If your employer gives you meal vouchers, you'll have noticed something: the card no longer covers lunch. You top up the difference yourself, a euro or two a day, and you can't quite pinpoint when that started.
It happened slowly, and it has a very specific start date.
The €11 has been frozen since 2018
Meal vouchers, restaurant tickets and meal cards are benefits in kind exempt from income tax up to a limit: €11 per employee per working day. Anything above that is taxed as ordinary salary.
That limit rose from €9 to €11 on 1 January 2018. And there it has stayed.
Meanwhile the menú del día has done what everything else does: gone up. The average price in Spain is now €14.20, a cumulative rise of nearly 20% since 2016.
| 2018 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Daily exemption | €11.00 | €11.00 |
| Menú del día (Spain average) | ~€11.50 | €14.20 |
| Gap | ~€0.50 | €3.20 |
In 2018, €11 was just enough for lunch. Eight years on you're short €3.20 on average — and the gap isn't an accident. It's simply what happens when you freeze a figure through eight years of inflation.
How much you top up, depending on where you work
The national average hides the important part, because the voucher is worth the same in Cuenca as in Barcelona but the food isn't:
| City / region | Average menu | You pay out of pocket |
|---|---|---|
| Bilbao | €15.50 | €4.50 |
| Catalonia | €15.40 | €4.40 |
| Barcelona | €15.10 | €4.10 |
| Madrid | €14.80 | €3.80 |
| Spain average | €14.20 | €3.20 |
| Andalusia / Murcia | €13.40 | €2.40 |
| Canary Islands | €13.00 | €2.00 |
Over 20 working days a month, that becomes:
- Canary Islands: €40/month out of pocket
- Spain average: €64/month
- Barcelona: €82/month
- Bilbao: €90/month
Nearly €1,000 a year in Barcelona for someone eating a set lunch every day on the company card. Which is exactly the person the exemption was invented for.
The figure that settles it
Here's what caught our eye when we looked at our own data.
Across the entire Barcelona catalogue on Appetece, sorting every menú del día with a published price from cheapest to most expensive, first on the list is:
4 Latas Granados — €11.90
There isn't a single one below €11.
In other words: there is no complete menú del día in Barcelona that fits inside the exemption. Not even the cheapest in the city. It overshoots by 90 cents.
You can eat for under €11, of course — a one-plate special, a sandwich, half a menu. But the starter-main-drink-dessert format the exemption was designed to cover no longer fits.
The cheapest menus in the city right now, with live prices:
The cheapest menús del día in Barcelona
4 Latas Granados
Ramen Shifu Paralel
Halal Marrakech
Timesburg Sants
Four Corners
Berto's Milanesa - Diagonal
Data updated in real time from Appetece
What's moving
In May 2026, tax economists formally asked the Treasury to raise the limit to €14, roughly where it would sit had it tracked inflation.
That's a request, not a bill in progress. Until it changes, the situation is what it is: an exemption meant to make eating out at work cost you nothing now covers 77% of the meal.
There's a knock-on effect that gets little attention. Many collective agreements peg the voucher "up to the tax-exempt limit", so the amount you receive is tied to a figure that hasn't moved in eight years. And because restaurants know much of the lunch crowd pays by card, the gap presses down on the format itself: tighter portions, drink charged separately, dessert or coffee but not both. It's part of why the menú del día has been declared dying for years without ever quite dying.
How to stretch the €11
Cross a street. In Barcelona, the Gòtic and the Raval are 500 metres apart and up to €5 apart per menu. The price map by neighborhood is the highest-return tool here: you don't change your life, you change your corner.
Check the price before you sit down. It sounds obvious and almost nobody does it. A €12.95 and an €18 menu on the same block is routine, and you only see it if you look.
Watch the extras. Plenty of menus advertise one price and then charge coffee, dessert or a second drink separately. A €13.50 menu with coffee and dessert on top lands at €16.
Check they take your card. Not every neighborhood restaurant has a Pluxee, Edenred or Up terminal. Ask before, not after.
Use the fact that it doesn't expire daily. The limit is per working day, but the balance accrues. If you bring lunch from home one day, that balance is still there for the day you want to eat properly.
What you can do today
You're not going to move the exemption. The price of what you eat, you can — and that's where the €80 a month is.
Start with the cheapest menus in Barcelona, the list sorted by price and updated daily. If you work in a specific area, the neighborhood guide tells you what range to expect before you head down. And if you just want to solve today's lunch without wandering, menú del día near me.
The €11 meal-voucher limit was set when a menú del día cost €11.50. Today it costs €14.20. Until that updates, the only lever you have is knowing where you eat.
See what today's menu costs near you — on Appetece, with real prices updated daily.