If you have eaten out over the past couple of years, there’s a pretty good chance you have used QR code technology.
Congress Group of Restaurants partner Blair Voth Miller manages some restaurants in Saskatoon, including Thirteen Pies, Hometown Diner, and the Bagel Shop. She said adapting during the pandemic has been necessary, and technology has helped.
“One of the major changes was switching to QR code menus and to be honest it’s been a pretty smooth process,” she said.
QR code technology was simple for Voth Miller to roll out and easy for customers to learn.
“Once you show them once or twice like all of us, they catch on pretty quickly. It’s kind of nice to be able to look at your own menu on your phone and have that available,” Voth Miller said.
Her other business partners agree QR codes will still be utilized, even though physical menus are now welcome with lifted COVID-19 mandates. Using fewer physical menus reduces waste, and saves time and money.
“We still need to do the graphic design side of it but it is nice not to have to send that change to the printer and do all those things,” Voth Miller said.
Like many small business owners, Creative Haven YXE’s Becky Scharfstein-McGettigan opened a store to bring a passion to life.
The craft shop brought Saskatoon’s creative community together, but after about a year and a half of being open, COVID-19 shut things down.
“I didn’t know if we were going to come out of it or if we were going to be able to pivot enough that people would still be interested in Creative Haven,” Scharfstein-McGettigan said.
She was previously hosting four to five crafting classes a week and needed to find a way to make up for the lost revenue. The business owner started to make take-home crafting kits, providing video tutorials that are accessed with a QR code.
“We make the video, then we put it on our YouTube channel and create a QR code that will take you directly to that video. There’s no hunting, there’s no searching, no copy and pasting and it’s really easy,” Scharfstein-McGettigan said.
The technology was new to her, but the rollout was successful. Some customers prefer the take-home kits over in-person classes.
“They can quickly get to the tutorial, they can see me doing it, slow it down watch it as many times as they want. We’re definitely going to keep that here,” she adds.
Meanwhile, Voth Miller is opening a new cafe this spring. QR code technology will be utilized, being put up on the front doors so customers can order quickly.