QR code menus for restaurants

A QR code menu starts with one code on every table. Give it a destination URL pointing at the menu you serve most — your dinner menu, say. That page is what guests land on by default.

Rules sit on top. Think of them the way your kitchen thinks about service: at any moment, one menu is live. On every scan the rules run in order, and the moment one matches — lunch hours, a guest from abroad — it takes over and redirects to its own URL. If nothing matches, service continues as normal: the guest gets the default dinner menu. That is the whole idea behind a dynamic QR code menu.

Add a time-of-day rule set to 10:00–14:00 with the action "redirect on match" pointing to your lunch menu URL. During lunch hours, every scan is automatically routed to the lunch menu. Outside those hours, the rule doesn't match and guests see the dinner menu instead.

You can adjust the time window to match your actual lunch service — 11:00–14:30 for a late-opening restaurant, or 10:00–15:00 for an all-day café.

Example setup:
• Rule type: Time of day
• From: 10:00 — To: 14:00
• On match: Redirect to https://yoursite.com/lunch-menu
• On fail: Skip (routing rule — never blocks)

A geo country rule looks at where the guest's phone is connecting from. Say your terrace fills up with German tourists every July: add an allowlist rule for country code "SE" that redirects matches to your Swedish menu, and let everyone else continue to the English default.

Stack as many language rules as your dining room needs:

1. Country "SE" → Swedish menu
2. Country "DE" → German menu
3. Default → English menu

The engine works through the list from the top and stops at the first hit — like a waiter running down the specials until one lands. Guests from Sweden never reach the German rule; a scan from Munich sails past "SE" and stops at "DE".

Example setup:
• Rule type: Geo country
• Mode: Allowlist
• Countries: SE
• On match: Redirect to https://yoursite.com/middagsmeny-sv
• On fail: Skip

Want a step-by-step walkthrough? Read our guide: one menu, two languages — serving Swedish and international guests from the same QR code.

Combining rule types is where a single code starts doing real work. A short stack covers a full service day:

1. Time of day 10:00–14:00 → Redirect to Swedish lunch menu
2. Geo country SE → Redirect to Swedish dinner menu
3. Default destination → English dinner menu

Scan at noon from a Swedish phone and rule 1 fires before anything else — lunch is what's on the pass, so lunch is what you get. The same guest at 19:00 falls outside the lunch window, so rule 2 picks them up and serves the Swedish dinner menu. A visitor from Hamburg at 19:00 matches neither and lands on the English dinner menu.

Drag the rules into whatever order fits your service. In practice the tightest condition goes on top — time windows first, language after, with the default catching whoever is left.

Want to build a mailing list from your restaurant guests? Add an email gate rule at the top of your rule chain. Before the guest sees any menu, they're asked to enter their email address. You can optionally require a consent checkbox for GDPR-compliant marketing opt-in.

Once the guest submits their email, a signed token is issued that remembers them for a configurable duration (default: 15 minutes). If they scan the same QR code again within that window, they go straight to the menu without being prompted again.

All collected emails appear in the Submissions tab on your QR code detail page, where you can filter by date and export to CSV for use in your email marketing tool.

This works seamlessly with the time and language rules below — the guest submits their email first, then the routing rules decide which menu to show.

A printed menu is a snapshot; a QR code menu is live. The difference shows up in the everyday running of the restaurant:

• Price and dish changes go live in minutes — no reprints when a supplier raises prices or the chef swaps a dish
• Seasonal and holiday menus are a rule or a URL change away, and can be scheduled in advance
• Table cards last: laminate once, and the same code serves lunch, dinner, and every menu you will ever run
• Scan analytics show when guests actually open the menu — by hour, day, and country — so you can time specials and staffing to real demand
• Language versions reach international guests without printing a separate menu per language

A static QR code that encodes a fixed URL can do none of this: printed once, it points at the same address forever. A dynamic QR code menu keeps the printed part permanent and moves all the change into the dashboard — which is exactly where you want it on a busy Friday night.

1. Fire up a dynamic QR code and point its destination URL at your default menu — the English dinner menu works well as the base
2. Open the Rules tab on the QR code detail page
3. Plate up your routing rules — time-of-day, geo country, or an email gate — stacked in the order you want them checked
4. Send the code to print on table cards, stickers, or tent stands
5. Keep an eye on scan analytics and email submissions from the dashboard

Swap menu URLs whenever the kitchen does — the printed code never changes. Season's specials, holiday menus, or one-off event routing are just a rule away.