Customer Feedback for Restaurants

A guest who didn't enjoy their meal almost never says so at the table. They say "everything's fine", they pay, they even tip, and then they quietly pick somewhere else next Friday. AskHedgy gives you an anonymous QR code guests scan when the meal ends. You find out what actually happened while the shift is still fresh, and the guest who was unhappy gets a private place to say so instead of TripAdvisor.

Think of it as an early-warning system for restaurants. Anonymous QR feedback catches the cold plate or the long wait for the bill, and it reaches you the same evening rather than later from a review.

How it works

Set up once. Works continuously. No integrations, no technical setup.

What your guests see

How was the food tonight?

Did your order come out right?

Anything we could do better?

Four questions about four different things, not one blanket score. The food gets a rating, the order accuracy is a yes or no, the evening gets a line of text if the guest feels like writing one. Nobody signs in and nobody installs anything: they point a phone at a code and they're done before the card machine arrives.

Why unhappy guests don't tell you

"How is everything?" gets asked mid-bite, by the person who just carried the plate over, in front of the guest's date or their clients. Almost nobody answers that honestly. Complaining out loud means making a scene at your own table and souring the evening you came out for. So the lukewarm risotto goes unmentioned, and so does the appetiser that landed after the mains.

Nobody is hiding anything from you. It simply isn't visible from the floor: the shift runs smoothly, the plates go out, the tables turn. The kitchen has no way of knowing that the 8:40 ticket on Saturday went out wrong. The verdict arrives days later on Google, from a name you don't recognise, about a night you can no longer reconstruct.

In a survey of 1,000 U.S. diners by Lightspeed Commerce, 40% said rude service alone would stop them coming back, ahead of cold food (34%) and long waits (27%).

A happy guest is a repeat guest, and in restaurants the regulars are the business. They are the Friday booking you can count on, and the reason a slow Tuesday still covers itself. Winning a new guest costs far more than keeping one who has already walked through your door.

A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25–95% — Bain & Company research, published in Harvard Business Review.

AskHedgy won't put the plate back on the pass. But it will tell you the same evening that something went wrong, early enough to fix the cause before it reaches the next table.

Restaurant survey questions your guests answer

A star rating collapses the whole evening into one number. The question library breaks it apart: the food, the pacing, the room, the bill. You see what the guest actually liked and what they didn't.

Pick the questions that matter to your restaurant right now. Around five works best in a live survey, because the shorter it is, the more guests reach the end.

Loyalty

  • How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? (0 = not at all, 10 = definitely)
  • Would you visit us again?

Service Quality

  • How friendly and attentive was our staff?
  • Was it easy to get your server's attention when you needed something?
  • What could we do better?

Quality

  • How would you rate the taste and quality of the food?
  • Was the food served at the right temperature?
  • Was your order taken and served without any mistakes?

Speed

  • Did your food arrive within a reasonable time after you ordered?
  • Was it easy to find a table or get a spot without a long wait?
  • Was it quick and easy to get the bill and pay?

Value for Money

  • How well does the price reflect the quality you received?

Atmosphere

  • How would you rate the atmosphere and ambiance?

Cleanliness

  • How clean and tidy was the dining area and your table?
  • How clean were the restrooms?

This is only part of the library. There are more questions to draw on: the choice on your menu, the quality of the drinks, new and seasonal dishes, how a guest heard about you, the first minutes after they walked in. Build the set you want to test right now, and swap it out when a new question comes up.

What makes AskHedgy different

A bad table reaches you while the shift is still running. A low rating triggers an email straight away, so you read it while you still know which section was short a person and what was leaving the pass at that hour. The channel is private and anonymous, which matters here: "this is cold" is a sentence almost nobody will say to the person holding the plate, and it has to land somewhere. Better with you than on your listing.

See whether a change in the kitchen or on the floor actually landed. Mark the day you changed something: "New head chef", "Cut the menu from 40 dishes to 22", "New fish supplier". Then watch how ratings move from that point on. Whether the shorter menu improved the food scores or simply made service faster is now something you can read off your own data.

One question in every survey goes after the thing nobody thinks to ask. It's built in automatically, and it digs at what a blanket rating flattens: whether the table felt hurried along for the next booking, whether the wait for the bill soured an evening that was otherwise fine. Four stars tells you the night went acceptably. It says nothing about why that guest hasn't booked since.

Furious guests answer anyway. The quiet ones need a reason. Put something small at the end of the survey — an espresso, a scoop of dessert, something off the next bill — and the guest collects it by showing the last screen to a server. Completion goes up, and the people you start hearing from are exactly the ones who used to leave without a word.

Where to put your QR code in a restaurant

  • Inside the bill folder. A printed card lands in front of the guest at the exact moment the meal is over and the verdict is formed.
  • On a small table tent brought out with the bill rather than set out at the start, so guests answer about a meal they've actually had.
  • Beside the card terminal at the counter, for counter-service and fast-casual spots where guests pay on the way out.
  • A printed slip in the bag for takeaway and delivery orders. The guest answers at home or at their desk, unhurried, and unhurried answers tend to be the fullest.
  • At the bar, in the same holder the menu stands in, where someone waiting for a table has an idle minute anyway.

Questions restaurant owners ask

My servers already ask "How was everything?" — why do I need this?
Because of who is asking and when. That question comes from the person who brought the plate, mid-meal, in front of the guest's company. The social cost of answering honestly is high, so "fine" is the default even when nothing was fine. A survey the guest completes alone and anonymously carries no such cost. You get the answer they were thinking rather than the one that was polite to say.
Two hundred guests come through on a Friday. Am I supposed to read every response?
No. The only ones that need reading straight away are the low ratings, and those reach you by email as they come in. The rest is worth looking at as a picture over a week or a month rather than response by response. One answer tells you almost nothing. A hundred of them show that food temperature dips specifically on Friday evenings. The busier you are, the sharper that picture gets.
Will this get me more Google or TripAdvisor reviews?
No, and that's deliberate. AskHedgy collects private, anonymous feedback that stays with you. It doesn't nudge guests onto review platforms or filter who gets asked. You protect the rating by fixing what went wrong on Saturday night, not by managing what gets posted about it.
Can I tell whether a problem came from the kitchen or the floor?
Yes. That's what asking about the plate and the service as separate questions is for. Food temperature and order accuracy point at the pass; attentiveness and the wait for the bill point at the floor. And because each survey has its own QR code and dashboard, you can run separate ones for lunch and dinner service, for the terrace, or for a second location.
What stops a server from only showing the code to happy guests?
The temptation appears the moment the survey starts being used to score the servers themselves. Don't turn it into a scoreboard: as soon as someone's tips or bonus depend on the ratings, the code stops reaching the guests whose evening went badly. And to keep it off any one shift's discretion, put the code where staff don't decide: on the terminal at the counter, in the holder at the bar, in the delivery bag. The guest finds it themselves.

Common questions

Does my customer need to install an app or create an account?
No. They scan the QR code and quickly answer a few short questions — no app to install, no account to create, no friction.
How quickly do I hear about an unhappy customer?
Immediately. The moment a low rating is submitted, an email alert goes out — so you know the same day, while there's still time to fix what went wrong.
How much does it cost?
Plans start at $15.99 / month after a 30-day free trial with full Pro access — no credit card required to start.

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Your first honest customer feedback could arrive before end of day.