Lately Restaurant & Bar:
Case Study

Initial Trial

Lately was one of our first trial customers in Sept 2020. At that time, businesses were still trying to adapt to the new realities of a pandemic and for Lately that meant no longer being able to supply physical menus. The interim solution was to tell customers the menu web URL and have them look it up on their own. This was obviously not a very customer friendly solution.

Immediately upon installing Tapcetera table stickers with a combination of QR and NFC there was a huge demand as customers could now easily open the menu without knowing or having to type a URL. The initial design included only a QR with the words “Tap or Scan”. We were able to track the resulting usages over the next 2 months to see whether patrons were using the QR or the more efficient NFC method to open the menu.

Any Android smartphone or iPhone 10+ is capable of seamlessly tapping an NFC chip to open the Lately menu without an app. The initial 2-month trial data showed that a whopping 96% of the smartphones being used to open a menu could use the NFC method, however to our surprise 91% of the menu opens were utilizing the QR instead of NFC. The question then was why? The answer had to be a lack of awareness.

Updated Design

At this point Tapcetera installed a re-designed sticker on each table at Lately. This design used a smaller QR and included a similar sized icon of a hand holding a smart phone and tapping. We guessed this would bring the percentage of usages to something more in the range of 50/50 as more people learned NFC was available. However, when we reviewed the data over the first month following the switch, we were shocked to see a complete flip. From 91% QR previously to now 93% using NFC all attributed to the minor design change.

This further validated patrons were aware of NFC and preferred using it over QR so long as it was obvious it was available. Is your business utilizing NFC? Please reach out to us to learn more about how NFC tags can help your customers!