Google review QR code for restaurants

The check presenter beats every other spot

A review gets written in the gap between finishing and leaving. In a restaurant that gap has a name: the wait after the bill lands. The customer is seated, the phone is already out, and there is nothing else to do.

A card inside the check presenter — or clipped to the bill itself — arrives in exactly that gap, in the customer’s hands, at reading distance. Nothing else in the room competes with that.

Compare the alternatives honestly. A sign at the host stand is read by people who have not eaten yet. A sticker on the door is read by people leaving with a coat in one hand. A poster behind the bar is read by nobody, because nobody looks behind the bar.

This guide assumes you already have the link that opens the review form directly. If you do not, the Google review QR code generator shows where Google keeps it.

Table tents work, with one condition

A table tent is seen for the whole meal, which is both its strength and its weakness: by the time it matters, it has become furniture.

It works when a server says one line while clearing. Signs do not ask — people ask, and the sign is what makes acting on the ask immediate. A tent with nobody mentioning it is decoration.

If you already have a menu code on the table, do not put both on the same card. Two codes side by side make the customer choose, and at the end of a meal they should be choosing this one. Keep the menu code on the menu and the review code on the bill.

Takeaway and delivery need a different sign

There is no table and no bill folder. What there is, is a bag that gets opened at home — and the moment the food comes out is a good moment.

A sticker on the bag, or a small card dropped in with the napkins, catches it. For delivery, remember the review is about your food and not the courier: wording that says so spares you ratings about a cold bag and a late driver, which you did not control and cannot fix.

Printing something that survives service

Table tents live on tables, which means spills, heat and being knocked over all night. Print on card rather than paper, and laminate anything that will be handled.

One trap with lamination: gloss reflects. A code under a downlight can vanish behind a highlight at exactly the angle a customer holds their phone. Matt costs the same and does not do this.

For size, a code read at arm’s length is comfortable from about 25 mm. Download the PDF at the exact size you want, or the SVG if your printer prefers it — both are vector, so nothing softens when it is scaled. There is also a 3D-printable table stand, which holds the code at a readable angle and does not blow off an outdoor table.

What Google allows, in a restaurant specifically

Asking every customer is fine. Two things are not: offering anything in exchange — a free coffee, a discount, entry to a draw — and asking only the tables that seemed happy. Google calls the second one review gating, and it is against their policy.

In practice that rules out the most tempting restaurant tactic, the leave a review, get a dessert card. A sign that opens the same form for every table, with nothing attached to it, is exactly the kind of asking Google is comfortable with.