Can You Eat At Restaurants On A Budget With ‘Good Deals’ From Companies Like Restaurant.com?

I came across a special deal on Restaurant.com some time back where they were offering $25 meals for only $3.

Needless to say, I purchased 10 of these coupons. The thought of getting a $23 savings on a restaurant meal was too good to pass up. My husband agreed.

While this was an extraordinary deal, Restaurant.com normally offers discounts of $15 selling $25 gift certificates for only $10. This is still a great deal.

How It Works

To take advantage of Restaurant.com‘s gift certificate deals you need to sign up on the site, enter your zip code, pick your gift certificates, and pay.

You don’t have to print out all of your coupons when you purchase them — you only have to sign in and print the coupon when you are willing to use it.

 

My Experience With Restaurant.com

So I purchased the coupons about 3 month ago, haven’t used them yet. What happened? Well first of all, the restaurant choices were very limited and a little out of the way. Second, you have to spend up to a certain amount to use the gift certificate.

For instance, to use the $25 gift certificate, you need to spend $35 and pay the tip based on that higher amount. For my family of 4, this means we need to order a lot of food (because the restaurants where we have the certificates have good prices).

The other catch is that there are black-out hours when you cannot use the certificates. We found this out the hard way.

Fortunately for us, we got the extra good price on the gift certificates, but at the normal $10 price, I don’t think I would buy them unless the restaurant was right near my house and I could get there during the allowed times, and I was entertaining guests.

As for the certificates I have, I am thinking about selling them as a mini-fundraiser for an upcoming event for my daughter.