Marketing Tips
QR Codes are Like Family:
A Little Weird but They Just Work
by Michele Rempel QR (Quick Response) Codes are not new. They were invented in 1994 by Masahiro Hara, an engineer at a Japanese automotive company to help streamline car part production. They gained worldwide popularity in the early 2010s, but at the time, most of us had to download a separate QR code reading app on our phones, and
28 The Franchise Woman
QR code use just sort of fizzled. Enter the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need for touch-free solutions. Restaurants started to use them as a way to share their meal choices for pick-up orders or outdoor dining without needing paper menus. You may have seen a proliferation of laminated QR codes on outdoor
dining tables at your favorite eatery. Venmo and PayPal give their users a unique QR code to allow touch-free sharing of money. Some retailers are using them to share discount codes or special deals. Since most of us have smartphones with QR code readers built in, they are now super easy to use.
