu says.
Allergen information applies to the code's menu too. For food served in a UK restaurant, the FSA asks for allergen information on every item that contains one of the 14 allergens, in writing or orally — and if orally, with a clearly visible written notice saying how to get it (allergen guidance, section 2.5). Our guide to the allergen matrix covers how to keep that list right.
A middle way: the waiter confirms the order
Many of the costs above come from orders going to the kitchen with nobody looking at them first. That part is a choice.
- In Slotina a guest scans the table's code, reads the menu with its allergens in their own language and orders; a waiter confirms the order first, or, if your restaurant chooses, it goes straight to the kitchen.
- A guest whose card lists allergies always waits for a waiter, whatever the setting, so the allergy conversation still happens.
- QR ordering is switched on per restaurant and works only while a party is seated at that table, so a code only works for the people sitting at that table.
- Every QR order joins the table's bill, and the guest can pay a check from the same code with a tip of their choice — straight to your own Stripe account, commission-free.
Trial it for a month before you decide
- 1
Pick one room or one service
The terrace, the bar, or weekday lunch: somewhere the gain is most likely and the risk smallest. Keep the rest of the restaurant as it is, so you have something to compare against.
- 2
Decide who confirms
Start with every QR order confirmed by a waiter. Sending orders straight to the kitchen is one setting for the whole restaurant, so change it only if the floor asks for it, and only for the whole trial area at once.
- 3
Watch three numbers
The average spend per head in the trial area against the rest, the kitchen's ticket times at the busiest hour, and how long a table waits for its bill. A sales report that shows the dish mix and the busy hours does most of this for you.
- 4
Ask the floor
After a month, ask the waiters what they did with the time. If the answer is talking to guests, keep it. If it is covering more tables, look at the spend per head before you widen the trial.
What it needs from you
Codes printed for each table and kept clean; a menu on the code that matches the menu on paper, sold-out dishes included; staff who know which orders to confirm and how; and someone who checks, every week, that the prices and allergens behind the code are the ones in the kitchen.
In Slotina the menu is built once — dishes, sizes and options with their prices, the 14 allergens, names in each language — and staff on shift mark a dish sold out, so the code and the floor read from the same menu.
QR code ordering: short answers
Is QR code ordering worth it for a small restaurant?
For some moments, yes: the second round of drinks, a terrace staff pass rarely, a large table. For the first order of the evening and anything involving an allergy, a person usually does it better. Trial it in one area first.
Do prices on a QR code menu have to include the service charge?
In the UK, yes for a mandatory one: a mandatory cover or service charge belongs in the total price, according to the CMA's price transparency guidance, which counts a QR code menu as an invitation to purchase. A genuinely optional charge may be shown separately.
How do I handle allergies with QR ordering?
Show allergen information for every dish on the code's menu and make it easy to talk to someone. In Slotina a guest whose card lists allergies always waits for a waiter to confirm the order.
Can the kitchen cope with everyone ordering at once?
Not always. QR ordering removes the natural pacing of one waiter taking orders table by table. Having a waiter confirm each order gives the floor a way to hold a round when the pass is full.
Sources (checked 4 November 2026; not legal advice)
What Slotina's QR code ordering does · The menu, with allergens on every dish · Pricing