Selling a discount card for restaurant purchases before the restaurant opens

Hello,

The owner of a restaurant advertised that before the restaurant opens, during these days, one can buy a kind of membership card for 1,000 NIS, which will entitle the buyers, once the restaurant opens, to make a purchase of 1,000 NIS with a 25% discount, i.e. a value of 1,250 NIS. Is this permitted?

Shalom u’vracha,

According to the Shulchan Aruch, if the restaurant owner already has the products from which he will prepare the dishes (and they are not lacking three stages of work in order to become a finished dish), it is permitted.

However, according to the Rema it is forbidden, since he is stipulating two prices. There is, however, room to permit it in two ways: (a) if it is possible to pay for the card also with deferred payment, such as a post-dated check or installments; (b) if he would not specify that he is granting a 25% discount, but would merely obligate himself to a certain amount of dishes that they will receive, and would provide them before he publicly prices them for all who come to the restaurant (in both of these leniencies it is permitted even without the restaurant owner already having the products).

In Siman 173, se’if 7, regarding the laws of fixing a price at a discount, the Shulchan Aruch and the Rema dispute whether it helps that he already has the goods when he specifies two prices or not. The two possible grounds for leniency are: if it is possible to pay in a way that no loan is created, then even when in practice there is a loan, it is not evident that he is granting the discount in exchange for the wait; and since this is interest in the form of a sale, it is permitted. Or, in a case where he does not specify two prices, and even if he does not have the products and the market rate has not yet been set, it is permitted according to the Rema, who allows fixing a discounted price for an item whose value is not known. The poskim question the Rema, arguing that the fact that the price is not known is itself a reason to be stringent, since the market rate has not yet been set. Be’er HaGolah explains that for an item whose price is not known, if prices rise, the seller can give a product of lesser value, since he did not obligate himself to a specific item. The practical difference implied by Be’er HaGolah is that if one fixed a price for an electrical appliance whose price is not yet known, he nevertheless may not give a different model; but with restaurant dishes he can compose the meals in such a way that they cost him less, so that the seller does not lose from the price increase. In this case it does not help that people call this a “membership card”, since it is clear that this is not a genuine membership card. The basis for permitting the purchase of a true membership card is that the buyer acquires membership among the store’s customers, and the card and the membership themselves are worth the symbolic amount that the card costs; after he has acquired that right, he has a full year of discounts. Here, however, the nature of the “club” is different and limited to a certain amount of purchases at a specific discount, and it is certainly not a purchase of membership but rather a loan with interest, all the more so.