How does Restaurant.com work? Is it really a gift certificate, a coupon or a scam

I was about to go to a movie and saw a "Get a free ticket" link on Fandango.com. I clicked through and saw a bunch of offers including one from Restaurant.com offering gift certificates for 40 cents on the dollar. It looked reasonably good so I bought my gift certificate and got my free movie ticket. Of course I had to buy two more movie tickets since three of us were going to the movie.

To use the coupon, I had to pick a restaurant on restaurant.com, apply a certificate amount and print the gift certificate. I took it to the restaurant and the waiter/owner saw it when we placed our order and took the certificate and said he'd take care of it. He did take care of it when we paid our bill so it was a simple process. He explained that it works great for Restaurant.com as they get paid a nice amount by the customer for sending the restaurant a customer. The business owner likes it since Restaurant.com requires an 18% gratuity and the owner is often getting a new customer. The business can restrict what days and hours the certificates can be honored. The only question I had was whether it was really a good deal for the customer.

For me between the movie tickets and dinner, I laid out $20 for the Restaurant.com $50 coupon, I purchased $21 dollars worth of movie tickets to go with my free one and paid $17 from my $42 meal for three by using my $25 coupon. I still have $25 on my restaurant account. I can't keep all those numbers in my head so I put together the table below to show what the deals really end up like.

So in the end, the "gift certificate" ends up being a 12% to 25% off coupon plus you could take a bit off since gratuity was included. Would I recommend giving restaurant.com gift certificates as a gift? Probably not since you are requiring your gift recipient to shell out some cash. Would I use them myself? Maybe, but it would half to be compared to other coupons.