What a French QR Menu Does Not Replace: Prices Outside, Allergens in Writing

A French restaurant takes the paper carte off the tables, puts a code on each one, and considers the job done. It is not, and the reason has nothing to do with whether guests like scanning. Two different French obligations sit on a restaurant menu, and a code satisfies one of them by name while failing the other by definition.

Getting this right is cheap. Getting it wrong is the sort of thing a DGCCRF inspection notices in the first thirty seconds, from outside, before anyone has walked in.

The display outside is a separate obligation

The arrêté du 27 mars 1987 relatif à l'affichage des prix dans les établissements servant des repas, denrées ou boissons à consommer sur place is the text, and it is older than the web. Two of its articles do the work.

Article 2 requires prices to be displayed visibly and legibly from outside for a specified list of commonly served items: black coffee, draught beer, bottled beer, fruit juice, a soft drink, mineral water, an aniseed aperitif, the plat du jour and a sandwich. The letters must be at least 1.5 cm high. Entertainment venues display a different list, covering entry, soft drinks, spirits by the glass and champagne by the bottle.

Article 4 requires restaurants to display menus and cartes visibly from outside, from 11:30 for lunch service and 18:00 for dinner, together with a wine list of at least five wines, or fewer where fewer are offered. The same documents must be available inside.

Read that as a specification and the conclusion is immediate. The person the rule protects is standing on the pavement, has not entered, has not asked, and has not scanned anything. A code on the window is not a price display, because the price is not displayed. It is a pointer at a price, addressed to someone with a charged phone, a data connection and the willingness to use both before deciding whether to sit down.

Inside, the wording is "directly readable"

Article 3 covers the interior: a document exposed to public view and directly readable, listing by category the drinks and foods offered with each individual price.

"Directly readable" is the phrase that decides the QR question for prices. A document that requires a device, an app or a network is not directly readable. This is not a hostile reading of an old text; it is the plain meaning, and it is why the successful French QR menus are additions rather than replacements. The paper carte stays, the code sits beside it, and what the code adds is the things paper is bad at: photographs, a full allergen table, translations, dishes that sold out at eight o'clock.

Article 1 adds a detail worth checking on your digital carte as well as your printed one: displayed prices are the prices actually paid by the customer, taxes and service included, and where a service charge is levied the documents carry the mention "Prix service compris" followed by the rate in brackets. Your web page is one of those documents.

Allergens are the one place the code is explicitly contemplated

Now the good news, and it is genuinely good, because the text was written recently enough to anticipate exactly this.

Article R. 412-14 du code de la consommation, which came from décret n° 2015-447 du 17 avril 2015 implementing règlement (UE) n° 1169/2011, reads:

"Dans les lieux où sont proposés des repas à consommer sur place, sont portés à la connaissance du consommateur, sous forme écrite, de façon lisible et visible des lieux où est admis le public : 1° Soit l'information mentionnée à l'article R. 412-12 elle-même ; 2° Soit les modalités selon lesquelles cette information est tenue à sa disposition. Dans ce cas, le consommateur est mis en mesure d'accéder directement et librement à l'information, disponible sous forme écrite."

The second branch is a code. A written, legible sign visible where the public is admitted, saying how to reach the allergen information, is one of the two permitted ways to comply. The information behind it concerns the substances listed in annexe II of the regulation, used in making or preparing a dish and still present in the finished product, even in modified form.

The conditions are where implementations fail. "Directement et librement" rules out, in practice:

• A login, an account, or an email address before the list appears.
• An app download.
• A cookie wall or a consent dialog standing between the scan and the information.
• A page that is only reachable on a connection the dining room does not have.
• A PDF that opens at a zoom level nobody can read on a phone.

"Sous forme écrite" also means the information has to exist as text in your own records, not only in the head of the chef who is off on Tuesdays. And it has to be accurate, which is a kitchen discipline question rather than a web one: the person who knows the recipe approves the allergen field, the same way they would approve a label.

The mentions that belong next to the dish

A few more French rules land on the same page, and they are easier to satisfy on a screen than on a printed card you reprint twice a year.

• Meat origin. Décret n° 2022-65 du 26 janvier 2022 extended to pork, poultry and sheep meat the origin indication that décret n° 2002-1465 du 17 décembre 2002 had required for beef in food service. Since 1 March 2022 the country of rearing and the country of slaughter must be indicated for those raw meats bought by the establishment. A digital carte handles a supplier change in a minute.
• Fait maison. Décret n° 2014-797 du 11 juillet 2014 governs the mention and its logo. Using it is optional; using it accurately is not.
• Service compris, as above, with the rate.

None of this makes the code the compliance instrument. It makes the code the place where information that changes weekly can change weekly, which is the honest argument for a digital carte and a better one than saving on printing.

How to build the thing so it survives a Saturday night

• Keep a paper carte. Enough copies for a full room, not two behind the bar. It is your compliance baseline, your accessibility answer, and your fallback when the network drops.
• Keep the outside display on the window, in the letter height the arrêté specifies, with the items article 2 lists and the menus article 4 requires.
• One page per language, not a language switcher nobody finds. Our guide to multilingual code experiences covers how to route a scan by language without shipping a separate code per language.
• Allergens as a column, not a sentence. Structured data per dish, editable by the kitchen, rendering as a table. A wall of prose is how a wrong answer hides.
• Prices identical to the window. Two sources of truth is one too many, and the discrepancy will be found by the one guest who checked.
• No account, no cookie wall, no app. Both the allergen text and plain commercial sense require the page to open instantly for a stranger.
• Repointable destination. A table tent printed in spring should survive a change of platform in autumn without a reprint. Our page on menu codes for restaurants covers the setup.
• Test it in the room. Dim light, a phone at arm's length on a table, a code under a glass table top, a guest who does not want to take their reading glasses out. Then test it with the WiFi off.

The short version

The code is allowed to be how allergen information is reached, and the text says so in terms. The code is not the price display, because two articles of a 1987 arrêté describe a display that a person outside your door can read without doing anything. Keep both, and the only surprise left is how much easier a digital carte makes the parts that actually change.