Best practices for QR codes on food packaging
1. Make packaging interactive
Food packaging can now be an interactive marketing and branding tool. Use a YouTube QR code to show customers a video of how your product goes from raw material to the store shelf. Provide allergy information with a Download File QR code and a PDF file. Share advanced nutrition details, how you keep your facilities peanut free or anything else that would instill trust in your brand.
You can digitize your coupons with a Coupon QR code, and switch the offer at your leisure without having to reprint the code. Or you can spark your customers’ imaginations with a gallery of delicious recipes. Add new ones when you develop them to keep your gallery fresh.
2. Instill trust
With E. coli outbreaks happening on an annual basis, food controversies popping up in the news and deadly peanut allergies on the rise, consumers are growing more leery about where their food comes from, how it is processed and what exactly is in it. Giving them a clear view into the entire supply chain and the processes used to handle the food can give customers trust in your brand and increase sales. QR codes on food packaging allow for this before a customer even buys the product. Companies that “pull back the curtain” and invite consumers to see how it’s all done will win people’s trust and earn their loyalty.
3. Be eco friendly
Brands have to consider the environmental impact of their food packaging now. Excess and wasteful packaging can mean the difference between a consumer choosing your brand and a more sustainable one. QR codes on food packaging are the perfect tool to provide customers with information without having to increase your packaging material. In fact, brands can even lessen the packaging they use by putting any non-essential information in a QR code and using less material.
In keeping with the environmental movement, dynamic QR codes are reusable and recyclable. If you need to change the information they link to, you can easily do that without having to reprint your code.
4. Develop a package strategy
QR codes on Food Packaging: the benefits
Consumers want more information about their food. They want transparency about where it comes from, what goes into making it and what the ecological impact of it is. That’s a lot of information to share on a little bit of space, but with the help of QR codes on food packaging, you can share all of that information and even more.
How to generate QR codes
on food packaging
2. Enter the necessary information for that QR code type.
3. Customize your QR code by editing the short URL and creating a template for it. Add your brand’s name, logo and colors.
4. Download your QR code in the file format you need. (We can help you choose the right one.)
5. Integrate your newly-created QR code into your food packaging design.
6. Watch the magic happen.
Your code is completely changeable on the back end. If you want to alter what it links to, simply sign into your QRcodeKit.com account and edit the code’s back end. The printed code can stay the same.
Ready to jump level?
Turn your food packaging into an interactive marketing tool
QR codes on Food Packaging: doing it the right way
Now that you know about the advantages of using QR codes on food packaging, let’s look at some helpful tips on how to use them.
1. Add a call to action
A call to action (CTA) is imperative when using QR codes on food packaging. The codes are common enough now that most people will know what they are, but they’ll still likely require a little push to scan the code. They’ll be more likely to take out their phone and scan it if they know what the code leads to and they have a little prompting. Something like: “Scan for amazing recipes! Updated regularly” will lead to more scans than just having the code by itself.
2. Slap a logo on it
3. Save your designs
4. Customize the short URL
For an even more immersive branding experience, use white-label URL masking, which makes the entire URL look like it comes from your website.
5. Test like your life depends on it
Keep in mind that the minimum size we advise for a code is 3 x 3 cm (1 x 1 in). As long as your code has good contrast with a darker foreground and a lighter background and it’s not covered or altered too much, it should be fine. (Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through the process of customization 😉.)
See real life examples of QR codes on food packaging
Raw Ingredients
Giving away free recipes that use your raw ingredient product is great, but compiling recipes into a book and selling it can be a lucrative new revenue source for your company. Put a Download File QR code with a PDF excerpt of your cookbook on your food packaging and give customers a way to pre-order it. You’ll be making profit on it before it even hits store shelves.
Culture
When a business is around long enough, it becomes part of the fabric of the community. If your business is approaching a milestone like its 50th, 75th or 100th anniversary, celebrate your heritage with a YouTube QR code linking to a video about the history of your business and what it has meant for the community.
Restaurants
Restaurants often have their own brands so customers can recreate the restaurant’s dishes in their own homes. But, the restaurants obviously still want those customers to come and visit them, too. A Coupon QR code printed on the restaurant brand’s packaging with a nice discount can entice customers who buy their products in the store to come back and enjoy a restaurant meal.
Putting a Menu QR code on your take out containers will ensure fans always have it in their phones. They scan it, download your PDF menu and the next time they’re hungry, they can just look in their Downloads folder for good eats.
Charities
Food packaging QR codes can be used for charitable causes, too. A brand that wants to raise awareness and funds for a charity can print a PayPal QR code on their packaging and give customers a way to donate directly to the cause right from the packaging itself. If the charity or cause needs some explanation, create a custom landing page with a Mobile Page QR code that provides some info about the charity with text, photos and videos and gives people a way to donate with a button leading to the charity’s PayPal account.
Coffee
Fair trade ingredients are a big deal in the coffee industry. Consumers like to know the coffee they’re drinking has been ethically sourced and the growers and their employees are getting a fair price for their raw ingredients and labor. A YouTube QR code can take customers on a video journey to the fields where the coffee is grown, right through to the processing and packaging plant so they can see the supply chain in its entirety. For a more immersive experience, design a mobile page with a photo gallery, a video gallery, text information and links to other sites where customers can learn more and link it to a Mobile Page QR code.
Customer Service
Make your brand easy to reach for customers with a WhatsApp QR code printed right on your packaging. Pre-write a hello message to easily get the conversation going if a customer wants to contact your brand. If you’re an international brand, serve customers in their language of choice with a Multi-Country Links QR code. This code will take customers to a list of countries you’ve created. If your brand has multiple websites to serve different regions of the globe, you can put them in this list of countries and let customers choose the website they want to see. It’s a fantastic way to connect to your customers and show them you care.
