Summary
Who can benefit from restaurant tickets?
All employees of the company who are required to take their meals during their working hours. Are thus entitled to meal vouchers:
- full-time employees;
- part-time employees provided that their meal break is during their working hours (an employee working only in the morning or only in the afternoon cannot claim to benefit from it);
- employees on fixed-term contracts;
- the trainees.
Under certain conditionsare also entitled to meal vouchers:
- temporary employees;
- staff representatives on delegation;
- employees of employer groups.
On the other hand are excluded :
- employees exempted from carrying out their notice;
- employees on paid leave or on sick leave;
- the trainees.
The employer buys from an issuing organization one checkbook per employee per month. The checkbook contains as many titles as there are working days in the month worked by the employee. The employee obtains his check book in exchange for payment of the part not covered by the employer.
Employees leaving the company must return to their employer, at the time of their departure, the restaurant vouchers that they have not used. In this case, the employer reimburses them the amount of their participation in the purchase of their securities.
Is the employer obliged to distribute meal vouchers?
No text of the Labor Code obliges an employer to give meal vouchers to its employees.
The employer is therefore free to grant or not these benefits, unless the collective agreement provides for the obligation of restaurant vouchers, which is very rare.
However, it is accepted that if the employer of at least 25 employees does not provide, as he must do, a room comprising tables, chairs, a water point, a refrigerator and an installation for reheating , he can, in compensation, distribute restaurant vouchers (but employees are entitled to prefer the restaurant premises).
What are the advantages of the meal voucher?
The restaurant voucher is a payment voucher that the employee can use in all restaurants that have joined one of the “meal vouchers”, “restaurant vouchers”, “lunch vouchers” organizations… A restaurant that has not committed to accepting them is perfectly entitled to refuse them.
It allows lunch at half price, since the employee’s contribution is a maximum of 50% of the value of the check.
How to use a restaurant ticket?
The same meal cannot be paid for with several vouchers. A tolerance for the use of 2 restaurant vouchers at most to pay for a meal or the purchase of food preparations is allowed, on the formal condition, however, that the merchant is not obliged to give change. Restaurant vouchers can be used in all establishments that accept them, generally indicated by a poster bearing the logo of one or other of the issuing organisations. This concerns restaurants, take-out places, bakeries, etc.
Restaurant vouchers cannot be used on Sundays and public holidays, unless otherwise stated on the check by the employer, for the exclusive benefit of staff working on those same days. On the other hand, they can be used day and night, and in principle in the department or in the departments bordering the place of work.
Restaurant vouchers cannot be used outside their period of validity: this period coinciding with the calendar year, any use by the employee of the vouchers in his possession beyond their year of issue is prohibited. But the employee has the possibility of exchanging his unused vouchers at the end of the year: provided that he returns them to the employer within 15 days following the end of their year of issue, these vouchers subject to a free exchange for an equal number of titles of the new vintage.
