A gift card at the restaurant till
A customer received a garden centre gift card for her birthday. She comes in for lunch with a friend and tries to pay with it at the restaurant. The restaurant till cannot read it, because the gift cards run on the retail EPOS. The server sends her to the main tills, where she can spend it on plants but not on lunch. She pays for lunch with her own card and leaves slightly annoyed.
Meanwhile the restaurant sells its own afternoon tea vouchers on paper, with handwritten serial numbers, checked against a book behind the counter. The events team sells workshop vouchers through their booking tool. At the year end, the finance team tries to work out how much unspent value you owe across three schemes.
Why gift cards split by department
Retail and hospitality tills are usually from different suppliers, and each has its own gift card feature or none. Each department solved its own problem, and the customer ended up with several kinds of voucher that do not work across the site.
- The retail EPOS gift card is not readable by the restaurant till.
- Restaurant vouchers are paper, tracked in a book.
- Workshop and grotto vouchers sit in the booking tool.
- Online gift card sales may go through yet another route.
- Nobody sees total outstanding balances across schemes.
What split gift cards cost
A gift card that cannot be spent where the customer wants is a poor gift and a poor first impression. Paper vouchers are easy to copy and hard to check. Finance cannot give an accurate figure for outstanding gift card value, which matters for your accounts, and your accountant will want it right.
Staff feel it at the tills. A cashier faced with an unfamiliar paper voucher has to decide whether to accept it, check it against a book or call a supervisor, and every one of those choices slows the queue. Mistakes, such as a voucher accepted twice, only show up much later, if at all.
Gift cards are also a strong Christmas product for garden centres. Selling several confusing kinds makes them harder to promote as one simple present.
One balance, spendable across the site
- We set up a single gift card ledger, either a gift card provider that integrates with both your retail and restaurant tills, or a small custom service with its own card numbers.
- Both tills can check and redeem balances, through their gift card integration if supported, or by scanning the card code on a simple lookup screen linked to a payment key.
- Gift cards are sold in store, online through your website and through the events booking page, all into the same ledger.
- Paper voucher books are replaced with printed or digital cards carrying a unique code.
- Existing paper vouchers and old gift card balances are migrated or honoured through a clear process.
- A liability report shows outstanding value, expiry profile and redemptions by department, for finance each month.
| Where | Today | With one gift card |
|---|---|---|
| Retail tills | Retail cards only | All gift cards |
| Restaurant | Paper vouchers | All gift cards |
| Workshops and grotto | Separate vouchers | All gift cards |
| Online | Separate route | Same ledger |
| Finance | Estimate across schemes | One liability report |
Your terms, such as expiry and whether cards can be used on concession goods, are yours to set. The system applies them consistently.
Gift cards that work everywhere
A customer with a gift card can buy lunch, a workshop place and some plants on the same visit. Staff do not need to know which kind of voucher it is. At Christmas, one gift card product goes on sale in store and online, which is simpler to promote.
Finance gets a monthly figure for outstanding balances, and the paper voucher book behind the restaurant counter is retired.
Are your gift cards split by department?
- Retail gift cards cannot be used in the restaurant.
- The restaurant sells paper vouchers.
- Workshops and the grotto have their own vouchers.
- Finance estimates outstanding gift card value.
- Customers are confused about which voucher works where.