QuiQi

CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML
CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML
CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML

Return on Investment for e-Menu

Case study: 
Traditional menus (OLD)

When a restaurant runs two bilingual menus (food + desserts, and drinks), plus a daily 1-page specials sheet, the costs stack up—both in cash and staff time. Below is where the money and time actually go.

1) Menu strategy & admin time

Twice a year, you rebuild or refresh prices, items, suppliers, allergens, and translations. This triggers a lot of coordination:
Manager ↔ Chef: draft dishes, cost recipes, confirm allergens.
Manager ↔ Distributors: track ingredient price swings and adjust menu prices.
Manager ↔ Designer: brief, review, and iterate the layouts.
Manager ↔ Printer: get quotes, submit files, proof, and approve.
Daily specials: someone formats, prints, and replaces a sheet every single day.
Those 10–15 minute tasks add up and become one of the largest hidden costs.

2) Design & redesign

Bilingual menus demand more careful layout (typography, spacing, hyphenation, icons, allergens, translations).
Expect two major design cycles/year, plus at least one mid-cycle patch for typos, seasonal changes, or supplier shocks.
Costs range from DIY to professional multi-round artworking depending on brand standards and complexity.

3) Printing, finishing & replacements

You need enough copies for all active tables plus spares for inevitable damage.
Materials: laminated/synthetic stock lasts longer but costs more; unlaminated looks tired quickly and forces more reprints.
Wear & tear: spills, tears, sun fading, and kid damage mean regular replacements (someone will put a wet carafe on page 3).
Typical pattern: 2 big print runs/year + 10–20% top-ups for damage or corrections.

4) Daily specials: the “silent” money leak

That A4 page printed every day (color or B/W) seems cheap—until you do it 365 times.
Direct costs: paper and ink/toner.
Indirect costs: the minutes to update, check, and reprint daily.
Small per day, real money by year-end.

5) The error

Printed menus are unforgiving.
Mistakes: a mispriced item or translation slip forces sticker patches (ugly) or partial reprints (costly).
Price volatility: supplier jumps can crush margins mid-season; if you delay price updates until the next print window, you “pay” via lost gross margin, even if it’s not on an invoice.

LETS CALCULATE:

Professional/brand-forward operation (bilingual pro layouts, heavier stock/lamination, cleaner typography, multiple proof rounds):

-Staff time (100h blended): €1,100

-Design (2 cycles + one patch): €1,300

-Printing & replacements (quality materials): €1,600

-Daily specials (paper/ink + time): €300

-Fixes/patches/reprints: €300

Cost: €4600/year

Case study: 
e-Menus using QR-codes (NEW)

Because a digital menu collapses 
(1) repeated design/print cycles, 
(2) daily specials printing, and 
(3) a huge chunk of coordination time
and lets you push instant price updates without reprinting, the savings start immediately. 

In practice, when you compare the annual printed-menu burden above to a modest ongoing digital service plus a small one-time stand expense, the payback period is usually measured in weeks to a few months, not years. After that, the ongoing difference flows straight to the bottom line — while also giving you the flexibility to update prices,  items, and localize in minutes instead of waiting for the next print window.

Bottom line: Electronic menus solve a lot of the issues that traditional menus have and are more cost effective.

-One person can be in charge of all the changes that need to happen within the menu with no back and forth communication with others and no waiting time.

-Typos and prices can be changed very easily.

-Unavailable dishes can be updated live while the business is open.

-Dishes of the day can be easily selected every morning upon business opening.

ROI will happen within 3-6 months
then keeps compounding savings

Return on Investment for e-Ordering

Case study: 
Waiters place orders (OLD)

How this restaurant actually runs

Service pattern: 6 nights/week, ~7-hour dinner shift.
Team on the floor: 6 waiters per shift (order taking, keying, running food/drinks, payments).
Menu breadth: starters, platters, mains (incl. daily dishes), desserts, soft drinks, beer, wine, cocktails.
Demand/throughput: 6,192 orders per month.
Spend per order: €20 average order.
Waiter cost to business: €1,278/month.

Baseline economics (manual ordering)

-Monthly revenue: 6,192 orders × €20 = €123,840.

-Monthly waitstaff payroll: 6 × €1,278 = €7,668.

-Labor per order: €7,668 / 6,192 ≈ €1.24.

Cost of waiters: €7.768/month

Case study: 
Customers place orders via QR-codes (NEW)

What changes with QRcode e-ordering

Operationally

Guests place orders on their phone; the system pushes clean tickets to the bar/kitchen.
Waiters pivot to hospitality: greetings, checks, food running, dealing with edge cases.
Scheduling efficiency: 6 → 5 waiters/shift most nights (1.0 FTE saved - Full-Time Equivalent).
Fewer mistakes, instant 86s, clear modifiers, and one-tap reorders.

Financially (monthly)

Labor saving: 1.0 FTE × €1,278 = €1,278 saved per month.
Sales uplift: +10% × €123,840 = +€12,384 revenue/month.

Assumptions (transparent and conservative)

Labor change: QR e-ordering removes most order-taking/keying time, letting you schedule 5 waiters instead of 6 most nights (i.e., save 1.0 FTE on average). No service downgrade—staff focus shifts to greeting, food running, and exceptions.

Sales uplift: +10% from:
Fewer ordering errors/returns (clear modifiers & allergen prompts).
Faster reorders for drinks/desserts (no waiting to flag a server).
On-screen smart upsells (add sides, extra round, dessert nudges).

Everything else held constant: hours, table count, kitchen capacity, and demand sufficient to realize the 10% uplift (very common for busy dinner venues).


ROI speed 
Even ignoring the sales lift, 1.0 FTE saved typically recoups the investment within a few months.
Including the 10% uplift, the first month’s gains alone (≈ €8k–€9.3k) are far above a typical annual fee for such a system—so payback is in the first weeks, then it’s pure monthly upside thereafter.

Why these are realistic

Order accuracy: Digital flows kill handwriting/mis-key errors and reduce comps/re-fires.
Speed to second/third round: Guests reorder drinks/desserts the moment they decide, without hunting for a server; this reliably lifts beverage mix.
Menu control: Live price edits and instant 86s prevent margin leaks and awkward “sorry, we’re out.”
Capacity utilization: Faster cycles on low-prep items (drinks, desserts) add revenue without overloading the kitchen line.

If uplift were only +5% (half our assumption), incremental gross profit would still be ~€3.4k–€4.0k/month—plus the €1,278 labor saving—so the break-even timing remains very fast.
If you can’t reduce an FTE immediately, the model still works via fewer overtime hours, tighter overlaps, or reallocating staff to higher-value activities (host, expo, floor manager), while the uplift alone drives payback.

ROI will happen within 4-8 months
then keeps compounding savings

DEMO
see it in action
You can see EXACTLY how it looks and feels in the live demo provided here. Simply click on the link below:

Return on Investment
for e-Menu

Case: 
Traditional menus (OLD)

Average cost:
€1158/year

Our research has shown that a restaurant which serves starters, platters, main dishes with dishes of the day, desserts, refreshments, beers, wines and cocktails has a menu that consists of 5 pages on average (per language) and revamps the menu and dishes every 2-3 of years. 

To create each menu a lot of back and forth communication is needed amongst the person who is creating the menu, the chef, the designer and the person who will print the menus.

With paper menus you cannot easily make changes every time you find a typo or every time a price has changed, you cannot update it live when a dish becomes unavailable and you cannot easily manage different dishes per day. Nonetheless every time you decide to make changes, the above process must take place which is time and money consuming.

Taking all the above in consideration we found that maintaining traditional menus has the above average cost.

Case: 
e-Menus using QR-codes (NEW)

Cost of QuiQi:
€249/year 

Electronic menus solve a lot of the issues that traditional menus have and are more cost effective.

-One person can be in charge of all the changes that need to happen within the menu with no back and forth communication with others and no waiting time.

-Typos and prices can be changed very easily.

-Unavailable dishes can be updated live while the business is open.

-Dishes of the day can be easily selected every morning upon business opening.

The cost for the e-Menu usage is fixed and the same for any kind of business, large or small - shown above.

Return on Investment 
for e-Ordering

Case: 
Waiters place orders (OLD)

Average cost of waiter: €11.213/year

Our test case was at a restaurant working 6 nights per week with a capacity of 150 customers serving inside and outside. The specific restaurant served starters, platters, main dishes with dishes of the day, desserts, refreshments, beers, wines and cocktails. Each waiter placed on average 26 orders per shift. 

During our research we observed a lot of issues and delays with this model. The customers were waiting to get the menus upon arriving. 
They were waiting for a waiter every time they wanted to order something. They were waiting for the check and payment process at the end.

Other problems we experienced were: Dishes of the day were aurally provided to the customers and were difficult to remember. Customers sometimes were decided on a dish just to learn from the waiter that it was unavailable. Different items were served than those ordered and it was difficult to find out where the miscommunication happened. 

Lastly, what was communicated from the business owner was that it is very difficult to find good staff and keep them. 

The average cost of a waiter at the specific business is shown above.


Case: 
Customers place orders 
via QR-codes (NEW)

Cost of QuiQi:
€970/year

Our experiment was to try and replace just 1 waiter at the specific restaurant with QuiQi online ordering, find out the pros and cons and also calculate the difference in costs.

The pros:

-Waiting times were decreased dramatically for the customers

-Staff spent less time on taking orders and running back and forth.

-By making it easier for customers to order an increase in drink sales was observed.

The cons: 

-The staff needs training on using QuiQi because there is a difference in operation while QuiQi is used. 

-A POS integration seems to be needed, because during the test, staff had to enter the QuiQi orders manually into the POS.

Below the total cost for the QuiQi ordering usage is shown for the respective business. It was a huge 10X decreace for the business - shown above.