How to Save Money when Dining Out with Restaurant.Com

With times being tough, more and more people are looking to save a buck. A friend of mine who knows I am thrifty sort of fellow suggested that I try Restaurant.com as a way of saving money via the web when I go out to eat.

Restaurant.com works by allowing you to pre-purchase coupons to various restaurants on line. A $25 coupon will generally costs about $10 on the site.

If you want to save even more money on your Restaurant.com gift card you can sign up for Mr. Rebates and get 25% cashback on all Restaurant.com purchases. With the 25% rebate a $25 gift card would only cost $7.50. In addition new Mr. Rebates subscribers get a $5 bonus for signing up. So a $25 Restaurant.com card would only cost $2.50. You can get more info on Mr. Rebates here: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=397582

My experience with Restaurant.com began after I got the recommendation from my friend. After looking into the site I found I could get a free $25 gift card for Restaurant.com from Swagbucks (a search and win internet portal that works like Google). So trying Restaurant.com would essentially be free for me. (BTW, Swagbucks is still giving out the free $25 gift cards to people who use their site. If you want more information on how Swagbucks works you can do so by going here: http://swagbucks.com/refer/getfreestuff )

After getting my $25 gift card I found that there were not a lot of Restaurants in my area that worked with Restaurant.com. Most of the ones that did work with them required a $35 purchase at the restaurant before you could use the $25 gift card.

So in essence the site Restaurant.com really works more as a restaurant coupon site than as an actual gift card site. You pay $10 up front in order to get $15 off a $35 meal.

In addition you have to go through the hassle of having to pay for your meal with some sort of pre-printed coupon (which is hardly ideal for a business meeting or a romantic date).

I think where Restaurant.com really could work for the user is for a pre-planned party or an event.

If you know you are having a set amount of people at a restaurant for a party on a particular date set in advance, pre buying the coupons off of Restaurant.com would make a lot of sense and probably save you a lot of money.

For example if you are having a party at a restaurant for one of your kids and their friends on a particular date. You are not planning on splitting the bill with anyone. The bill at the restaurant will most likely be around $250. Pre paying $40 to get you a $100 credit at restaurant would make the party much more affordable.

I ended up using my gift card to pay for a big take out order to "cater" dinner at my house when we had people over. That way none of my guest had to know I was pulling out the discount coupon to pay for the spread.

But outside of the special occasion use, using Restaurant.com for every day dining just seems like a hassle.