Contract Restaurants???
 

I have been doing the weekly travel thing for ~15 years ... and have
seen lots of changes in the name of "expense control." Recently, meal
caps were swizzled (reduced) and declared to be per-diems. That works
better for me, since I tend to seek the local hole-in-the-wall establishments
that do something special (and I can pocket the difference).

Now we are being told to use our per-diem at restaurants with which the
company has negotiated rebates ... and to log/report the meal expense
by using the corporate credit card but reporting it as non-reimbursable.
Uh, okay, it's the new rule. Got it.

Anyone else dealing with such tortured per-diem re-definition and logic?

I am so not looking forward to next week's trip, where the preferred
restaurants are:

- Dennys
- Texas Roadhouse
- Outback
- Carrabbas
- Bonefish

It may be time to claim Kosher or Halal dietary restrictions. <g>

I'm guessing someone just got a big bonus and/or a promotion for thinking up this one.

Is it still a "per diem" if they tell you where you have to eat? If you don't eat at one of these places, do you get less than the normal per diem?

> Is it still a "per diem" if they tell you where you have to eat?

They're still calling it "per diem." But that's not the GSA defn of per diem.

> If you don't eat at one of these places, do you get less than
> the normal per diem?

I asked that question ... and got a lot of mumbling about, "we think many
people are now eating cheaper and pocketing the difference." (Doh!) "We
expect you to eat at the contract restaurants ... Not following expense
reporting guidelines is considered falsifying an expense report." <Gulp>

When I asked if I could not-claim a per diem in order to avoid any possible
worries about falsifying an expense ... resulted in an eye-roll and no direct
answer.

At the time, I did not think to ask about Kosher or Halal dietary restrictions. <g>

Weren't people sometimes doing that under the old per diem rules? I mean, how did they know people were spending the full amount (or more) of the per diem?

Sorry OP, I have no idea how per diems work as I've never worked in an industry where I had one. I just wanted to say that is a terrible list of restaurants. And if you have to select from a list of "preferred" restaurants, well, this is almost sounding like a health insurance plan with a list of "preferred providers."

If the company I worked for were to start doing this, I would contact a head hunter, line up a new job, and get the heck out of there. If management is micromanaging and nickel and diming your dining choices when you're on biz travel--especially specifying this type of restaurant--one can only imagine what other stupidity they are up to. What are they afraid of--that their employees might run the risk of having a decent meal while on business travel if left to choose their own restaurants? That said, I had a decent salad at a Carrabba's about ten years ago. It had grilled scallops on it. Not bad. Haven't been back, though. Good luck!

While I certainly wouldn't like being told where to eat, the list could be much worse. Imagine having $20/day per diem for meals for weeks on end. Roadhouse is an excellent value, believe me.

Not a bad idea to have a diet consisting of Bang Bang Shrimp at Bonefish... :P

> how did they know people were spending the full amount (or more) of the per diem?

The chronology of the travel-meal changes in that past ~12 months:

- Daily cap. Trust employees; that they are eating what they report. If caught lying, forging an exp rpt is grounds for dismissal.
- Daily cap. Only reimbursing meals paid with corp credit card
- Per-diem. Lower than daily cap. Employee eats what & where they want. Employee pockets any savings, pays for any over run.
- "New" per-diem. Same lower amount, to be spent at contract restaurants. Unclear if employees are permitted to pocket any savings.

Do it.

The contract restaurants are, for the most part, garbage food.

dranz, I just had a brilliant idea: propose to your bosses that they give out gift certificates to employees traveling on business. $50 for Dennys should cover someone for a 4 day work week, plus some restaurants have a "buy x gift cards, get a $25/50 for free".

Better yet, you should suggest that employees graze at CostCo and other stores known for their free samples.

> I just had a brilliant idea ... gift cards ... Denny's

$"^*$%)(!@$#F <g>

> Costco ... free samples

You are incorrigible! I am placing you on double-secret probation.

I give Dennys gift cards to people I don't like.

1. Call your head hunter. Any employer who thinks like this will lose its top producers soon enough and be stuck with the dregs soon enough. It will then circle the drain until it falls in. You want to be ahead of the pack.

2. This thing needs details and real answers in a written policy (if they're going to hold you to it). Per diems were put in place because they are a way of letting people use their own discretion and cutting down reimbursement and expense-processing costs. In other words, 2 day trip at $90/day means $180. No receipts, no nothing. You want to eat peanut butter crackers your brought from home and pocket the $180, that's up to you AND it's not fraud.

3. So, the details:

A. Under what circumstances are you able to go outside the contract (no restaurant close by, dietary needs, client entertainment, etc)?

B. Is it a lower per diem outside the contracts (in other words, what if you want to eat at a 5-star restaurant and pick up the difference yourself)?

OP, are the per diem rates billed to the clients? If they are, and clients are billed the per diem rates, then it sounds to me like the company is hoping to pocket the difference between what employees use and what the client is billed, rather than allowing the employees to pocket it. The lack of response about opting not to claim per diem makes it sound like that's what they're doing.

I too suggest starting to look elsewhere, but also asking for a written policy, including how dietary restrictions are handled as well as if one can opt out of taking the per diem amount.

That's outrageous. That said, Bone Fish isn't too bad and Texas Roadhouse is a guilty pleasure that I can't find near my home (only on the road). The list could be worse.

Still, this cannot possibly be sustainable long term. Penny wise, pound foolish.

Sounds like you're living in Dilbert's world. I'd probably be polishing my resume. Outrageous..

Yea, some of us have to pay for our meals when we work!

I'd look at it as a case of at least they're reimbursing you for some meals at restaurants they partner with instead of not compensating you for any meals...

Sorry for sounding UnAmerican, I guess my sense of entitlement is lacking today.

Just to be on the safe side, I would claim both Kosher and Halal. :D

My employer used to have (IMO) extremely generous per diems. If they'd reduced them by a third, I don't think anyone would have suffered - in most cases I couldn't spend the full amount even if I tried.

But instead, when they decided that travel expenses were too high, they replaced per diems with company credit cards (to be used when possible) and (if cc could not be used) reimbursement to employees of actual cost. There was no official daily limit; it was up to each employee to guess what was "reasonable" and then up to the employee's manager to decide whether they agreed that it was "reasonable." Needless to say, some employees were more thrifty than others; some managers were more accommodating than others, and in the end it's not clear it saved any money.

It did, however, increase the amount of time (during working hours) for the traveler to keep receipts and submit expenses, and for someone else to double check it and arrange reimbursements. But I'm sure they think this is a sensible use of time. :(

I've never heard of a company requiring employees on travel to pay for their own meals without any reimbursement whatsoever. It wouldn't surprise me however after reading the associated thread over on Travelbuzz.

I could see encouraging employees to eat in certain restaurants under contract, but mandating that is a completely different thing.

For US government travel if you look at the State Department web page it mentions that the perdiem rates are set as such to 'substantially' cover the cost of lodging and meals. Maybe your employer had a similar policy. When I used to travel on full per diem it was only very rarely that I would ever exceed the State Department rates, but often times I would meet the lodging rate because certain hotels in some countries always seemed to set their rates exactly at the maximum allowed US per diem rate.

Wouldn't they be better off just paying actuals on the corporate card, up to a certain per diem rate?

I'd tell them those places are unhealthy and I don't choose frozen and over processed foods high in sodium and all kinds of other preservatives.

Well, here is the way it was explained to me when I first started working out of town in the 80s. Per diem for meals is to help offset the cost of eating in restaurants as opposed to eating in your own home. You don't expect your employer to pay for your meals when you are home. Why should they pay 100% for nice restaurant meals every day out of town when that is something you might only occasionally splurge on when you are home? It made perfect sense to me then, and still does to this day. $20-25 per day even today in almost any city is more than fair, and if you want to splurge, pay for it yourself.

Perhaps. Ours was just for meals; hotels were paid directly in advance (by some mysterious transfer), and other out-of-pocket expenses (taxis, laundry...) were reimbursed from receipts. But the meal allowance for Europe would have covered a full cooked breakfast, three course lunch and three course dinner with wine every day. :eek::eek: I love to eat, really, but I can't do that every day, particularly if I'm working.

In practice, the hotel rate included (a full cooked) breakfast so I got 75% of the per diem for lunch and dinner, and I made a tidy profit despite eating at some very nice restaurants in some of Europe's most expensive cities.

I don't really miss making the profit; my main complaint is the effort (and time) in collecting receipts (in handwritten French, Norwegian, Magyar, Japanese, ... - yeah, like anyone's going to check these!) and filing expense reports when I get back. The per diem ("here's your money; have a good trip") system was much easier and quicker.

I worked for one company that paid (straight reimbursement) for breakfast and dinner expenses on the road, but wouldn't pay for lunch. Supposedly, the rationale was that you would have had to buy lunch anyways -- I always thought it was wonky logic. And let to a lot of suspiciously late breakfasts/early dinners.

Why should traveling jobs pay for their employees meals?

How is it any different than a job where you don't get to travel?

We don't reimburse our employees for the lunches/dinners they get daily for working for us.

Meal reimbursement as a benefit seems pretty messy given the variables involved in deciding how much to reimburse a person and how large of a reimbursement to give them.

I understand reimbursing the employee for plane tickets and hotel rooms because it's part of the cost of traveling, but a person eating isn't doing anything he wouldn't normally be doing.

Then again none of my employees or I get to travel for work, but I'll be miffed if we start paying our employees lunch expenses.

The only difference, as I explained above, is that you are forced into eating out rather than having the (normally) cheaper option of eating at home. For this reason, a small per diem to help with the added expense is called for. Full reimbursement for fine dining is ridiculous.

Uhhh no...

If I am out of town for two weeks, so 14 days, you cannot assume if I was home I would be eating out for any of those days, let alone all of them.

The cost of doing business, out of town, should never affect the employee financially. I am there because it is my job to be there and I expect certain comforts as if I was at home, such as not eating Denny's every night and staying in comfortable rooms. I am a traveling tax write off.

We can just quash the whole "Get a room with a kitchen" BS, half the time I am lucky if I even find a decent room within 40 miles of my work site, let alone a kitchen suite.

Are you of the same opinion that businesses should pay for employees clothing? After all if I require my employees to dress sharp, it's affects the employee financially.

Where do you draw the line? If there are hourly employees and I need to cut back on hours due to a downturn in the economy I'll be affecting them financially via less work hours,?

The cost to be an employee needs to be weighed by the employee, if you don't want to pay for meals when you're being paid to travel the compensation isn't high enough and you shouldn't take the job.

Employee meals are simply another convoluted system of rewarding employees, in my opinion it's a lot less messy to just pay the employee a wage that is considered the industry "norm" and the employee can eat ham sandwiches if he wants to while traveling for work.

I guess it really doesn't matter, eventually there will be fewer and fewer people traveling for work thanks to technological advances and also because there will be fewer and fewer jobs....

If I have an employee work 13 hours in a row(a double) should I be required to BUY their lunch? After all they would otherwise be forced to financially shell out for food while "on" the clock(during their paid lunch/dinner break)


I give people money, they do a job that may require a uniform, training, travel, gas to get to work, gas to get home, hair cuts, shaving, etc.

Frankly as a business owner and also as someone that's been an employee, cash in the pocket of the employee is better than ME or them deciding benefits.

Happy employees are productive employees, the more work that is involved to make them happy means a loss of productivity.

Please re-read my post. I am assuming you would be eating at home when you are home. It still costs money to eat at home. I believe that a small per diem is in order to help pay for the extra cost of being forced to eat out, not the total cost.

The Fire Department I am also an employee of, bought my turnout gear.

What? I am not an hourly employee with my day/travel job...

My previous job when we wanted to "keep" people over to finish a project, we would buy lunch/dinner/pizza/perch/subs/steaks or whatever since they obviously had no option to either go home, or hadn't had advanced notice to bring along extra food. I guess I just prefer to treat employees as humans, not robots.

I accepted my current position (which is not grunt work as I think you might be assuming) based on a salary and benefits I negotiated. I also accepted it with the flexible travel policy in mind.

I don't have time on-site to go shopping for a weeks worth of brown bag and at-home meals, nor the ability in most cases to store/prepare them.

I am expected to manage the amount of money I get a day to provide all my meals and necessities (snacks, water, etc..). If I go over my allotment, I pay the difference. We are not expected to eat unhealthy McMeals to save money, as in the long run, my employer also provides my health insurance.

If the travel policy wasn't designed like it is, I wouldn't had accepted it.

Just my two cents..

No reason to re-read, I understand what you are saying, I just don't agree with it.

When I am out of town I still have to provide for my family to eat, they are still going to make the same things we make when I am there in a smaller portion that you really can't relate to an actual savings.

Then, when I eat on the road, I am paying often triple what it would cost me to make it for my family along with drinks, taxes and tips...

Take for instance, I love making Fajitas. We pay around $28 for our family of five, so about $5.60 a person. If my wife makes them when I am gone you are talking about a savings of maybe $3 or $4. There is usually never any left over.

So if I go to Chili's and get fajitas, they cost what, $16, plus $2 for a drink, tax and tip you are looking at around $22 maybe? How do you logically decide what per-diem rate to enforce that would take all of this into account? How do you determine what my cost would be ($5.60) and apply it to three meals a day?

I am paid to do a job and expected to focus on getting that job done on time and to the satisfaction of the client which is what actually makes us money, not nickle and dimming our own employees to save $15 a day..

As an employer, I logically decide you are going to get $20-25 a day per diem. Maybe slightly higher in certain cities. It's not an exact science. If you negotiate a higher amount, I will negotiate it right out of your base pay. I don't expect you to be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and a $22 dinner every day without chipping in yourself. I never expected it for myself, and I am far from alone. My employees over the years have by and large considered traveling for work to be a privilege not a burden. Special perks are rarely if ever asked for.

Be that as it may, good for you that your employer is willing to spend more for your meals.:)

Most people I know don't think travel is a privilege. Maybe if you're only hiring people in their early 20's and sending them to business trips to HKG, BKK or SIN, I might agree, but the regular worker having to travel certainly doesn't enjoy it too much, especially if it's less than great places.

My former and my current employeer do pay me whatever I spend on any restaurant I choose, up to a certain limit. (Which is generous enough) I'm free to choose if I eat a good steak and have a nice wine, or if I prefer some unhealthy junk food and lots of beers.. employeers shouldn't act as nannys.

I think a fixed day expenses isn't such a great idea - my former work had some departments running on it, and some (like mine) where we got reimbursed up to a certain limit of on the road.. you can imagine the discussions we had, when we were on a trip and had people from several departments with different policies..

So, have a limit which allows the workers on travel duty to eat good, but not splurge, is what I find correct. That means maybe having 10-15€ limit for lunch, 20-30€ for dinner, if you like to eat more expensive, please, go ahead, but the company don't need to pay it all.

And someone else may have been hired as a result. Good for you that you managed to get the benefits you get out of your employer, but at the end of the day it's part of your overall compensation. Me personally? I would rather have higher pay and then I could decide how much I want to spend on food.

I'm looking at it from the basis that employee meals ARE calculated into the overall cost of doing the business, which does affect the rest of your compensation.

I treat my employees like humans, I pay them, they do work, we hang out occasionally. The one thing I don't let them do is walk all over me when it comes to business, because a unprofitable business isn't a business it's a charity.

Nickle and diming occurs whether you like it or not, because at the end of the day that's how a business turns a profit by watching the expenses.

Would you rather have the per diem set for dining out or have it tacked onto your paycheck so you can decide whether you want to go to Chiles or brown bag it?

They also shouldn't be required to act as sugar daddies.... But employees nowadays are more entitled than ever, so it is what it is.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and when there is it comes with strings attached and a cost of some kind.

Kind of interesting, considering companies are trying to push healthier lifestyles and lower health insurance costs. Not to mention they're basically making the lives of their employees who are on the road even tougher. I got to say, I question the IQ levels of your company's management team with this decision.


Don't you have receipts and turn them in with an expense report?

Can you let us know what your company is? The majority here would probably prefer to avoid the privileged travel you provide for $25 a day.

Any business which operates as you suggest one should, will lose its best people to competitors and be stuck circling the drain with the rejects.

Traveling for business is neither a privilege nor "cool" after a short period of time. Employees should not be spending their own money supporting business activities and the good ones won't. The bad ones will do whatever they are asked because they've got nowhere to go and a lousy company circling the drain is better than unemployment --- barely.

Is this meant towards me? If so I have to disagree, I fail to see how properly paying your employees instead of having a bunch of pre-designated perks will lose the "best" people to competitors.

It depends on how often they're traveling and where it's to. I've worked for plenty of companies where traveling IS a privilege and I got to go to some really cool events.

Or the good ones calculate that into their overall compensation, and if their compensation isn't high enough they walk.

Good employees know what they're worth and understand that they don't need bogus benefits if they're being paid what they're worth.

"Good" employees should resent being given per diems and instead should just opt for better pay.

I think you need to revisit how you decide who's a "good" or "bad" employee, most employees think they're better than they really are.... Entitlement mentality back in play.

A good employee knows he's replaceable but knows how to leverage his benefits towards maximum compensation. A good employer pays his employees well and treats them with respect but knows how to manage costs.