How a Local Restaurant Turned $200 in Table Tents Into 47 New Customers

Bella’s Kitchen is a family-owned Italian restaurant tucked into a quiet strip mall in Austin, Texas. They serve handmade pasta, brick-oven pizza, and the kind of tiramisu that keeps people coming back every weekend. For years, their catering service was an afterthought — a line item on their website that occasionally brought in a birthday party order or a corporate lunch. But when owner Maria Gonzalez decided to actively promote catering, she hit the same wall that most small restaurant owners face: she had no idea if her marketing was actually working.

Maria had invested in printed table tents — those small folded cards that sit on every table, right next to the salt and pepper shakers. Each tent featured a QR code linking to a catering inquiry form. The tents looked great. The QR code was right there. But after two months of having them on all 30 tables, Maria couldn’t answer a single basic question: How many people had actually scanned the code? Were the tents generating any leads at all? Or were they just expensive table decoration?

This is the story of how Maria spent $200, set up a simple tracking system using QR Funnel, and uncovered insights that completely transformed her catering business — turning a blind spot into a revenue engine that generated 47 new customers and $8,750 in catering orders over six weeks.

The Challenge

Bella’s Kitchen operates on a marketing budget of about $500 per month, which covers everything from their Google Business listing to the occasional Instagram post. There is no dedicated marketing person on staff. Maria handles it herself between managing the kitchen, handling suppliers, and keeping the front of house running smoothly. Every dollar spent on marketing needs to justify itself, and Maria knew it.

The restaurant seats about 120 people across 30 tables. Maria had placed identical table tents on every table promoting weekend catering packages — graduation parties, family reunions, office lunches, that sort of thing. The tents had a QR code that linked to a basic Google Form asking for the customer’s name, event date, and party size. It was a perfectly reasonable setup, except for one glaring problem: Maria had absolutely no visibility into whether anyone was scanning those codes.

Her only tracking method was asking the front-of-house staff to mention the table tents to guests and ask if they had seen them. In theory, this would give her qualitative feedback. In practice, it was a disaster. Servers are busy. They forget. When they do remember to ask, the conversation is awkward and rushed. Guests who did notice the tents rarely mentioned it unless prompted, and even then the responses were vague: “Oh yeah, I saw something about catering.” That kind of feedback is better than nothing, but it’s not data. You can’t make decisions with it. You can’t optimize with it. You certainly can’t calculate a return on investment with it.

Maria was stuck in the classic small business marketing trap: spending money on something that might be working, might not be, and having no reliable way to tell the difference. She was considering pulling the tents entirely and redirecting that effort toward social media ads, which at least offered some measurable analytics.

The Strategy

Instead of giving up on table tents, Maria decided to get smarter about them. After discovering QR Funnel through a recommendation in a local restaurant owners’ Facebook group, she set up an account on the free tier and designed a simple experiment that would finally give her real data.

The plan was straightforward: create three different table tent designs, each with a unique QR code tracked through QR Funnel. By giving each design its own code, Maria could see exactly how many scans each version received, how many of those scans turned into leads, and ultimately, which design drove the most catering orders.

The three designs were deliberately distinct in their messaging approach:

• Design A — “Scan for 10% off your first catering order” — A straightforward discount offer. The tent featured bold text, the percentage prominently displayed, and a clear QR code. The idea was that a financial incentive would motivate people who were already considering catering to take action.
• Design B — “Scan to see our catering menu” — An informational approach. No offer, no incentive — just an invitation to browse the catering options. Maria included this as a control of sorts, testing whether simply making the menu accessible was enough to drive engagement.
• Design C — “Scan to book a free tasting” — An experiential offer. Instead of a discount or information, this design invited guests to schedule a complimentary tasting of the catering menu at the restaurant. The barrier to entry was low: no money required, just a time commitment.

Maria distributed each design to 10 tables, giving every version equal exposure across the restaurant. She intentionally mixed the placements — some Design A tents were near the window, some in the back, some by the bar — to avoid any one design benefiting from a better location. The total cost of the experiment was $200: $60 for printing the 30 new tents across three designs, and $0 for QR Funnel since the free tier covered everything she needed. The campaign ran for six weeks, from early December through mid-January, capturing both the holiday party season and the slower post-holiday period.

The Results

After six weeks, Maria logged into her QR Funnel dashboard and saw the numbers for the first time. The differences between the three designs were not subtle — they were dramatic. Here is the complete breakdown:

The numbers told a clear story. Design C, the free tasting offer, absolutely crushed the competition. It generated more than three times the scans of Design B and significantly outperformed Design A across every single metric. The free tasting wasn’t just getting more attention — it was converting at a higher rate too, turning curious diners into paying catering customers at a clip that exceeded Maria’s most optimistic projections.

Key Insights

The raw numbers were impressive, but the real value lay in the insights Maria extracted from the data. These weren’t just statistics — they were actionable lessons that immediately informed her next moves.

The Free Tasting Crushed Everything Else

Design C’s dominance wasn’t just about scan volume — it was about the psychology behind the offer. A free tasting is a low-commitment entry point. There’s no money on the line. The guest doesn’t have to commit to a large catering order right away. They just have to show up, eat some food, and see if they like it. That tiny psychological shift — from “spend money” to “try something for free” — was the difference between 34 scans and 112 scans. People want to say yes, but they need the barrier to be low enough that saying yes feels easy.

Information Alone Isn’t Enough

Design B, the menu-only option, had the weakest performance by a wide margin. It offered no incentive, no compelling reason to scan beyond curiosity. In a restaurant where guests are already eating the food, asking them to scan a code just to see a menu they could probably find on the website wasn’t motivating. The lesson was clear: people need a reason to take action. Information is not a reason. Value is a reason. Whether that value comes in the form of a discount, a free experience, or exclusive access, there needs to be something on the other side of that scan that makes the effort worthwhile.

Timing and Context Mattered Enormously

QR Funnel’s timestamp data revealed a fascinating pattern: the overwhelming majority of scans happened during a very specific window — the five to ten minutes between when guests placed their order and when their food arrived. This is the moment when people are sitting, phones are out, and there’s nothing else to do. The table tent is right there, staring at them. Maria hadn’t considered this timing advantage before, but in hindsight it made perfect sense. She was catching people in a moment of idle attention, which is exactly when a low-friction scan is most likely to happen.

Weekend Tables Converted Better

Tables served on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays produced noticeably higher scan rates and conversion rates than weekday tables. Weekend diners were more likely to be in a relaxed, celebratory mindset — the exact mindset of someone planning a party or event that would need catering. Weekday lunch crowds, by contrast, were often rushed office workers who were in and out quickly, barely glancing at the tent before asking for the check.

Repeat Diners Were the Surprise Audience

Perhaps the most surprising finding was that roughly 60% of scans came from repeat diners — regulars who had eaten at Bella’s Kitchen multiple times but had never considered using the catering service. These were people who already loved the food and trusted the brand. They just hadn’t made the mental connection between “I love eating here” and “I could have this food at my next event.” The table tents, combined with the right offer, bridged that gap.

What Bella’s Kitchen Did Next

Armed with six weeks of real data, Maria didn’t just sit on the results — she acted on them immediately. The first move was obvious: she killed Design B entirely. Those 10 tables were redistributed to Design C, the free tasting offer, giving it 20 tables instead of 10. Design A kept its 10 tables since it was still generating a solid return, even if it couldn’t match Design C’s performance.

Next, Maria created a “Catering VIP” email list using the contact information captured through the QR code landing pages. Every person who had scanned and submitted their information — even those who hadn’t yet converted into a customer — was added to a simple email list. Maria began sending a monthly email featuring seasonal catering packages, photos from recent events she’d catered, and exclusive early-booking discounts for VIP list members. The list became a direct revenue channel that cost nothing beyond her time.

She also started tracking which physical table positions generated the most scans. Using QR Funnel’s data, she identified that tables near the entrance and tables along the window consistently outperformed tables in the back corners. She moved her best-performing tent design (Design C) to these high-visibility positions, further optimizing the campaign without spending a single additional dollar.

The expansion didn’t stop at table tents. Maria applied the same tracking methodology to a new channel: storefront window signs. She placed a large poster in the restaurant’s front window with the free tasting QR code, targeting foot traffic from the strip mall. This gave her a second data stream and a way to capture leads from people who hadn’t even eaten at the restaurant yet.

Three months after the initial experiment, the cumulative impact was undeniable. Catering revenue had increased 340% from the pre-QR baseline. What had been a sporadic, unpredictable side business was now a consistent and growing revenue stream, all traceable back to a $200 investment and a willingness to let data guide the decisions.

What You Can Learn From This

Bella’s Kitchen isn’t a marketing powerhouse. They don’t have a CMO, a dedicated ad budget, or a growth hacking team. They’re a family restaurant that figured out how to ask the right questions and measure the answers. Here are the takeaways that any small business can apply:

1. Always A/B test — you can’t predict what will work. Maria assumed Design A (the discount) would win. She was wrong. Design C (the free tasting) outperformed it by nearly 75% on conversions. If she had just printed one design and called it a day, she would have left thousands of dollars on the table. Testing multiple versions with unique tracking codes is the only way to find your winner.
2. Offer value, not just information. Design B proved that simply making information available isn’t enough to drive action. People need an incentive — a discount, a free trial, an exclusive experience — something that makes scanning feel worth their time. The menu was already on the website. The free tasting was something they could only get by scanning.
3. Track by design variant AND location. Knowing that Design C outperformed Design A is useful. Knowing that Design C on a window table outperforms Design C on a back-corner table is actionable. The more granular your tracking, the more precisely you can optimize. QR Funnel makes it easy to create unique codes for each variable you want to test.
4. Follow up with leads quickly. Bella’s Kitchen called or emailed every new lead within two hours of submission. That speed mattered. By the time a competitor could have responded, Maria had already had a conversation, answered questions, and in many cases booked the event. Research consistently shows that lead response time is one of the strongest predictors of conversion. Two hours is good. Under one hour is better.
5. Let data guide your next move, not gut feeling. Maria’s gut told her to pull the table tents and try social media ads instead. The data told her the tents were working — she just needed to find the right design. Without measurement, she would have abandoned a channel that went on to generate nearly $9,000 in revenue. Gut feelings are useful for deciding what to test. Data is what tells you what to scale.

Conclusion

Bella’s Kitchen’s story is not about a marketing breakthrough or a revolutionary new strategy. It’s about something much simpler and much more powerful: the decision to stop guessing and start measuring. Two hundred dollars, three table tent designs, and a free QR tracking tool turned a marketing blind spot into a revenue machine that generated $8,750 in six weeks and grew catering revenue by 340% within three months.

The tools are available. The cost of entry is negligible. The only question is whether you’re willing to run the experiment. If a family-owned Italian restaurant in Austin can do it between the lunch rush and the dinner prep, so can you.