HOW TO USE QR CODES TO PROMOTE YOUR RESTAURANT

In the restaurant industry, restauranteurs can use QR codes for a variety of purposes. They can advertise the restaurant’s app or loyalty program, share the menu, place orders, connect on social media, and more.

While there’s no limit to creative marketing efforts, here are 8 ways you can use QR codes to promote your restaurant. We’ll explore each one in more depth in this article.

1. Order from Your Restaurant through Delivery Apps

Carryout and delivery are huge segments for most restaurants, and they’ve grown over the years to reflect more and more of a restaurant’s bottom line. Many restaurants now do most of their business off premises even.

The shift to off-premises eating has presented challenges and changes to marketing and adver- tising. By adding a QR code to your packaging, the receipt, or a promotion attached to your packaging, you can link the QR code to your restaurant on a variety of food delivery apps.

2. Promote Downloads of Your

Own App

Speaking of apps, if your restaurant has an app, you can use QR codes to promote downloads of it. Put a prominent QR code on your packages that directs users to download the app.

You don’t have to provide a fully immersive augmented reality experience or partner with top celebrities to use QR codes to promote your own app. Consider providing a discount or some other incentive in exchange for users to download the app.

3. Link to Your Website or Menu or Share Your Address or Phone Number continued on page 34

If you don’t have an app, you can still use a QR code to encourage customers to connect with your restaurant. You can link your QR code to your restaurant’s website, even directly to your menu page.

You can also use QR codes in this way to create a contactless ordering experience—for dine-in and delivery orders. That way, customers can scan the QR code to open a digital menu where they can place their order without the need to handle a menu or interact with a server.

4. Promote Your Loyalty or Rewards Program

Loyalty programs help bring customers back repeatedly and to increase your bottom line. Takeout customers who use rewards programs also spend more on restaurant food than other customers.

If your restaurant has a loyalty program, you know that encouraging customers to use it is crucial to its success. Here again, you can use QR codes to encourage people not only to enroll in your rewards program, but you can also reward those valuable customers by giving them double points or other incentives for using your program.

5. Give out Coupons—and Connect Via Email or Text

QR codes are a great tool for encouraging repeat business among your customers. You can put a QR code on carryout or delivery packaging that shares a discount through your app, website, a thirdparty app or website, or even your rewards program. Those coupons could provide a discount on a customer’s next meal or promote a new menu item or bestseller.

You can optionally tie these coupons to customers sharing their email address or phone number with you. Then, you can email or text coupons, promotions, or new menu announcements to your customers, reminding them about your restaurant and rewarding them for coming back time after time.

6.

Connect on Social Media

Connecting with customers on social media can be an important part of your restaurant’s market - ing and advertising. You can use QR codes to link directly to your social media profile or encourage guests to engage with you on social media. You can also use QR codes to prompt users to post a message on their own social media profiles— tagging your account or sharing a personalized link.

7. Encourage Reviews

It’s no secret that the competitive restaurant industry thrives on reviews. Yelp, Trip Advisor, and other review sites are also highly likely to appear in place of your restaurant to customers searching for a place to order food. If you have a Google My Business listing, reviews from across the web will also appear there.

So, what if your packaging could also encourage customers to leave you a review? With QR codes, it can. You can give customers a way to leave a review on your Yelp, Google, or other review page.

8. Share Your Brand’s Story

Every good hero has an origin story and so should your restaurant. By telling your story, you can connect with customers. It’s a terrific method for sharing the values that your company operates by as well as your history and purpose.

Telling your brand’s story may not be as hard as you think. Ask yourself why you first opened your doors, where the inspiration for the busi - ness or menu came from, and what history or traditions you uphold. Either way, you can use QR codes to tell that story to people.

Get More Insights about Food Packaging from the Pros

As an innovative food packaging provider, Inno-Pak doesn’t think outside the box; it reinvented the box. For more than 30 years, InnoPak has had the pleasure of providing the most innovative packaging and best-in-class customer service to the foodservice, grocery, and convenience store industries. With a wide array of domestic and international partners, we look forward to working with you to find the packaging solutions your business needs.

If you’d like more tips on how to get more from your packaging, visit Inno-Pak’s blog at https://www. innopak.com/blog/. There, you can find information about using QR codes, how sustainability factors into consumers’ decisions, the latest trends in packaging and how they’ll impact your business, and more.