10 Ways to Save Money When Eating Out
With our busy lives, it seems more and more of our money is going towards eating out. In fact, I read recently that 40% of food money is spent on eating out. Here are some tips to help lower the amount you spend.
1. Go out for lunch instead of dinner. Lunch prices are usually much lower.
2. Check to see if your restaurant has promotional evenings. Some restaurants have nights where kids eat free. This alone can save you at least $10 if you have 2 children.
3. See if the restaurant offers frequent visitor cards. This may sound cheesy, but some Mexican and Chinese restaurants offer punch cards for their frequent customers. Each time you go in, you can get your card punched and earn free dinner.
4. Order water. Sodas, tea, and alcohol can really spike your bill.
5. Purchase an Entertainment or Attractions Book. Each year, we buy at least one or two Attractions books. Most of the coupons are for buy 1 meal get 1 free. Not only does this save money, but this allows to you try new restaurants without feeling bad about the prices.
6. Check your mail and newspaper for coupons. On Wednesdays, we receive the new sales papers for the week and there are usually some coupons inside. Yesterday I received coupons for Golden Corral, Ryans, Hardees, and more.
7. Buy certificates from Restaurant.com. You click on their site, enter your zip code, and see which gift certificates are available in your area. You can usually buy a $25 certificate for $10. The great thing is, after you buy your first certificate, they send you emails offering them to you at discounted rates (such as 50% off).
8. If possible, avoid ordering kids’ meals. Kids’ meals are very pricey. Usually the adult meals have more than we can eat, so we share with our kids. Sometimes we’ll order a side item if we need it stretch a little further.
9. Skip the appetizers. We rarely order appetizers when eating out. If we do, we make this part of our meal. Sometimes hubby and I will order 1 meal and 1 appetizer. It’s more than we need.
10. Visit coupon websites. I just found out about these and I have already found coupons for places in my area!!!! :) Try Hot Coupons and Valpak. These would also be great when traveling, since you won’t have a newspaper or coupon book that you purchased.
Do you have any tips to add to this list?
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POSTED IN: Top 10 lists, frugal friday, money saving idea
17 opinions for 10 Ways to Save Money When Eating Out
Leslie
Feb 1, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Check to see if the chain has an online registration. We just went to Chuck E Cheese for the first time. Before we went I registered on their web site and I had one time only coupons that were better than the ones in the paper! Red Robin and Cold Stone have birthday clubs where you get free burger and ice cream on your birthday.
Kristina
Feb 1, 2008 at 5:20 pm
My husband said not to do Restaurant.com. he said he did something similar and he got so much spam he had to cancel his email account. Is this the case with this site?
Happy Housewife
Feb 1, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Some things we do are write the company of a restaurant we have visited and compliment the service (if they deserve it) and sometimes they will send a coupon in the mail. We also go to places with counter service like Panera, Jason’s Deli, Chipotle. They are usually cheaper and you don’t have to leave a tip which can save 4 to 6 dollars on a meal.
Thanks for the great ideas.
Toni
Jasmine31
Feb 1, 2008 at 6:51 pm
These are some great tips. Thanx so much for sharing. Check out the place online too. There are lots of coupons available.
Karen
Feb 1, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Kristina: I usually get 1-2 emails each week from Restaurant.com. They go to my junk mail box, so I just leave them there unless I need to use them.
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Feb 2, 2008 at 6:33 am
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Mighty Mommy
Feb 2, 2008 at 9:54 am
Just another note on the kids meals. If you have two kids, let them share and adult meal. For example, 5 and Diner has amazing mac & cheese, but if you get the kids meal, it’s just this little scoop for like $3.99. If you get the adult mac & cheese meal, it comes with a huge bowl, a pile of veggies, a roll AND soup or salad for …. $6.50.. You are getting twice the food and then some, for $1.50 LESS.. than if you bought 2 kids meals. So check the adult menu - get the extras and basically just ask for extra plates and share everything with everyone. I do this with breakfasts too.
We eat out WAY too much because hubby and I both have 2 jobs and no so much time to cook.
Thanks for the tips!
Cj
anon amos
Feb 2, 2008 at 12:28 pm
The real way to save on food is to -not- eat out. The markup is absurd… for example, pizza out costs say, 15 with tip for a large pizza with 2 toppings.
When I make 3 batches back to back (freezing most of the extra I won’t consume in the next day or 2), it takes about 80 min to make dough + sauce for 12 large pizzas, including time to clean up while dough is rising/pizza sauce is reducing. This means per piece of dough + sauce i’m spending 6 min, 40 sec. To actually stretch the dough, put on sauce, cheese, and any other toppings I want on, ~4 min per pizza. So, per pizza, cleanup time included, I spend about 10 min of time. For these 12 pizzas it takes about 1 bag of bread flour ($3.2), assorted small indgredients yeast, salt, olive oil, garlic for pizza sauce etc ($1.5), 1 can of crushed tomatoes ($.80 ), 1.5 lbs mozzerella ($3), other toppings (~$5) (I like pepperoni & pinapple with oregano). (costs taken from costco, shaws, whole foods(their yeast is suprisingly cheaper than shaws), and trader joe’s based on best deal) Thus, per pizza, I pay $1.12 with 10 min of work.
If you’re making $80 an hour for work, you still save more cooking for 10 min than working 10 min more and eating out. (the breakpoint where eating pizza out makes more sense is $83.25 hourly wage, or roughly 166.5k per year. Progressive (bracketed) taxes push the real number you need to ear a bit higher, but that’s messier math, so i’ll refrain) If you managed to get an ‘amazing’ deal of $7.50 for a large pizza out, tip included, you’d still need to be making 38.25 hourly to make eating out a wiser choice, financially if not taste wise (~76.5k full time salary).
Pricing comparison done on large pizzas which generally have less markup than smaller varieties, you get an even better deal at home when making smaller pizzas.
And we haven’t even really spoken of enjoyment yet… homemade pizza is better tasting. You get to choose exactly what, and how much, goes on. It’s easy to split pizzas up so everyone can make what they want, no argument over toppings. (Further, if children are doing their toppings, the time cost/pizza of the breadearners is reduces) Finally, while it may cost more than water at a resraunt, you can have something tastier to drink with the pizza without restraunt markup on drinks.
Martha Artyomenko
Feb 2, 2008 at 6:01 pm
We also do not eat out much, but when we do I have a couple of tips. We are a family of 6. My youngest two usually just like french fries and though that is not healthy, I have bought two children meals and a side of fries, plus the two adult meals and we have plenty of food and leftovers.
Check if resteraunts have special nights for kids eat free or Eat free on your birthday or aniversary. We have a couple who do that on special nights.
flybabymom
Feb 3, 2008 at 12:35 am
Don’t get the desserts, unless you are just going out for dessert. That’s one of the big places where restaurants make money–that, and drinks. The profits are much larger on desserts than entrees. Get a cookie at a bakery like Panera, or eat dessert at home. Eat the free mint!
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kellys
Feb 3, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I get hot tea for my dessert and they usually don’t charge me if I ask for a refill on my tea but instead of iced tea, I ask for Hot Tea. You have to ask though because sometimes, they do charge you and then I don’t get it.
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lylah ledner
Feb 4, 2008 at 10:53 am
excellent post - great ideas!!! i’ll have to come back another time to peruse what other goodies you have to share.
blessings….lylah
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