Industry guide
QR codes for bars and pubs
Bar QR codes face the worst lighting conditions of any hospitality setting — dim, coloured and often moving. Print bigger than you would for a restaurant, use maximum contrast, and never use a coloured or styled code.
Dim and coloured light is the constraint
A bar is lit at a fraction of restaurant levels, often with coloured or moving light. A phone camera in low light uses a longer exposure, which means motion blur, and coloured light distorts the luminance difference a decoder relies on.
Consequences:
- Pure black on pure white. No brand colours, no gradients, no styled modules. This is the one setting where a plain code is genuinely required.
- Bigger: 4–5 cm on a table card rather than the 3 cm a restaurant would use.
- Matt, always. Gloss plus a moving spotlight is unreadable.
- Vertical on a tent card, never flat on a wet bar top.
Placement
| Code | Where |
|---|---|
| Drinks menu | Table tent, and at the bar rail |
| WiFi | Bar back, at eye level |
| Table service ordering | Table tent, with the table number in the URL |
| Feedback | Exit |
Table service ordering
The strongest bar use: example.com/order?table=7. It removes the queue, which is the
single biggest complaint in a busy bar. The QR code is the cheapest part; the ordering
platform is the work.
Age verification
If you link to anything requiring age verification, do it on the linked page, not by assuming the scanner is of age. A code is not a gate.
Wet surfaces
Bar-top codes get wet. Laminate, or use a standing tent card. A soaked paper code is unusable within one shift.