Lunch vouchers can be used not only for daily trips to cafes with colleagues, but also for restaurant visits at any other time
When in 1962 Jean Borel, trying to save his restaurant L’Auberge Express near the Champs-Élysées from bankruptcy, offered clients to pay him with funds issued by enterprises for lunch, he did not suspect that fifty-odd years later the whole country would celebrate the birthday of this invention. As RFI notes, lunch vouchers enjoy nationwide love – they can be used not only for daily trips to cafes with colleagues, but also for restaurant visits at any other time of day or week, and even during holidays.
To receive vouchers, one must be an employee or worker of a French enterprise. Volunteers may also be among the lucky ones, but only by the voluntary decision of the enterprise itself. Vouchers are not provided to employees of large enterprises that have their own cafeteria. Eating in the cafeteria is cheaper, but not as interesting as in a cafe that you can choose at will. Craftsmen and other private entrepreneurs are their own employers and also do not have the right to vouchers. Still, the system is fair: the director of an enterprise can use vouchers only if his employees also have this opportunity.
The number of vouchers issued is determined by the number of working days, provided that the employee worked on those days both before and after lunch. This does not include vacation, business trips (when lunches and dinners are paid by the employer from another budget), or days missed due to illness. The value of a voucher varies by enterprise but does not exceed ten euros. However, vouchers can be combined to pay for a more lavish meal. The law does not allow paying with a large number of vouchers at once, but restaurateurs often turn a blind eye to this.
Vouchers cannot be exchanged for cash change, nor can they be converted into money. Possessing them is voluntary; vouchers must be officially requested from the employer, but one can also refuse them. However, there is no benefit in this, as it is impossible to demand compensation in the form of a salary increase. Each voucher holder also has the right to go to a supermarket or other grocery store to redeem them. The list of products that can be bought with vouchers is limited. For example, alcohol cannot be purchased, but in cafes, the daily set meal often includes a glass of wine.
Restaurateurs and shop owners, in turn, must also agree to accept vouchers. Usually, on the door of a cafe, restaurant, or grocery store, one can read "We accept lunch vouchers." And a visitor can ask the question before sitting down at a table.
Vouchers have become part of the daily life of the French. When choosing a new job, residents of France invariably ask whether they are entitled to vouchers or a cafeteria, and if so, for what amount. This question is important and can tip the scales in the choice, especially in large cities, where a daily lunch in a cafe at one's own expense adds up to a significant sum.
The voucher also plays an important social role; it is one of the visible signs of integration into society. In the Paris metro, it is not uncommon to see passengers giving vouchers to the homeless. And the homeless, in turn, habitually address passersby – "A little change or a lunch voucher."
However, the inventor of the voucher himself, Jean Borel, did not know that his invention would turn into a social conquest. "For me, it was a marketing tool," he tells France Inter radio. "I invented these lunch vouchers as a marketing tool. I had very little money, I had just launched my restaurant near the Champs-Élysées, and three months later I needed a hundred more clients a day. I didn't even have the means to print them; I went to persuade neighboring enterprises with sheets of colored rolls for movie tickets. A roll of yellow paper – these were vouchers for two francs, a roll of green – for three, red – for four, and purple – for five. The result was fantastic. In 1977, when I left France, vouchers already existed in eight countries.
The lunch voucher is a trifle; anyone could have invented it. But going to the government and persuading it not to take taxes or social contributions on vouchers – that not everyone could do! In France, it took me five and a half years and 1,942 business meetings. But in the USA, over 10 years, I participated in 6,000 congresses, presented five bills to Congress, and I lost in the Senate on my own birthday by just one vote, on April 9, 1989! That is why the USA holds the record for food poisoning in the world! Because in America, people take a lunch box with them, as once in France, and this lunch box you take out of the fridge at six in the morning, and then this chicken and this mayonnaise travel in the metro and train, and by noon it's all absolutely inedible. I am a killer! I failed to persuade President Reagan, it's my fault!"
Borel was not strictly the first inventor. Even before him, a British doctor had come up with the same idea. To ensure proper nutrition for his hospital staff, he arranged with several restaurateurs to feed them in exchange for vouchers he paid for. But the age of the voucher is rightfully counted not from the year the idea was born in Borel's head or another inventor's, but from 1967, when the Pompidou government gave the idea a legislative framework. According to the adopted law, the voucher became a real means of payment, and the employer received tax benefits for it.
In 2014, electronic vouchers were also introduced in France, simplifying the payment and accounting system. The country where the voucher was invented 50 years ago was one of the last in the world to replace the paper medium with a chip card.