Another restaurant is now using smartphone barcodes to promote sustainability in seafood.
Diners eating at an upscale San Diego restaurant called Harney Sushi will now be able to use their smartphones to scan QR codes on their dishes to learn more about the sustainability of the seafood products that have been used.
When the barcodes have been scanned, they direct users to websites where they can discover more about what they’re eating.
The QR codes lead users to the website for FishWatch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where they will be able to discover more about the seafood that they are eating as a part of their meal, in terms of its sustainability. The owners of the restaurant, Dustin Summerville and Kirk Harrison, as well as Robert Ruiz, its executive chef, have partnered with a number of different stakeholders in fisheries, as well as with scientists from the NOAA from that agency’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center. The center is located in La Jolla, California and the participants are working together to come up with a local culture and economy of seafood sustainability.
The edible version of the QR codes give consumers the chance to learn more about this effort.
Though not the first, Harney Sushi is among the original restaurants in the U.S. to use these QR codes, printed with water based, edible ink on rice paper. This is not the first time that the restaurant has made its way into the news. In 2010, this location’s executive chef Ruiz won the San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival grand prize and has earned the title of “Chef of the Fest.”
This makes the QR codes only the latest effort to help to work with the community and spreading the word about the efforts that the restaurant is making to be environmentally responsible. The barcodes are a very practical vehicle for sharing this message, because they are compatible with virtually any smartphone – a device carried by the majority of the restaurant’s patrons, as well as being very inexpensive to create and easy for the customers to scan and use.