AR menus for Covent Garden restaurants
For international visitors and pre-theatre tables: a dish they can see needs no translation.
Quick answer
Covent Garden restaurants serve a high share of international visitors and pre-theatre diners, two groups that benefit most from seeing a dish before ordering. With an AR menu from VR Express, a guest scans a QR code and sees each dish at real size on the table through their phone, with no app and no language barrier. We scan your dishes in your kitchen, check every model and go live in about two weeks.
Tourists: show, don't translate
A visitor reading an English menu in a second language skims. A dish they can see at its real size on the table tells them what it is, how big it is and whether it is for sharing, without a translation.
Pre-theatre: decide before you sit
Pre-theatre guests have a fixed curtain time. Putting the AR menu link on the booking confirmation lets them choose before they arrive, which speeds up the first order.
Cocktails and the piazza
Covent Garden has a long history with AR drinks: The Alchemist's app-based AR cocktail menu launched there in 2019. Today's guests expect no app, so we deliver AR drinks and dishes straight from the browser.
How it works
- Onboarding call and capture kit: guide, matte mat, turntable and your own upload code.
- Dishes are scanned freshly plated in quiet hours, by your team with the kit or by us on site in London.
- Every model gets a quality pass by our 3D team (holes, glare, scale, file size), with a retake note within a day if a capture can't be saved.
- Your menu page goes live with sections, prices and allergens, plus a print-ready QR code per dish. A typical menu takes about two weeks.
See it and read the case study
Try it on your phone: open the demo menu and tap “See it on your table”. VR Express has built AR, VR and WebXR since 2015, including the AR Menu platform for restaurants and bars. Start with the overview of AR menus for London restaurants, see what an AR menu costs in the UK or compare AR and QR menus.
Frequently asked questions
Does it help guests who don't read English well?
Yes. Seeing the dish itself at real size answers most questions a translation would, and the menu page still carries the written description and allergens.
Can it speed up pre-theatre service?
It can help guests decide before they sit down, if you put the AR menu link on the booking confirmation.
Does it need an app?
No. It opens from a QR code in Apple's AR Quick Look on iPhone and Google's Scene Viewer on Android.