◆ Gift cards

Online gift cards for restaurants, and how Zayos handles them.

Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026

Quick answer

A restaurant gift card is a prepaid balance a diner buys on your site and somebody else redeems later. Treat the money as a liability until the food is served. Good software issues the code, tracks the remaining balance, and lets any staff member redeem it in seconds.

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Why would a restaurant sell gift cards at all?

Three reasons, and only one of them is obvious. The obvious one is cash today for food you cook later, which is genuinely useful when covers are thin. The second is introduction: a gift card is one of the few things a regular will physically hand to somebody who has never eaten your food, and that person walks in already committed. The third is that the ticket and the balance will disagree in both directions, so some guests order past the card and pay a difference. What must never happen is the leftover money quietly disappearing, because that is the version the guest calls you about.

Is a gift card revenue, or is it a debt?

It is a debt. On the day you sell a $100 card you hold $100 in the bank and a $100 promise to feed somebody. Your accountant books it as deferred revenue and converts it to sales on redemption. That distinction has three practical consequences that hit real restaurants every January.

  • The holiday cash spike is not holiday profit. The food and labor behind it are still unspent.
  • Cost lands in the month of redemption, which is usually your slowest month, so a strong December can produce a painful February.
  • At year end somebody will ask for total unredeemed value outstanding. That is one number, and your software should produce it.

Unredeemed balances do not simply become yours on a date of your choosing. When and whether they can be recognized is an accounting and state law question. Ask your bookkeeper before you count that money.

From real kitchens

What actually goes wrong with restaurant gift cards?

The card lives in one system and the meal is rung up in another

A guest buys a card on your website. Three weeks later the recipient sits down for dinner and hands the code to a server who has never seen it. If your ordering tool and your register do not share a balance, the manager comps the ticket by hand and the card is never drawn down. The same code then gets used again, and again. This is the single most expensive gift card failure and it is a systems problem, not a staff problem.

Partial balances get thrown away

A $50 card against a $32 ticket should leave $18 on the card. Tools that treat a card as a one time voucher force the guest to spend the difference or lose it. Both outcomes end in a phone call to the restaurant, and the guest remembers the argument longer than the meal.

Nobody decided whether the card covers tip and tax

Write the rule down before you sell the first card. Most restaurants apply the balance to food and tax and ask the guest to tip separately, because a tipped out balance turns a gift into a payroll question. Whatever you choose, the checkout screen and the staff answer have to match.

The expiration date is copied from a promo template

Gift cards are regulated. The federal Credit CARD Act sets a floor of five years before funds may expire, and several states go further and prohibit expiration or dormancy fees on cards sold for money. A 90 day expiry lifted from a coupon tool is not a marketing decision, it is exposure. Ask your accountant or attorney for your state, this page is not legal advice.

The codes can be guessed

Sequential or short codes get drained by people who write a script and try ranges against a public balance check page. Codes should be long and random, and any lookup surface should be rate limited. If a vendor cannot answer how codes are generated, assume the worst.

Nobody can produce the outstanding balance number

At year end your bookkeeper will ask one question: how much unredeemed value is outstanding right now. If the answer requires exporting a spreadsheet and adding it up by hand, the number will be late and it will be wrong.

What should I ask a gift card vendor before I turn it on?

Eight questions. Ask them in the demo, out loud, and make somebody click through the answer instead of describing it.

  1. 01 Can a card bought on my website be redeemed without a manager standing there?
  2. 02 Does a partial redemption leave the remaining balance usable on the same code?
  3. 03 Who on my staff can look up a balance, and how many clicks is it while a guest waits?
  4. 04 Can I see total unredeemed value outstanding as a single number?
  5. 05 Can I resend the recipient email when somebody deletes it or types the address wrong?
  6. 06 Can I issue a card manually when a regular pays me in cash at the counter?
  7. 07 Do you take a percentage of the gift card sale, and if so, on top of card processing?
  8. 08 If I leave, do the outstanding cards come with me, and in what format?

The last two matter more than they look. A percentage on gift card sales is a fee on money you already earned, stacked on top of card processing. And a gift card program you cannot export is a switching cost the vendor is holding on purpose, because those outstanding balances are your legal obligation, not theirs.

How Zayos does it

How does Zayos handle gift cards?

A diner buys the card on your own branded storefront, pays through Stripe checkout, and the recipient gets an email carrying the code. Nothing routes through a marketplace and nothing carries a commission.

On the operator side

The gift cards screen lists every card with its code, recipient, initial balance, remaining balance, status and creation date. Search runs over the whole table by code, name or email, which is the shape of the actual problem: a customer on the phone reading you a code from an email they forwarded eleven months ago. You can resend the recipient email when it was deleted or the address was mistyped, and activate a card manually when somebody paid you in cash at the counter. The screen is limited to owner, manager and marketing roles, because balances are money.

At checkout

The gift card amount is applied to the order total, the customer pays whatever is left on a card, and the unused balance stays on the code. Partial redemption is the default behavior, not a setting somebody has to remember to switch on.

What it costs

Zayos does not take a percentage of a gift card sale. Plans are flat and monthly, per location: Operator $499, Operator plus Marketplace $599, Concierge $699, month to month with no setup fee. Card processing is billed by the payment processor at its own rates. On ordinary orders the only per order charge is the diner paid service fee, $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in and 10% on catering, and the restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue and 100% of tips. Full detail sits on the pricing page.

For context on the rest of the platform, start with what Zayos is, then how onboarding runs and the integrations list.

Gift card questions owners ask

Are restaurant gift cards actually worth selling?
They are worth selling if you treat the money as a deposit rather than as sales. A gift card buys you a first visit from somebody a regular chose for you, and the cash arrives before the cost. The trap is spending that cash before the food is cooked.
Is a gift card revenue or a liability?
A liability. On the day you sell a $100 card you hold $100 in cash and a $100 promise to serve food. Your accountant records it as deferred revenue and it converts to sales when the card is redeemed. That is why the December cash spike is not December profit, and why the food cost shows up in the month somebody eats.
Can I put an expiration date on a restaurant gift card?
Federal law sets a five year floor before funds on a gift certificate or store gift card may expire, and several states are stricter than that, including outright bans on expiration and dormancy fees for cards sold for money. Promotional cards you gave away for free are often treated differently from cards somebody paid for. Confirm your own state with your accountant or attorney before you set any date.
What happens when a gift card only covers part of the ticket?
The balance should be applied to the total and the guest pays the difference on a card at checkout, with whatever is left staying on the code for next time. On Zayos the gift card amount is applied to the order total at checkout and the customer pays the remainder, and the unused balance stays on the card.
How does Zayos handle a gift card the customer bought online?
The diner buys the card on your own storefront through Stripe checkout and the recipient gets an email with the code. On your side, the gift cards screen lists every card with its code, recipient, initial balance, remaining balance and status, searchable by code, name or email for the phone call where somebody reads you a code. You can resend the recipient email, and you can activate a card manually when somebody paid you off platform. Access is limited to owner, manager and marketing roles.
Does Zayos take a percentage of gift card sales?
No. Zayos is a flat monthly plan: Operator $499, Operator plus Marketplace $599, Concierge $699, each per location per month, month to month with no setup fee. Card processing is billed by the payment processor at its own rates. The diner paid service fee on ordinary orders is $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in and 10% on catering, and the restaurant never pays it.

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