You have no idea how many ways a QR code on food packaging can benefit your brand – it increases brand loyalty, boosts reputation and ROI, enhances marketing opportunities, and most importantly, prevents counterfeiting. Many food brands have started using QR codes on food packaging extensively and are seeing immense results, many have started embedding them, but a huge percent are still not leveraging its potential.

If you are a food brand, you sure must consider QR Codes, one of the cheapest, smallest, but highly innovative marketing tools at today’s time. 

If you are not sure what Quick Response Codes are then here’s a quick description: They are black and white areas in squares that are barcode’s next generation. While 1-dimensional barcodes typically store alphanumerical data, 2-D QR codes can store huge amounts of digital data, such as URLs, vCards, Maps and more. You can find them on books, banners, brochures, hoardings, lottery tickets, and flyers.

Food and beverage industry is booming with the competition, you cannot deny

The food and beverage market is booming, so much so that there is a new entrant with an exclusive product line every day. It is also one of the fastest-growing industries compared to others. Food brands must bring fresh ideas, better marketing strategies, and newer ways to earn customer loyalty to their tables frequently. And, QR Codes are one of the most unconventional, latest and flexible business ideas that food industries should adapt. 

You can turn your simple food wrapper into something that piques customers’ interest. If you know how to use these codes correctly, you can turn a pizza box into a premier league coupon and a jar of jam into a movie ticket.

What a QR code on food packaging can tell your customers

Here are a few ways you can use food packaging QR Codes in your mainstream advertising:

Display your entire product line

You can add a QR Code on your classic mayonnaise bottle with a link to your entire product line and show your consumers what else you have in store them. It is highly impossible for customers to find what they are looking for at one go, especially if they are in a hurry. This will help them research your products at the comforts of their homes. Sometimes, a couple of your products may not be famous among the mainstream audience but can interest a particular niche. By adding a QR Code, you will get these products more popular and potentially boost sales.

Provide nutritional information

Today, consumers have become more cautious than ever, thanks to the increasing cases of critical diseases, such as diabetes and heart diseases. Also, thanks to the celebrities and social media influencers who are doing a great job in spreading health awareness, the millennial group has started to research a lot before buying a product. 

This has made many foods and beverage companies offer more nutritional information embedded in QR Codes on food packages. By scanning these codes, consumers can instantly get access to what exactly went inside the food and how many calories and fats they will be consuming from the food.

This could be a great opportunity for organic food sellers. For instance, apple cider vinegar comes in different varieties, but most health-benefiting are the ones that are unfiltered and have a mother in them. So, if you are an apple cider vinegar brand that looks after both the elements, you could add a QR Code with video content about how the raw vinegar is made without tampering the ingredients.

You can try this approach and improve your rate of transparency, just as how McDonald’s introduced their app called ‘Track my Macca’s’ that allowed consumers to see videos of farmers working on the fast-food giant. 

Help empower consumers

Gone are the days when the consumers bought and consumed anything and everything. Even if there’s a slight discrepancy in pricing, they start questioning the product quality today.

In America, the Smart Label scheme empowers consumers by providing instant information about the product – right from its originality, through the ingredients used and their benefits to the nutritional factors. 

More than 30 different American manufacturers (including cosmetic and hair care brands) have employed this scheme. The Smart Label scheme is powered by QR Codes, wherein the scannable codes contain potential information that not only protects the brands from fake manufacturers but also provides consumers with accurate knowledge about product quality.

This could be done by embedding short videos or PDF files into the QR Codes. 

Engage with recipes

Let’s take the example of the apple cider vinegar again. Did you know raw, unfiltered, apple cider vinegar with mother can help burn fat, reduce blood glucose level, improve digestion and prevent skin aging? You would want your consumers to know the benefits of your products, right from what it does to how it is to be consumed.

With a simple QR Code on your food packaging, you can guide your consumers with recipes and ways to consume for a particular health condition. 

Enhance social awareness

Social awareness and responsibility have become an important criterion in making purchase decisions. It should be two-way responsibility where the consumer and the brand must show equal diligence. You can use QR Codes in multiple ways to redirect consumers to various social cause campaigns, such as say no to plastic, climate change, feeding the poor, food wastage, plant a tree, clean the city and so many others. 

However, you have to make sure that your product reflects your cause. For instance, if you sell your products in glass containers, you can share a link to ban plastic campaign. Or if you sell organic products, you can promote a go green campaign. 

Make your QR Code interactive and engaging so that consumers understand the value of it. Furthermore, support only real and authentic causes that make a change. 

Coca-Cola, Nestle, and TATA are few companies that have implemented QR Codes to augment social awareness via their products. 

Scannable QR Code has numerous advantages, apart from that it occupies less space, it can be created with colors and logos, and it is cost-effective. All of this is possible if you use the choose right QR code generator to generate your highly accurate, custom-made QR Code for food packaging.