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Comment by egorfine | Hacker News Reader

In Ukraine, this is a trend that is now in nearly 100% of venues, and it works nothing short of perfectly.

You flip through the menu on your phone and then order with a waiter. When done, you pay online via Apple Pay or whatever you want. Instantly and with tips.

Just a couple of companies do provide this service here in Ukraine and both managed to get the UI/UX just right so the experience is excellent.

Visiting Europe, I see so many absolutely brain-damaged implementations of online menus that I have to ask myself whether the developers ever used their product or if they are just dead inside people.

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When done right, they can be awesome. I was at a local restaurant that had a good system. The QR code was connected to the actual table, as in they knew what physical table I was at. Therefore if I wanted another drink, I just opened my phone, hit the button and it was brought out 1 minute later. I didn't have to wait for a staff member, flag them down, ask for what I want, then wait for my drink.

I could also request a staff member to the table (if I preferred to talk in person). It kept a running tab of my bill and at any time I could just pay online and walk away. The feeling was like the first time just getting out of an uber and walking away. Again, I didn't have to flag down a staff member, ask for the bill, get the bill, ask for "the machine", wait for them to return, tap my credit card etc etc. It was all very well done.

Unfortunately, most QR code menus are just a link to their mobile site. It has 0 added functionality.

So one or two companies get to know where everyone in Ukraine eats, how often, and how much they spend? No thanks.

Well, the main QR code menu service provider is conveniently one of the main banks in Ukraine and it's not an evil company.

But yes, concern is valid. But yes, they know anyway because you pay online.

Yeah I prefer a paper menu but I’ve never really had a problem using it.

You flip through the menu on your phone and then order with a waiter. When done, you pay online via Apple Pay or whatever you want. Instantly and with tips.

And if you don't have a phone -- you starve to death?

Preferably.

Or you can resort to a paper menu and/or cash payments both of which are always readily available.

Not sure which planet you've been on these past 3 years.

But on mine, the appearance of QR menus has been paired with a disappearance of paper menus, about 50 percent of the time.

It's really quite obnoxious, actually. But that's modern tech for you.

old man yelling at cloud

Yes I can feel your pain. I would be sad if no paper menu was available, especially if the online version is buggy.

In Ukraine where I'm from it's not a problem.

Thanks for the compliment.

But actually my concern about people, and how gullible they seem to be for every shiny new gimmick the tech gods put in front of them.

Not the cloud, per se.

What are the companies? Interested to see their UI/UX

One of them could be https://expz.monobank.ua/ which fits the description.

Not aware of the others

Exactly. They have the vast majority of the market and they are indeed the best.

Virtually every QR code menu I've encountered in Ukraine used https://choiceqr.com/

So, yeah: The two mentioned companies do indeed have close to 100% market share. Both have excellent UI/UX.

But the company implementing it was the cheapest!

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