Key Highlights

● Restaurant.com moves to month-to-month or annual memberships from 27 October 2026.

● Second-quarter net sales were US$21.7 million, up 4.0%, while gross billings rose 26.2%.

● Gross margin improved to 20.2% from 18.4%; net loss narrowed to US$1.2 million.

● Cash was US$3.9 million at 30 June 2026, with going-concern doubt disclosed.

Latest verified development

On 13 October 2026 Giftify, Inc. (NASDAQ:GIFT) announced that Restaurant.com will convert from one-time deal purchases to a membership model from 27 October 2026. Customers will be able to take month-to-month or annual subscriptions that give ongoing access to available restaurant deals, rather than buying deals one at a time.

The release did not state membership prices. It listed aims rather than targets: growing recurring revenue, making revenue easier to forecast, raising customer lifetime value and reaching strong margins as the member base grows. It carried a forward-looking statements caveat, citing among other risks the company's ability to identify a suitable business model.

Why it matters

Restaurant.com is one of two businesses in the group, alongside CardCash, a marketplace for buying and selling unused gift cards. Moving a transactional deal platform to subscriptions changes how revenue is recognised and how customer retention is measured. Chief executive Ketan Thakker called membership an established model across digital consumer and food-delivery services.

Whether it works here is untested. The company has given no subscriber targets or revenue figures, so the change is best viewed as a strategic experiment with dated launch timing rather than a quantified financial improvement. Chief technology officer Thomas Butt said the model makes that value continuous, which describes the intent but not the economics.

The company says members can reuse a subscription repeatedly and expects that to deliver more value than buying deals one at a time. Restaurant partners and business gift card buyers are also named as beneficiaries of continuing relationships.

Second-quarter results

Giftify reported second-quarter 2026 results on 3 August. Net sales were US$21.7 million, up 4.0%. Gross billings, a non-GAAP measure of customer purchases net of refunds and discounts, rose 26.2% to US$45.5 million. The company attributes the gap between the two growth rates to a higher share of agent transactions, which are recorded on a net commission basis.

Gross margin was 20.2%, up from 18.4%. The net loss narrowed to US$1.2 million, or US$0.04 per share, from US$2.6 million. Modified EBITDA, also non-GAAP, was US$126,036, compared with a loss of US$150,236 a year earlier.

Merchant gift card sales were about 97% of net sales, so the group's reported revenue still depends overwhelmingly on CardCash rather than on Restaurant.com. Gross billings also grew about 25% to US$45 million in the first quarter, reported on 12 May, so the second-quarter pace is consistent with the earlier period.

Balance sheet and going concern

Cash was US$3.9 million at 30 June 2026, including US$750,000 of restricted cash, and the release discloses substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern. Cash was US$3.7 million at 31 December 2025.

For the full year 2025, revenue was US$83.2 million, down from US$88.9 million in 2024.

Launch timing and CardCash initiatives

The 27 October launch is the next dated event for Restaurant.com, and membership pricing and sign-up figures have not yet been released. The company also deployed AI-powered customer service tools at CardCash on 1 October, which it said cut response times by more than 90%.

On 29 June it launched a campus gift card exchange with Follett Higher Education bookstores, an initiative that sits on the CardCash side, where merchant gift card sales make up about 97% of net sales.