Yuppie Food Stamps

French law requires that businesses above a certain staff size (I'm not sure exactly what the number is, but somewhere near 50) provide their employees with either a cafeteria, or coupons to buy lunch in a restaurant.

Government interfering with private business, you might say, except that this has created a private industry of its own. Several companies compete to supply these coupons to cafeteria-free employers. The competition includes trying to get different restaurants to accept your coupons and not the other guys'. And thus, restaurant doors are festooned with stickers announcing which of all the competing sets of coupons are accepted therein:


At lunch in business areas it is quite common to see people using these. We joke in the U.S. that $20 bills are "yuppie food stamps," but here it's the real thing.