How to Enhance Food Packaging Using QR Codes?

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 tremendous results. Many have begun embedding them, but a considerable percentage are still not leveraging their 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 unsure what Quick Response Codes are, then here’s a brief description: QR codes are barcodes’ next generation. While 1-dimensional barcodes typically store alphanumerical data, 2-D QR codes can store vast amounts of digital data, such as URLs, vCards, Maps, and more. You can find them on books, banners, brochures, hoardings, lottery tickets, and flyers.

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

The food and beverage market is booming a lot. 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 adopt. 

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 for them. It is highly unlikely for customers to find what they are looking for at one go, especially if they are in a hurry. A QR code on your product bottle will help them research your products in the comfort of their homes. Sometimes, a couple of your products may not be famous among the mainstream audience but can interest a particular niche. Adding a QR Code will make these products more popular and potentially boost sales.

Provide nutritional information

Today, consumers have become more cautious than ever due to increasing critical diseases, such as diabetes and heart diseases. Also, as the celebrities and social media influencers for doing a great job 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 access what exactly went inside the food and how many calories and fats they will consume. This could be an excellent 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 substance called mother in them. So, if you are an apple cider vinegar brand that looks after both elements, you could add a QR Code with video content about how the raw vinegar is made without tampering with 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. QR Codes power the Smart Label scheme, wherein the scannable codes contain potential information that protects the brands from fake manufacturers and 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 apple cider vinegar again. As per many studies, raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar has many benefits. It can help burn fat, reduce blood glucose levels, improve digestion and prevent skin aging. You would want to educate your consumers about the benefits of your products and how to consume them.

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 essential criteria 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 to redirect consumers to various social cause campaigns, such as saying no to plastic, climate change, feeding the poor, food wastage, planting a tree, cleaning the city, and many others. 

However, you must ensure that your product reflects your cause. For instance, if you sell your products in glass containers, you can share a link to ban the 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 its value. Furthermore, support only genuine and authentic causes that make a change. 

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

Conclusion

A QR Code has numerous advantages – it occupies less space, can be created with colors and logos, and is cost-effective. All of this is possible if you choose a suitable QR code generator to generate your highly accurate, custom-made QR Code for food packaging.