Paid in November, plated in February
Every other sale in your restaurant works the same way. You buy the stock, you pay the kitchen, you serve the food, and then the money arrives. Cash goes out before it comes in, every service, all year.
A voucher is the one exception. Someone hands you £60 in the third week of November for a dinner that might not happen until the February half term. You have the money for ten weeks before you buy a single ingredient against it. In a trade where cash flow is usually the binding constraint, that is not a small thing.
Most restaurants either don’t sell vouchers at all, or sell them the way a pub sells pork scratchings: a few laminated cards by the till, written out by hand when someone asks. Meanwhile the UK gift card market is worth somewhere north of £11bn a year, and food and hospitality is one of its larger slices. It is not a niche. It is a channel that smaller restaurants have quietly handed to chains and experience-day websites.
The timing is the whole argument. Gift card demand is savagely seasonal: in the food and beverage category, roughly 53% of annual sales land at Christmas, with the heaviest days falling between 20 and 25 December. Redemption then arrives on the other side — over half of consumers redeem a gift card within the first month of receiving it, which puts a wave of pre-paid covers into January and February.
January is the month restaurant like-for-likes reliably fall. Vouchers are the only marketing instrument that moves December money into the January dining room, and they do it without a discount. If you have read our piece on why empty Tuesdays cost more than busy Saturdays, this is the same problem solved from the opposite end: instead of discounting into a quiet week, you get paid at full price months in advance and the guest turns up when you need them.
What a £60 voucher is actually worth
A voucher is worth more than its face value, and the reasons are structural rather than clever.
It sets a floor, not a ceiling. Nobody spends a voucher to the penny and stops. UK research from Tillo found 67% of gift card users overspend, adding an average of £18.55 above the card’s value. In restaurants the effect is stronger at the top end: in US data, 84% of fine-dining gift card holders spent beyond the card, by an average of around $35. The voucher gets them through the door; the wine list does the rest.
Some of it is never claimed. An estimated 8–10% of UK gift card balances go unredeemed each year. That unredeemed value — breakage — is revenue you booked without cooking anything. It is real, but treat it as a rounding benefit rather than a business model. Deliberately engineering breakage with short expiry windows is both bad practice and, as we’ll come to, legally shaky.
The buyer and the diner are different people. This is the part owners undervalue. Someone who already loves your restaurant is paying you to introduce it to someone who may never have heard of it. It is a referral with the first round of spend pre-paid, and your acquisition cost is zero.
Run the numbers on a modest programme. Say you sell 200 vouchers at an average of £60 across November and December:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cash collected before Christmas | £12,000 |
| Expected breakage at ~8% | ~£960 |
| Overspend on redemption (67% × ~£18.55) | ~£2,200 |
| Total value of the programme | ~£14,200 |
Around £3,200 of that is incremental — money you would not have taken otherwise — and the £12,000 sits in your account during the most expensive trading weeks of the year, when you are paying for stock, agency cover and Christmas staffing. Two hundred vouchers across eight weeks is roughly three a day. It is not an ambitious target for a restaurant doing 600 covers a week.
First, the rules
Vouchers look simple and have more tax and consumer law attached to them than almost anything else you sell. Three things matter.
VAT may be due when you sell, not when you serve
This is the one that catches people. Since January 2019, UK VAT treats vouchers in two categories, set out in HMRC’s VAT Notice 700/7.
- A single-purpose voucher carries the right to only one type of goods or services, all at a single rate of VAT. VAT is due at the point you issue it — and it stays due whether the voucher is ever redeemed or not.
- A multi-purpose voucher is anything else. No VAT on issue; you account for it when the voucher is redeemed, based on what the guest actually buys.
For restaurants, the line falls in an unintuitive place. A voucher for a dine-in-only restaurant, where everything is standard-rated, is likely to be single-purpose. Add cold takeaway or a deli counter — anything zero-rated the guest could buy with the same voucher — and it probably becomes multi-purpose.
The practical consequence: if your vouchers are single-purpose, £12,000 of November voucher sales includes £2,000 of VAT payable in that quarter, long before you serve the meal. Plan for it, or the January VAT bill will undo the cash flow benefit you just built. This is a point to put to your accountant with your actual menu in front of them, not a question to settle from a blog.
You can set an expiry, but not a sneaky one
Unlike Ireland, which requires a minimum five-year validity under its Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Act 2019, the UK sets no statutory minimum expiry period. You are free to choose.
That freedom is bounded by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which makes unfair contract terms unenforceable. An expiry buried in small print, or one unreasonably short for the price paid, can be challenged. The Gift Card and Voucher Association has for years encouraged a minimum of two years as the industry norm, and two years is a sensible default: long enough to be fair, short enough to keep the liability from sitting on your books forever.
Whatever you choose, print it on the voucher itself and state it before purchase, not only on the buyer’s receipt — the recipient is the one who needs to see it, and they never get the receipt.
It’s a liability until it’s redeemed
An unredeemed voucher is not revenue. It is money you owe in food and service, and it belongs on the balance sheet as deferred income until the guest shows up or the voucher expires. Keep a running total. A restaurant carrying £9,000 of outstanding vouchers into January has £9,000 of covers already paid for, and should be staffing for them.
Your own till, or someone else’s
You can sell vouchers two ways, and they are not close.
Sell them through an experience-gift or deal site and you get distribution, but you also get a negotiated commission on every redemption, pressure to discount the face value, and — most expensively — no guest. The platform holds the buyer’s email and the recipient’s. Next Christmas, they market to both. You get a booking and a name on a docket.
This is the same trade we picked apart in the real cost of a 30% commission and who really owns your guest, applied to a new surface. A voucher sold on your own website at full price gives you the whole £60, the buyer’s details, the recipient’s details, and the occasion — birthday, anniversary, thank-you — attached to both. That occasion is the single most valuable field in your guest database, because it recurs annually and you now know the date.
Sell direct. Use the platforms only if you have a genuine distribution problem you cannot solve yourself.
What you need to run it
Selling direct does not mean doing it by hand. A workable voucher programme needs five things: a branded purchase page on your own domain, instant email delivery, a way for the team to redeem and mark a voucher as spent in seconds at the pass, a running balance of outstanding liability, and the buyer and recipient details landing somewhere you can use them later.
Growtality does not do vouchers. Our platform covers bookings, direct ordering, guest profiles, loyalty and email and SMS marketing, and gift cards are not on that list — so this is a gap you fill with dedicated software.
VoucherCart is one of the established platforms in this category, and a useful reference point for what the software should do. It is built specifically for selling gift cards, vouchers, memberships and tickets direct: branded purchase pages, instant-delivery eVouchers alongside reloadable and printed cards, a redemption app for the floor team, sales and redemption reporting, and payouts into your own bank account through your own payment provider. It integrates with POS, PMS and CRM systems, and it is built for hospitality rather than being a retail tool bent into shape. Your POS provider may also offer a gift card module, and that is worth pricing up alongside it.
Whatever you choose, judge it on the five things above, and check two specifics before you sign: whether it lets you set your own expiry terms, and whether you can export the buyer and recipient records. A voucher tool that keeps the guest data is just a marketplace with better branding.
How to actually sell them
Make it digital and instant. The biggest single day for food and drink vouchers falls in the last week before Christmas, and a meaningful share of that is panic-buying. A voucher that can be bought at 11pm on Christmas Eve and emailed straight to the recipient captures demand a printed card in a drawer never will. Keep physical cards for the guests who want something to hand over, but digital is where the late money is.
Put it where people already are. A permanent link in your site navigation, not a seasonal banner. A line in every booking confirmation and post-visit message. A card on the table through December. Your Google Business Profile. The sale is almost always made by someone who already knows you.
Use three fixed denominations. £30, £60, £100, plus a custom field. Open-ended amount boxes make people hesitate; fixed tiers anchor them, and the middle one usually wins. Set the tiers around what two people actually spend at your restaurant, so the voucher covers most of a real dinner rather than a third of one.
Email the guests you already have. Your past diners are the highest-converting list you will ever have for this. One email in the third week of November, one in the second week of December, one on 22 or 23 December leading with “arrives instantly by email.” Three sends, not a campaign — and if your email and SMS marketing already runs off your guest list, it is three scheduled sends rather than three evenings of work.
Nudge the redemption. A voucher sitting unredeemed in March is a guest you haven’t seen. A reminder at six weeks and again a month before expiry turns dormant liability into a booked table, usually in a week you want filling.
Don’t discount the voucher. Add to it. Instead of selling a £60 voucher for £50, sell it at £60 and include a £10 credit valid in January and February only. You keep full value on the sale, and you have just engineered a second visit into your two deadest months. The same logic underpins a loyalty programme that works: reward the next visit, never discount this one.
What to track
Five numbers, monthly:
- Voucher value sold, split by digital and physical
- Average denomination
- Redemption rate, and average days from purchase to redemption
- Average spend on a redemption visit, against your normal average check
- Outstanding voucher liability
The fourth one is the one that will surprise you. If redemption visits are not out-spending your normal check, the vouchers are being treated as a discount rather than a floor, and the fix is usually on the floor: how the team handles the voucher when it is presented.
Start now rather than in December. A voucher page that goes live in the first week of November has eight weeks of Christmas demand ahead of it; one that goes live on 15 December has ten days.
Questions owners ask
Are restaurant gift cards worth it for a small restaurant?
Yes, and the cash flow is the main reason rather than the revenue. You are paid weeks or months before you incur any food or labour cost, and the money arrives in November and December when your outgoings peak. On top of that, most recipients spend beyond the card's value — UK research puts overspend at 67% of users, averaging £18.55 — and a share of value is never redeemed at all. A programme selling three vouchers a day through December is worth several thousand pounds to a typical small restaurant.
What software do restaurants use to sell gift vouchers?
Dedicated gift card and voucher platforms, rather than a general booking or ordering system. The things that matter are a branded purchase page on your own domain, instant email delivery, quick redemption on the floor, reporting on outstanding liability, and full export of buyer and recipient data. VoucherCart is one established example, supporting eVouchers, reloadable and printed cards, a redemption app and POS, PMS and CRM integrations. Compare any platform against your POS provider's own gift card module before deciding.
Do you have to pay VAT on restaurant gift vouchers in the UK?
It depends on the type of voucher. Under HMRC's rules, a single-purpose voucher — one redeemable only against goods or services at a single VAT rate, which often describes a dine-in-only restaurant — attracts VAT at the point of issue, whether or not it is ever redeemed. A multi-purpose voucher, usable against items at different VAT rates such as zero-rated cold takeaway, is only accounted for when it is redeemed. Which category you fall into depends on your menu, so confirm it with your accountant.
Can a restaurant put an expiry date on a gift voucher in the UK?
Yes. The UK sets no statutory minimum validity period, unlike Ireland's five-year rule. But the Consumer Rights Act 2015 makes unfair terms unenforceable, so an expiry that is very short or hidden in small print can be challenged. Two years is the widely accepted norm, and the expiry must be clear and prominent before purchase and printed on the voucher itself, not just on the buyer's receipt.
When should a restaurant start selling Christmas gift vouchers?
Early November, with the heaviest promotion in the final ten days before Christmas. Food and drink gift card sales peak between 20 and 25 December, so an instant digital voucher is essential for capturing late buyers. Redemption then lands mostly in January and February, which is exactly when most restaurants need the covers.
Is it better to sell vouchers on your own website or through a voucher site?
Your own website, in almost every case. Third-party experience and deal platforms take a commission on redemption, usually push you to discount the face value, and keep both the buyer's and the recipient's details. Selling direct means you keep the full amount, own the guest records, and know the occasion the voucher was bought for — which gives you a reason to contact that guest on the same date next year.
