Can a tag replace a restaurant's printed menu?
For a menu that changes, yes, and it beats reprinting. What a tag does not settle on its own is the allergen information, which European law makes mandatory for food sold without prepackaging and whose means of provision each Member State decides for itself.
What a tag is good at here
A menu that changes daily is the case that pays. The dish of the day, a sold out item, a price correction and a seasonal card are all server side edits, and none of them cost a reprint or a lamination.
Translations follow the same logic. A restaurant that prints four languages prints four menus; a page can hold them all and open in the language of the phone.
And it measures. Which dishes people read about, and when, is information a printed card cannot give you, and the catalogue page makes the same point for a range of products.
The allergen information is not optional
regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers requires mandatory food information to be available and easily accessible for all foods. For food offered without prepackaging, which covers a restaurant serving a plate, article 44 makes one particular mandatory in every Member State: the allergens listed in article 9(1)(c).
The same article then leaves the means to the Member State. National measures may set how those particulars are made available and, where appropriate, their form of expression and presentation. Some require them written on the menu, some allow a notice inviting the customer to ask, and the answer where you operate is a question for that national measure rather than for this page.
Two consequences for the tag. It may be one of the accepted means, or it may not be, and that is worth confirming before the printed menus go in a cupboard. And language matters: the regulation requires mandatory food information to appear in a language easily understood by consumers in the Member State where the food is sold, which a page that opens in the language of the phone can satisfy and can also miss.
The safe design is the one restaurants that have done this already use: the allergen information reachable without a phone, and the tag as the faster route to the same thing.
A menu is browsed, not looked up
A tag answers a question about one thing. A menu is read by moving across it, comparing two dishes, and noticing something nobody was looking for.
That is the distinction the QR comparison and the catalogue page both draw, and it decides how much of the menu should live behind a tap. A short printed card with the tag for depth, photographs, allergens and the wine list, costs less than a thick printed menu and stays current.
There is also a room to consider. A table of six people all looking at their phones is a choice a restaurant makes, and it is worth making deliberately rather than by removing the printed menu to save money.
Making it work in the room
Basements and thick walls have no signal, and a menu that fails to load is worse than a card. Check coverage at the tables rather than at the door, and keep printed menus for the case.
Keep a printed menu for anyone who asks, without making it a favour. A flat battery, an old phone and a guest who does not want to tap are all ordinary.
Put the tag where a hand reaches it while seated, which the table page covers, and if the tap is going to carry an order or a payment, read the ordering page first: that is a different risk from showing a menu.
Frequently asked questions
Can allergen information live only behind the tag?
That depends on the national measure. The regulation makes the allergen particular mandatory for unpackaged food and leaves each Member State to set the means of providing it.
What language does the menu have to be in?
Mandatory food information must appear in a language easily understood by consumers in the Member State where the food is sold.
Do guests need an app?
No. A tag holding a web address opens a page on any phone that reads tags, and the printed menu covers those that do not.
Is a tag better than a printed code here?
It is faster where the hand is already near the table, and it fails where a phone will not read. Most rooms end up with both.