Ordinami.itIn a restaurant's financial accounts, the "menu printing" expense doesn't exist: it's scattered among typography, stationery, and miscellaneous expenses, and that's why nobody looks at it. But try to reconstruct it over twelve months, and often a figure emerges that you didn't expect. Let's do the math together and see where we can cut costs without losing anything.
The True Cost of Paper
A decently printed menu - multiple pages, lamination, or hardcover - costs between a few euros and over ten euros per copy at a printing house, depending on format and materials. For a restaurant with 15 tables, you need at least 20-25 copies for the dining area and replacements. And the expense isn't a one-time thing:
- Damaged copies: stains, folded corners, laminations that come off. In a real service, menus age quickly, and a greasy menu in the customer's hand costs more than a reprint: it costs image.
- Updates: every price change or new dish means re-printing, or correcting by hand in front of customers.
- Versions: lunch menu, dinner menu, menu in English, wine list, dessert menu: each format multiplies copies and reprints.
- Seasonal menu: if you change it four times a year, multiply everything by four.
Adding it all up, for many restaurants, this expense easily exceeds 500-1,000 euros per year, not counting the time spent on layout and back-and-forth to the printing house. And the most expensive item is still missing: the menu that you don't update to avoid paying for a reprint is a menu that sells worse, and this doesn't appear on any invoice.
The Alternative: Print Once
With a menu QR code, the only printing left is the cards with the code: a one-time expense of a few dozen euros, because the QR code never changes - what changes is the menu behind it, not the code. Prices, dishes, language versions, and seasonal menus can be updated from the panel, at zero cost and in real-time. You can still keep a few paper copies for courtesy: two or three, not twenty-five.
An Honest Comparison
Digital isn't free: a serious subscription costs between 30 and 70 euros per month - for example, Ordinami's plans can be found on the pricing page. But the comparison should be made with the full cost of paper: printing, reprints, versions, time. And above all, with what paper can never do: hiding out-of-stock dishes in real-time, photos, six languages, table orders. The printing savings alone often cover a good part of the subscription; the rest is covered by the fact that an updatable menu sells better than one that you can't touch for fear of paying for typography. Do the final calculation for your restaurant: recover the printing invoices from the last twelve months, add them up, and compare them with the annual subscription. Ten minutes of calculation that settle the discussion, one way or the other.