How to use QR codes in a coffee shop
Three codes, a counter, and a paper cup: where each one goes and the print details that decide whether a customer scans before their coffee is ready.
Three codes, a counter, and a paper cup: where each one goes and the print details that decide whether a customer scans before their coffee is ready.
A coffee shop needs two codes on day one and a third if you run a loyalty or reorder page. The menu code is for the queue and the window. The guest WiFi code is for the people who sit down. Loyalty — or a simple reorder link — lives on the cup, where it leaves with the customer. A Google review code is optional and belongs on the sleeve or the receipt, never on the door.
That is a tighter set than a full restaurant, and it should stay tight. A counter already carries the till, the pastry case, the tip jar and a forest of stickers. Extra codes compete with each other and with the drink. If a customer cannot tell which square to scan before the barista calls their name, none of them will be scanned.
Print all three in the same colours and the same dot style so they look like part of the shop, not three different apps. The label under each code does the work the pattern cannot: write Menu, Guest WiFi, or Stamp card in words large enough to read from the queue.
A static QR code bakes the destination into the printed square. You cannot edit it later, which is the whole point — there is no subscription and nothing to expire — and it is also the trap. Encode an address you own, usually yourdomain.com/menu, and change the page behind it whenever the specials change. Encode a Google Drive preview, a Dropbox share or this week's Canva link and you will reprint every cup and every counter card the next time that URL dies.
The filename rule is the one cafes actually break. If the menu is a PDF at yourdomain.com/menu.pdf, uploading a new PDF over that exact name leaves every printed square working. Rename it menu-august.pdf and the counter card, the window decal and last week's sleeve run all go dead at once. Seasonal drinks, oat-milk prices and sold-out pastries are content changes. They are not new codes.
A coffee shop updates faster than a restaurant. That is an argument for a web page you edit in five minutes, not for a new QR code every Friday. The code is the address. The page is the menu.
If you remember one thing: encode an address you control, and change what lives at that address. Every reprint a cafe ever pays for is caused by encoding something temporary.
Placement is a function of scan distance, not of empty wall space. A customer at the counter holds a phone 25–30 cm from a standing card. Someone on the pavement is 1.5–2 m from the window. A cup in the hand is closer still, but the surface is curved, so the printed area has to be flatter and a little larger than the same code on a card.
Put the menu and WiFi codes together on one counter card, labelled. Put loyalty on the cup, where it survives the visit. Keep the review code off the door — at the door the drink has not happened yet.
| Placement | What it is for | Scan distance | Minimum printed size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counter card | Menu + guest WiFi, in the queue | 25–30 cm | 2.5 cm (1 in); 3–4 cm is safer |
| Window or door decal | Menu preview for passers-by | 1.5–2 m | 15–20 cm |
| Cup sleeve, flat printed patch | Loyalty, reorder or Instagram | 20–30 cm | 3 cm; cups curve, so go larger than a card |
| Cup wall (direct print) | Loyalty or review, after pickup | 20–30 cm | 3 cm on the least-curved face |
| Receipt or bag sticker | Google review, after the drink | 25–30 cm | 2–2.5 cm |
| A-board on the pavement | Menu, from a few steps away | 1–1.5 m | 10–15 cm |
Treat 2.5 cm as the floor for anything a customer holds, and 3 cm for anything on a cup. Below about 2 cm older phone cameras start to miss, and cafe lighting — pendants, window glare, a dark corner table — makes that worse. There is no scanning penalty for a code being too big.
Every code needs a quiet zone of four modules of clear space on all four sides. On a 3 cm code that is roughly 4–5 mm of empty margin. Sleeves and cup prints are where this gets cropped: a logo wrap or a flavour name running into the square will scan in the studio and fail in the queue. Keep the margin blank.
Cups are a different surface from cards. A paper cup curves, so a code printed around the wall distorts the modules. Print on the sleeve if you can, on a flat patch, or on the least-curved face and a little larger. Do not print a 2.5 cm code on a thin wall and expect it to behave like a counter card.
Laminate counter cards matte, not gloss. Gloss throws pendant light back into the camera. Uncoated card soaks up espresso and the stained corner loses data. Error correction Q (about 25% recovery) or H (about 30%) buys tolerance for wear and for a centre logo; if there is a logo, Q or H is not optional. Send SVG to the printer rather than PNG whenever they accept it — vector stays sharp on the window decal, where a scaled-up PNG turns into soft grey edges.
A WiFi QR code stores the network name and password as plain text in the pattern. Anyone with a decoding app can read it. Print it only for a guest network isolated from the till, the back office and staff devices. That caveat aside, it is the highest-value code in a cafe: guests join without asking, and baristas stop reciting a password forty times a shift.
Rotating the guest password means reprinting the code. Most shops pick a stable guest password, change it a couple of times a year, and print a fresh batch of counter cards at the same time. The longer hospitality write-up — hidden SSIDs, captive portals, WPA2 versus WPA3 — lives in the guest WiFi guide for cafes and hotels. Use that when the network setup is the hard part; this page is about where the square sits next to the menu.
Treat a printed WiFi code exactly as you would treat the password written on a chalkboard — because that is what it is. Guest network only.
The cup is the one surface that leaves with the customer, which is why loyalty belongs there and not on the counter. Point the code at a page you control: a simple stamp-card page, a reorder link, or a signup form that does not demand an app install before the coffee is cold. An app-store detour in the doorway of a 90-second pickup is how those codes go unscanned.
If you do not run loyalty, the same square can open your Instagram or a link-in-bio page. One destination. A sleeve is too small for a row of social icons. Instagram is the usual cafe choice because the visit is visual; a second code for a second network is almost never worth the ink.
The same address rule applies. If the loyalty programme changes, edit the page. Do not print a new sleeve run because the campaign name changed. And do not encode a third-party loyalty URL you cannot keep — when that vendor folds or paywalls the page, every cup in circulation becomes a 404.
A review code works or fails on timing. At the door the customer has not had the drink. On the sleeve or the receipt, when the flat white is in hand or the bag is leaving, the ask is short and the phone is already out. That is the only moment it belongs.
The code opens your public Google Business Profile listing. It does not submit a review, it does not know who scanned it, and it cannot filter anything — it saves someone from typing your name into Google. Label it in one line: Enjoyed it? Leave a review. Do not offer a free pastry in exchange; Google prohibits review gating and incentivised reviews, and listings do get penalised for it.
Test the printed proof, not the file on your screen. A code that scans from a laptop can fail on a curved sleeve under the window at 8am, and you only find out after a thousand cups are already in the bin.
Stand where the customer stands — in the queue, at a table, on the pavement outside the window. Use the lighting you actually serve in, including the morning glare. Hold the phone the way a customer would, at an angle, not flat-on in the studio.
Use two phones: a current model and one at least three years old. New cameras forgive codes that older ones will not. If the old phone hesitates more than a second or two, print larger or drop the logo, then test again. Open the destination on mobile data with WiFi off, and confirm it is not a login wall or a PDF that opens at unreadably small type.
Keep a printed menu on the counter and offer it without being asked. Some customers have no smartphone, no data, a dead battery, or low vision. A QR code is the convenient option, never the only one — and digital-only menus have been challenged under accessibility rules in the US, the EU and the UK. A dozen paper menus behind the till is the cheap answer.
A static QR code has the destination encoded in the pattern, so it needs no server and never expires. It also cannot be edited after you download it, and it cannot count scans. There is no dashboard, because nothing is reporting back — to us or to you.
Neither limit hurts if you set it up as above. Editability is solved by pointing at an address you control. Scan counts, if you want them, come from the analytics on the page the code opens — your menu page already knows how many mobile visits it received.
What you get in return is a code with no subscription behind it. A dynamic code routes through a third party's redirect service, so the square on your window stops working if that company folds, raises its price, or ends your trial. A static code has no such dependency. Make the menu code on the menu tool; it is free, with no account and no watermark.
Free, no sign-up, and your code never expires.
Got your code? ☕ Buy me a coffee — it keeps this tool free for everyone.