The Great Human Contact Disincentive of 2020 upended the way restaurants do business, and Lou Bird’s was no exception. Customers wanted contactless menus, but existing solutions were deeply flawed (or particularly expensive). Lou Bird’s tried QR‐to‐PDF for a while, but any change meant reprinting every table code, so they came to me for a better alternative. The solution I provided is low‐maintenance, mobile‐friendly, and packed with quality‐of‐life features.

QR Codes

While just slapping a black‐and‐white QR code on a table works well enough, we wanted to go above and beyond. I was able to vectorize their logo from a low‐quality raster and drop it into the center of the code, with enough error‐checking and whitespace that it hasn’t failed (yet).

Context Sensitivity

Lou Bird’s does an excellent weekend brunch, as well as frequent special menus, buyouts, and events. The menu site automatically redirects guests to the correct menu for the time and location from a predetermined set of rules.

Performance

It’s helped by its size, but this site is probably the fastest one I’ve ever made. Since every visitor is on a mobile data connection, efficiency was essential, and the site reflects that in every way. Optimizations to shave off fractions of a second added up — load times are usually under 400 milliseconds.