
Show HN: A directory of restaurants with links to buy gift cards to support them - brentsum
http://givelocal.co
======
Scoundreller
My real worry is that if the restaurant goes under (or sometimes, even changes
ownership), your gift card is worthless.

Dunno if a chargeback would go through, since you technically received what
you paid for.

~~~
smt88
Yeah, these gift cards are essentially free loans given to borrowers with
extremely poor credit. I’m still going to do it, but I’m considering it to be
a donation to my local restaurant scene.

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chii
it sucks - but i think a better option is to use a charity to do this rather
than give 'em cash. You lose taxes twice - once from your own end, and once
from the restaurant's end.

~~~
smt88
I don't think you can "donate" to a for-profit private business without paying
taxes...

~~~
chii
no, i meant donate to a charity, whose sole purpose is to help those
businesses in need. You don't donate directly to the business (which is the
tax hit).

~~~
tylerhou
Are charities allowed to give assets to for profit corporations?

~~~
techbio
Whawhawhat? How about to the workers those for-profits are currently not
supporting?

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danieltillett
I like the thought of this idea, but it won’t work. If the business spends the
money from the cards now then it will be on the hook for the meals later. It
is basically just an interest-free loan to the business that will have to be
paid back. The party that is really being bailed out here is the landlord.

A better approach would be to let the restaurant go under and have some way to
pledge that you will support the new restaurant that opens when things return
to normal.

~~~
dehrmann
We're better off having the government backstop this--pay the rent, pay
unemployment to the employees, and have society pay at the end of the day. The
tricky part is getting money where it's needed. The Fed is doing what it can,
but that's basically keeping banks open.

~~~
amelius
This. It's way too complicated to let society sort this thing out by
themselves. For one, because only the "visible" companies like restaurants
will benefit, and e.g. companies in the supply chain will be easily forgotten.

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eruci
I built something like this 15 years ago, it is still up but I have not
touched it in years ( Canada:
[https://foodpages.ca/?giftcards=1](https://foodpages.ca/?giftcards=1) / USA:
[https://dinehere.us/?giftcards=1](https://dinehere.us/?giftcards=1) )

In my aforementioned experience trying to entice restaurants to sell eGift
cards online is a waste of time.

Good luck though.

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evo_9
Why just restaurants? This should be expanded to support barber shops, nail
salons and massage business. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few other business that
could benefit.

~~~
klenwell
I usually pay my barber in cash. If I wanted to send her a payment in lieu of
my next appointment, what would be the most sensible way to do that?

I could mail her a check I suppose.

ACH transfer? (I assume I would have to ask her for her bank account info
which might be a little awkward.)

Venmo? (I've tried to avoid it thus far.)

~~~
lb1lf
Sincere question - how widespread is actual check usage in the US nowadays? As
in, would "mail her a check" be a colloquialism for an Apple Pay transfer or
similar, or would it mean just what it says - write out a check, mail it, wait
for her to cash it?

(Question comes from Norway, a small country with only a handful of banks
which very early collaborated to get electronic payment options available - to
the extent that debet card terminals are everywhere, even kids have cards -
and I think the last time I saw a check was in 1992 or so, at which point my
reaction was "wow, do these still exist?")

~~~
redis_mlc
Checks are still an everyday thing in the USA and Canada for rent, grocery
stores and more-expensive services.

Checks are generally not used for small amounts, and where the Not Sufficient
Fee (NSF) fees would be a problem. So usually not for restaurants, barbers,
etc.

Banks until recently issued free "basic design" checks, but it looks like my
national-level bank stopped doing that last year.

The advantages of checks over eletronic payments is that you don't need an
always online network, and you can mail or give checks in advance of the
payment date.

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dkoston
Thanks for putting this together. I’d recommend adding some indicator that the
results load async. I thought you had zero restaurants in Austin and left the
page after a second because there was no loading indicator. In fact, until I
got to Pittsburgh, I thought it was a site with no listings asking for my
email (because Pittsburgh loads way faster).

(Adding an index to your database for city or however the queries are formed
would probably also help).

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cakeface
There is also
[https://rallyforrestaurants.com/](https://rallyforrestaurants.com/)

Great to see people coming up with creative ways to support the restaurant
community. These efforts should be critical to keep the business running and
take out and delivery will keep back of house employees working. I'm still
really concerned about front of house employees. What can be done for servers,
bartenders, hosts?

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PaulDavisThe1st
"Don't see your city? Hit Add Location above and your city will be added when
you add it's first restaurant"

I could be blind but I cannot see "Add Location"

~~~
k1t
It's actually "Add a Restaurant" in the top right.

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__initbrian__
cool project. Good extension of the pledge show hn the other day

I’d love for a feature “within 25 miles of {zipcode} so I can find some around
me. (I’m in the suburbs where local doesn’t mean the same city)

Clicked “view all cities” Not down to type in the name of every city around me

~~~
justinmares
You can type the name of the city you're searching for on this page -
[https://givelocal.co/search](https://givelocal.co/search)

Great feedback though! This is definitely something we pulled together quickly
over the last few days.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
That search page seems to use infinite scroll for its results. That makes
searching _within_ the results using the browser's Find function impossible.

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alljames
In the UK there's
[https://saveyourindiehighstreet.uk](https://saveyourindiehighstreet.uk)

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avmich
Can't we have this site serving straight HTML with links? Why we should always
have JS involved for even most simple tasks?

~~~
btrettel
I've asked someone who likes using tons of JavaScript before and the response
I received was along the lines of "It saves developer time."

I don't get that one because in my experience, writing straight HTML is
simpler than writing JavaScript. The real problem seems to be that many people
today seem to have learned frontend web development through fancy JavaScript
frameworks and don't know any other way. Since learning the simpler way to do
it is more work, they don't bother. That's just my impression, however, and I
don't have any hard data. Another possibility is that people want to learn the
latest sexy technology and React/Angular/whatever people use these days is
that.

~~~
avmich
We probably need good tutorials about how to create a nice looking HTML pages.
Pure HTML, maybe with CSS. I'd prefer page to be self-contained - a document,
not an app. This way some accessibility problems could be avoided too.

At least we may have static page generators which execute JS once on server
side - for pages which don't really need interactivity (documents, not apps).
There are a lot of them.

~~~
btrettel
There are many resources available today on how to create a nice looking
HTML/CSS page. Looks like Mozilla has a complete guide:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Learn](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn)

This goes into JavaScript later as well but it seems to be the way I'd
consider proper: only using JavaScript for things that can only be done in
JavaScript.

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ProCicero
Can someone clarify this for me? I thought that businesses generally were not
able to book gift card revenue until after the gift card was redeemed. If that
is the case, then I don't see how this really helps them. It's not like they
can use that money to pay bills.

~~~
treyfitty
You think booking revenue at a later date restricts them from spending the
cash they receive now? It helps them because they receive cash that can be
physically spent for whatever they need. FASB guidelines just prevents them
from matching those expenses to revenue from a tax perspective. If I receive
$250,000 in gift card sales in 2020 but all $250,000 get redeemed in 2021,
then your revenue in 2020 should not reflect this $250k, but instead be
reflected in 2021. All else equal, in the event the restaurant owner took the
convenient and simple path of recognizing the expenses in 2020, it would just
mean their tax bill in 2021 would be much higher because their net revenue
(sales - COGs) would be high as a result of the $250k in revenue being
realized.

Source: I used to own a restaurant.

~~~
ProCicero
> You think booking revenue at a later date restricts them from spending the
> cash they receive now?

I did not know what to think, as I have never dealt with this before. Thank
you for explaining it.

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mikemccormick17
I’m working with a group on a version of this now that allows customers to
request a gift card from any local business in the US. I could use some help a
pm and a full stack dev with ecomm / payments experience. Ping me if
interested. Michaelpatrickmcc@gmail.com

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phnofive
Isn’t this what commercial paper is for? Surely we shouldn’t take the stimulus
and send it aloft under the guise of charity? I’d rather just give that money
to a small business owner than forestall the inevitable.

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vortico
In my experience, 90% of locally-owned restaurants have gift cards. So what's
the point of a website that attempts to list 90% of restaurants? Why not just
use Google Maps?

~~~
dkoston
Sometimes it’s nice to have a list view. Google maps only provides geolocated
results in a small list so you’d have to move around the city quite a bit to
find the whole list.

It can be useful to be remembered of places you like but haven’t been in a
while as well.

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jelliclesfarm
I think people should stop spending considering the u certainity in the
markets and economy.

This is not the time for feel-good charity and small scale philanthropy

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mateioprea
We have this in Romania too:
[https://cadou.ialoc.ro/](https://cadou.ialoc.ro/) :)

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freepor
Please donate your discretionary income to food banks and other charities, not
business owners.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Actually, small business owners absolutely do need money right now. You want
them to have the money, too, if you want to have an economy to return to after
the pandemic subsides.

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estraschnov
Great to see a Bubble-built app! Nocode lets you do things over the course of
one day

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smohnot
a better one for SF: [https://saveourfaves.org/](https://saveourfaves.org/)

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__initbrian__
“Operation timed out -- app too busy”

Hug of death?

