What and where you can pay with the lunch benefit is defined in the Finnish Tax Administration’s guidelines. With the lunch benefit, you can buy meals for yourself from restaurants and cafés. The lunch benefit can also be used in grocery stores with certain restrictions: the meals must be fresh, meaning they cannot be packaged or frozen convenience foods. The meals may be either hot or cold, but they must be prepared specifically for sale in that store. Meals assembled from a salad bar or service counter (for example, meatballs with mashed potatoes, grilled chicken drumstick with rice, or a Greek salad) can be purchased with the lunch benefit. In more and more grocery stores today, you will also find a sushi counter, and sushi meals from there can be bought with the lunch benefit. Fresh filled baguettes, sandwiches, and triangle sandwiches are also on the list of allowed lunch options.

The lunch benefit cannot be used to buy groceries or consumer goods. It is intended only for purchasing a meal to be eaten during the working day. Therefore, it may not be used to buy anything that cannot be eaten or that could end up being used by another person.

Allowed purchases with lunch benefit

• Meals from the service counter (e.g. meatballs & mashed potatoes, warm fish dishes, salads).

• Ready-made hot meals (heated meals packed by the store for sale).

• Meals from the salad bar.

• Sushi from the sushi counter.

• Ready meals packed by the restaurant or store itself.

• Pre-packed fresh salads and heat-and-eat meals.

• Filled sandwiches, baguettes and triangle sandwiches.

Not allowed purchases with lunch benefit

• Raw ingredients and groceries (e.g. bread, meat, fish, cheese, vegetables).

• Convenience foods/frozen meals (e.g. frozen pizza, macaroni casserole, microwave pasta).

• Deposit-bearing drinks (mineral water, soft drinks).

• Alcohol.

• Tobacco and nicotine products.

• Candy and sweets.

• Other goods (e.g. toilet paper, disposable items).