Eight Years Later, Restaurant Gift Certificate is Still Good

In 2003, George W. Bush was president, the war in Iraq was getting underway and the term “Great Recession” hadn’t been invented yet.

And South San Francisco resident Dennis McArthur got a gift from his coworkers: a $50 gift certificate to , his favorite restaurant on Grand Avenue.

A lot’s changed in the past eight years, but last week McArthur’s wife Phyllis found out some things stay the same. She walked out of Di Napoli on Friday afternoon with a takeout order of cannelloni, pizza, cheesecake and a green salad after learning that at this Italian restaurant, an eight-year-old wrinkled gift certificate is apparently still good.

Dennis McArthur unearthed the old gift certificate this month when cleaning out a roll top desk in the garage.

“He said ‘Oh no, it was my favorite place when we lived in South City,” said Phyllis McArthur, now a Foster City resident. “’It’s no good.’”

Phyllis decided to make a call before she chucked the certificate in the trash. She got through to Ricardo Oliveira, who’s owned the restaurant for 21 years with his two brothers.

“She deserves to use it,” Oliveira said. “She was very surprised that we would still honor that gift certificate.”

Di Napoli doesn’t issue paper gift certificates anymore; like most businesses, it uses gift cards that allow purchases to be debited. But McArthur’s gift certificate didn’t have an expiration date, and as far as Oliveira was concerned, it was as good as cash.

He even tried to her give her change on one of his new-fangled gift cards. McArthur wouldn’t take it; she was still stunned by the boxes of food she was holding in her arms.

“It’s a big deal because restaurants are struggling, and it’s a family business. He didn’t have to do that,” McArthur said. “This makes you want to support these guys.”

Oliveira said his business has faced tough times since the economic meltdown in 2008. But in the last couple of years, he and his family has been able to complete a renovation that doubled the size of the restaurant and have added new employees.

Di Napoli also takes advantage of new tools that weren’t available back when Dennis McArthur first got his gift certificate. Customers can order online and book reservations through OpenTable.

“We try to use as much as possible new technology,” he said. “This is the only thing we do in life, so we need to survive.”