I'm building a new mini startup this week

I found a new idea while road tripping in Portugal

A thread

At lots of restaurants/cafes/bars here in Portugal (and in other places in US/EU) you now need to scan a QR code that's on the table to see the menu

This is to avoid Corona sticking to the menu and infecting you or the staff

For example at this hipster place in Sagres

I'd think there'd be some service doing this but most of the menus I've scanned are a self-hosted page on the restaurant's site

Many suck, are slow to load, slow to scroll on mobile etc.

Then I thought:
- many venues don't even have sites to host menus on
- managers/owners are usually not very tech
- there's over 1M+ restaurants/cafes/bars in the world
- after Corona these QR menus will probably stay because there's benefits to it like dynamically changing menu

So I started looking if it already existed, it did but:
- the majority are just random QR code creators, not much dedicated to restaurant/cafe menus
- most of the menu builders that do exist are really complicated, convoluted or too technical

That there's competition means the market is validated, and that the competition isn't that great means I can make something better and more simple, so a few days ago I started coding:

On the left I made a markdown editor and on the right a preview how it looks, iterated a lot but it still kinda looked super ugly

So I took the http://remoteok.io/hire-remotely  page because I know it actually sells

Then I wanted to add the QR code for the actual menu so people could immediately scan it while working on their menu and it'd live preview

Super easy with: https://davidshimjs.github.io/qrcodejs/ 

And I learnt you can just put a giant image in a QR code and it'll still work, so I put resto logo

Then I added the view menu page which customers will see (all in one index.php of course )

And a print QR codes page so restaurants can print them out as stickers and put them on tables https://qrmenucreator.com/?action=print_qr_codes&menu_id=bv9jCXYnXsmUjRGA&menu_hash=6e79d24ad7970061759a44c8cb8506a5

And I made the editor live update the menu preview

Then @AndreyAzimov said I should add some Google Fonts to customize it

The funnest part to build is live preview, you can edit while watching the menu on your phone. While typing on the menu it'll change on your phone.

I think useful for non-techy restaurant owners who wanna see it live immediately

Also fun, restaurants can use their own logos in the QR code

And now QR Menu Creator is live on @ProductHunt at https://www.producthunt.com/posts/qr-menu-creator

The biggest challenge here will be to reach restaurant/bar/cafe owners to actually use it, it's not my audience so I'd love your tips/help/feedback

Reading replies now, lots of ppl saying POS etc already exists. Indeed. But that's all very complicated for something that can be as simple as a menu designer + a QR code + hosting the menu for them

Most logic is in one index.php file, I put most JS in there too. You can see the source to see how it works: http://qrmenucreator.com 

Also problem I see with all these others and something I'm philosophically against is:

They're all these gigantic landing pages

Just let me immediately start editing the menu, it's not like restaurant/cafe owners have a lot of time esp now

A few weeks ago @johnonolan said I should follow my own advice to get new ideas by becoming a more original person by doing new things

Going road tripping a bit instead of sitting inside in lockdown helped me find this idea because it's not even in my own country

Thx John

Oh I forgot I also registered a short domain name for the menus themselves when viewed by customers: https://qrmn.co/m/OXYhaB6eLlPPWyyW

First real user, a restaurant from UK: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1318918294687154177?s=20

[TODO]
- add mobile layout for menu creator
- let users add images in markdown (and host them?!)
- add email box and save email and send edit link button
- fix dark/light switch won’t show in live preview

Someone had the SAME idea in the SAME restaurant haha