QR codes for restaurant and retail apps

Updated October 8, 2026

Your app is how regulars order ahead, collect points and get offers. The table, the till and the bag are where they meet it. One code there should get any phone to the app in one scan.

Where the code goes

• Table tents and menus: “Order from your phone next time” while people wait.
• Receipts and bags: after the purchase, when the loyalty pitch makes sense.
• Windows and doors: for people walking past outside opening hours.
• Packaging and delivery boxes: the code travels home with the order.
• Staff badges and the till screen: when a cashier says “we have an app”.

What one link does for you

• iPhones open the App Store, Android phones Google Play, Huawei phones AppGallery — and RuStore, if you publish there for customers in Russia. No “choose your platform” page in between.
• A customer scanning on a laptop or a phone without a matching store goes to the address you choose: your website or online ordering.
• Printed codes keep working when the destination changes — a new app, a rebrand, a seasonal landing page. You change the link, not the print run.

A setup that tells you which spot works

1. Make one link per placement and location, for example bistro-central-table and bistro-central-receipt. Duplicate the first link so they all share the same stores.
2. Download each QR code as SVG for the printer, and keep a list of which code is on which material.
3. Read the numbers weekly: scans by day show whether the lunch rush or the weekend drives installs; by platform, how your customers split between iPhone and Android.
4. Turn on store campaign attribution where your plan includes it, to see installs per placement in App Store Connect and Google Play Console.

Chains with many branches can keep each branch’s links in its own team, with its own members, and compare them side by side by exporting statistics to CSV.

Printing tips that matter here

• On receipts, at least 2 cm across and printed in black — thermal printers blur small codes.
• Say what the app gives: “Scan for 10% off your next order” works; a bare code does not.
• Keep the short address under the code for people whose camera will not cooperate.

What SetLinks does not do

It does not build your app, run your loyalty programme or know who ordered what. It sends each scan to the right store and counts it. If you need to know which customer installed from which table, that takes analytics inside your app.