Tickets Restaurant® and Tickets Alimentación® are Edenred’s leading products. Edenred is a leader in the meal and food voucher market in all the countries where the Ticket Restaurant® or the Ticket Alimentación® is issued.
Launched in 1962, the Ticket Restaurant® voucher enables employees with no access to cafeteria facilities to have lunch outside the workplace in an affiliated restaurant of their choice. The meal voucher provides a simple alternative to corporate catering structures, particularly in the case of small and medium-sized companies, while fostering employee loyalty.
Tickets Restaurant® are currently distributed in 26 of the countries in which Edenred operates. In these countries, all employers are entitled to order meal vouchers for their employees, regardless of the size of the company. In certain countries, public sector employees can also benefit from Tickets Restaurant®, as has been the case in France since 2002 for employees who do not benefit from an accessible cafeteria.
Tickets Restaurant® can be ordered online. Employers can opt to place an order once a month or set up a monthly standing order. These vouchers are mainly issued by Edenred in paper form and are sold either individually or in the form of a booklet containing one voucher for every day of the month. In 2009, the bulk of Tickets Restaurant® were still being issued in paper form despite the progressive shift towards electronic formats.
Employers are free to decide on the face value of meal vouchers that they grant to their employees. The value of the voucher is influenced by limits imposed by the government concerning the eligibility for income tax and/or social security charge exemptions on employer contributions.
The Ticket Restaurant® may be used in restaurants (and certain similar food service establishments as provided by applicable regulation) within Edenred’s affiliate network.
As of December 31, 2009, there were 164,000 affiliated food providers in France, 116,000 in Brazil and 107,000 in Italy.
In France, beneficiaries may use one voucher per meal, although in practice, two are often allowed. They cannot be used on Sundays or holidays. In general, the merchants do not give cash back for the unspent amounts of the meal vouchers.
In 2009, meal vouchers accounted for 52% of the Group’s issue volume and 40% of pro forma operating revenue.
*Restaurants, bakeries, take out restaurants.
The Ticket Alimentación® food voucher augments the purchasing power of beneficiaries and enables not only them, but also their families, to maintain a healthy diet. Employees can use these vouchers to buy food in neighborhood stores and/or supermarkets for the entire household. This solution is also responsive to new aspirations resulting from changes in life style, in particular by allowing people to establish a life-work balance.
In 1983, Edenred launched the Vale Despensas® food voucher in Mexico, where it currently issues vouchers that are received by 1.8 million beneficiaries. This voucher has since been distributed in Latin America under the brand names Ticket Alimentación®, Ticket Alimentação® and Ticket Canasta® and, more recently, in Central Europe.
The Ticket Alimentación® is used in the same way as the Ticket Restaurant®. It is issued in paper form and, increasingly in card-based format. In Brazil, where the voucher was launched in 1990, it is now available in card format only. With two million users and 60,000 affiliated merchants, the Ticket Alimentación® generates 87 million transactions per year in Brazil. In Mexico, approximately 780,000 people use this voucher in a card-based format (generating approximately 20 million transactions per year) and more than one million people use the paper-voucher form.
In 2009, Ticket Alimentación® accounted for 27% of the Group’s issue volume and 23% of pro forma operating revenue.