You’ve been running your café or restaurant on a card machine for years. SumUp Solo, Square Reader, iZettle, the old Worldpay terminal — pick your favourite. It works. Why change?
Short answer: you don’t have to. The card machine isn’t broken. But QR ordering does something the card machine can’t — it lets the customer order and pay without queueing, which means more orders per hour and bigger tickets per order. The card machine becomes a backup, not the primary channel.
Here’s exactly what changes when you make the switch, and what to expect in the first week.
What you keep
Don’t throw the card machine away. You’ll still want it for:
- Customers who don’t want to use their phone (about 5–15% of UK diners depending on demographic).
- Customers without a smartphone (rare but real).
- Walk-ups at a busy moment when the card-machine queue is shorter than the “explain the QR” queue.
- Cash counter-balance — when half your trade is regulars who pay cash, the card machine doesn’t need to be the only fallback.
For the first month, leave the card machine fully visible, and treat QR as additive. Don’t make staff push customers onto QR; let it become the obvious option through repeat exposure.
What changes for staff
The biggest shift is the front-of-house role. With a card machine, the order goes:
- Customer walks to counter.
- Staff takes the order on a notepad or POS.
- Staff reads it back, takes payment.
- Order is shouted/handed to kitchen.
With QR ordering, the order goes:
- Customer scans, picks, pays — at their table or in the queue.
- Order appears on a tablet or screen in the kitchen, with table number and timestamp.
- Staff carries food to the table.
You’ve removed two steps from the staff workflow. That’s a real time saving — usually about 60–90 seconds per order. At 200 orders a day, that’s three to five labour-hours a day.
What changes for customers (the first day is awkward, then it isn’t)
About 20% of customers will look at the QR code and ask staff what to do. This is normal. By week two, the regulars know, and new customers copy what the regulars do.
The fastest way to flatten this learning curve is a clear table-talker that says exactly three things:
- “Open your camera, point at the code.”
- “Tap the link that appears.”
- “Order from the menu, pay with Apple Pay or card.”
That’s the entire instruction. Don’t over-explain.
Payment fees, side by side
On a UK consumer Visa or Mastercard:
- SumUp Solo: 1.69% per transaction.
- Square Reader: 1.75% per transaction.
- iZettle (now Zettle by PayPal): 1.75% per transaction.
- Worldpay traditional: Negotiable — 0.7–1.5% + a fixed monthly terminal hire.
- Stripe (used by ScanToOrder): 1.5% + 20p per transaction. Plus a ScanToOrder platform fee — 2% on the Free plan, 0% on Pro at £29/month.
For a café with an average ticket of £6, the maths shakes out as:
- SumUp: £0.10 per transaction. Total: 1.69%.
- ScanToOrder Free + Stripe: £0.20 + 1.5% + 2% = £0.30 + 3.5% on £6 = £0.51. Total: ~8.5%.
- ScanToOrder Pro + Stripe: £0.20 + 1.5% on £6 = £0.29. Total: ~4.8%.
On low-ticket items, the per-transaction 20p of Stripe is the painful bit, not the percentage. SumUp is usually cheaper transaction-by-transaction.
But — and this is the actual point — QR ordering raises your average ticket by 15–25% by removing queueing pressure and surfacing modifiers. A 15% lift on £6 is £6.90. A 4.8% fee on £6.90 is £0.33. Net £6.57 to the restaurant, vs SumUp’s £5.90 net on the un-lifted £6 ticket. You’re ~11% better off, even after paying more in fees, because you sold more.
Use the homepage ROI calculator to plug in your real numbers.
What to expect in the first week
Day 1: Confusion at table 3, table 7 ignores the QR entirely. Staff explain QR five times. About 30% of orders go through QR.
Day 2: Same, but slightly less confusion. About 40% QR.
Day 3: Regulars are using it. About 55% QR.
Day 5: Staff stops mentioning it unless asked. About 70% QR.
End of week 2: Mostly QR with a stable minority on the till. The card machine is now backup, not primary.
The Bill-pay-only middle ground
Some owners hate the idea of customers ordering on phones at all. They like the human contact at the till.
If that’s you, there’s a halfway-house: keep taking orders the way you always have, but use ScanToOrder’s bill-pay-only mode at the end of the meal.
You enter the bill amount in your dashboard, hand the customer a printed code (or text it), and they scan and pay on their phone. No menu, no app. You skip the “hand them the card machine, they tap, hand it back” dance, which saves the customer about 30 seconds and saves you from buying another card machine when the queue is busy.
Same Stripe fees, same bank account, same daily payouts.
The boring questions everyone has
Will I need new hardware? No. A tablet you already have is enough for the kitchen board. We don’t sell hardware.
What about Wi-Fi? Customers use mobile data. The kitchen tablet does need internet — same as your card machine.
What if Stripe goes down? Same as if your card machine’s acquirer goes down. Cash fallback. In practice Stripe’s uptime is excellent.
Can I have a card machine AND QR? Yes — most of our customers do. They’re not exclusive.
What about refunds? Click refund in the dashboard. Stripe processes it in 5–10 business days back to the original card. No paperwork.
Try it for a week
ScanToOrder’s Free plan has no card requirement, no contract, and no minimum. Sign up, build your menu, print a single QR for one table, and run it for a week alongside your card machine. If it doesn’t pay for itself by Saturday, peel the QR off the table.
It will. Set it up free · try the live demo first · see all the pricing.