Meal tickets are being used by Romanian employees to buy everyday goods from the stores - both food and other items. These tickets have thus become the second currency of Romania.
From salami, soft drinks and detergents, to tooth paste and cigarettes - these are just some of the products that can be bought using meal tickets. #leadend
Most employees consider these tickets as an additional income, although they should be used only to get food during working hours.
But who stands to win, and who is losing money, because of this situation? The catering and restaurant industry is logging the biggest losses, while the main winners are the stores and the meal ticket issuers.
According to data provided by the companies that issue meal tickets, 97% of Romanians use the tickets in food stores and only 3% use them with restaurants or catering companies (still a higher figure than in 2001, when the percentage stood at only 1%).
In Western European countries such as Italy, France and Spain, meal tickets are used almost exclusively for meals, namely for buying food from catering firms, restaurants and cafeterias.
In Romania, the meal ticket market (which is set by the state budget law) has posted a constant increase in the past few years. This year, there are more than 1.6 million employees qualifying for meal tickets.
The eight meal tickets issuers share a market valued at an annual 450 million euros (the face value of all the tickets issued in one year).
The employers that grant meal tickets can deduct their value from profit tax. Moreover, employers pay no taxes for the respective amounts of money. Thus, meal tickets save the employers 1.5 million ROL per employee, according to ticketing companies. One meal ticket is worth 61,000 ROL daily, totaling some 1.45 million ROL each month.
Accor Services, the main player on this market, last year logged a net income of some 15 million euros, having issued meal tickets worth 190 million euros. The company has not yet disclosed its turnover (in this case, turnover accounts for the total value of fees cashed by the company from employers and from stores).
The stores that accept meal tickets (mainly supermarkets and hypermarkets and less restaurants and catering companies) stand to gain as their sales increase.
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