Hello Savvy Saver!
Here are some quick savings tips that require very little work on your part and pay huge dividends.
My wife and I love eating out. I’m not a big fast food fan (at all), so when we eat out, I like to go to a sit down restaurant and do some savoring. (You can’t savor McDonald’s now can you?) Eating out can be extremely expensive! Here are some dead simple things you can do to cut your bill by about 75 percent.
Split the Entree
Most every restaurant serves portions that are way too big for you, or anyone else! Not only will you save yourself some money, but you’ll also save some calories as well! It’s pretty difficult, in the moment, to actually want to just split an entrée because there’s a lot of enjoyment that comes from picking what you want and knowing there’ll be plenty. We’ve become so accustomed to large portions now that we think splitting an entrée won’t be enough. It will! And if you’re really worried that you’ll honestly still be hungry, split an appetizer, soup or salad.
Go Out to Lunch
If your circumstances allow, and you have the itch to go out, make it a lunch date. Lunch entrees are usually 20-30% less than their (similarly-sized) dinner entrees.
Let’s take a quick break here and crunch a few numbers:
If your Friday night dinner usually runs $40 with tip, and you split the entrée and go for an appetizer, you’ll easily knock 25% off your bill. Instead of two $16 entrees and a tip, you’re looking at one $16 entrée, a $7 appetizer and a tip: $30 (and that’s a very generous tip).
If you choose to have the night out at lunch, you’ll easily knock it down to $24.
But now the fun begins.
If you’re smart and plan a little bit, you’ll knock even a dinner meal down to the rock-bottom. Here’s how.
Use Gift Certificates Strategically
My favorite little secret: restaurant.com. Restaurant.com has a database of over 8,000 restaurants across the country. Not every restaurant’s participating, but I can quickly enter my zip code and figure which restaurants are available. Restaurant.com basically sells gift certificates for these restarants, at a discount.
As I write this I’m looking at a nice little sushi place down the road where I can buy a $25 gift certificate for $10. Now on this specific restaurant, they require you have a $35 dinner purchase (read the stipulations for each restaurant), so I couldn’t use it during lunch, and I’d still have to spend another $10. I’m basically saving 43% — not bad!
Do make sure you read the stipulations. You can only use one gift certificate per visit and some of them require that you purchase two entrees (they’re on to us). Others have it only valid for lunch, or only valid for dinner. Most of them have a minimum spend on there (for obvious reasons). If it’s a $10 certificate (cost: $3) then your minimum spend is usually $25. A $25 gift certificate usually will have a minimum spend of $35. Some restaurants even exclude drinks (and most exclude alcohol).
Wait — this Just Got a LOT Better
Every once in a while, restaurant.com will run a special where they’re giving a discount on the gift cards. You’ll see discounts of 70-80% fairly regularly if you google around a bit. So, going back to our example with the sushi place:
$25 gift certificate costs $3 (normally $10, but we used a 70% off coupon).
Additional spend to reach the minimum is $10.
Meal Cost: $35
Your Cost: $13 + tip
Savings: 63% – tip
You can enjoy a $35 meal of sushi (or something else if sushi isn’t your thing!) for $13 plus a tip. Now that’s not too bad at all!
Have fun eating out for less!
Just remember, the polite tip is figured off of the amount spent BEFORE any discounts. So for the sushi example:
$25off coupon $3
minimum meal $35
minus discount($25)
subtotal $13
tip $4.75 ( good service, waiter is nice, 15% tip )
total $17.75
I’ve always been unsure what percent to tip; I generally tip a little generously, but if I have bad service I tip horribly, maybe only 7% if it’s not very good and they don’t seem like they’re trying at all. Hope to see if anyone else has views on this.
David, great point. I usually tip at 20% unless my drink goes empty …then 15% :) One time I received service so horrible (and I’m not picky, I worked for tips in high school) that I actually left one penny. I honestly think our server may have been tipsy at the time.
I use the Restaurant.com certificates all of the time!
Slickdeals.net will post the deal on their front page whenever Restaurant.com has the big discounts.
We frequent a local Mexican place with the certificates. Every time my wife and I go, we order FOUR full meals (2 big burritos, beans & rice, chips & salsa) and leave paying under $20, including tip. We have to order four meals to get over the $35 minimum. It makes lunch/dinner the next day very easy.
I have waited tables. I tip generously. I don’t tip generously if the person is rude or nevers comes back when they aren’t busy. The food quality is not the server’s fault, but negotiating a recook is their job if something isn’t right.
I tip extra well if the restaurant is slow. I also think in this economy, if you can afford it– tip extra well. Business may be slow (even if the restaurant appears busy) and a lot of servers are working their way through school or are single parents. They could even have other jobs to make ends meet. Money is fluid, it will come back to you.
If everyone waited tables once in their lives, we would have a much friendlier world in my opinion.
Thought of something else, no matter what the cost of the meal, I never tip less than $1 per person and $1 for the table. Mexican can be especially cheap menu prices. Think about it, would you want to wait on someone for less than $1? When I eat alone, never less than $2. But sometimes up to 50% of the meal on a cheap eat.
Right on Jesse for being a generous tipper! If you can’t afford to be generous, eat out less. I used to give great service and have good rapport and then occassionally someone would leave a crummy tip. I chalk it up to either they didn’t know that I made $2.13/hr, didn’t understand the concept, or were cheap– but I know others took a much dimmer view…
I personally tip 20% and round up. I’m a big tipper. I know waitresses, so I know what it’s like for them. They get taxed on a certain percentage of the bill whether or not they receive that much in tip or not. I always try to tip high. It’s only an extra dollar or two tops and it helps them out.
My wife and I have been using the restaurant.com thing for a little while, and it generally works out pretty well. We can go to nicer places than fast food, and often get fast food prices. The tip is often a moot point, as the restaurant.com coupons we’ve used have all listed an 18% automatic gratuity on the amount before the coupon is applied.
That being said, I don’t necessarily tip based on the price of the bill. For the most part I tip about $4-5, and we generally have a $30-40 meal (before any coupons). I am not at all opposed to leaving no tip if the service is so slow that drinks don’t ever get refilled (assuming the place offers free refills, of course), or if the wait staff drops off the drinks and then disappears for 20 minutes while I’m sitting there ready to place my order and hungry. For the most part I sympathise with people who make the better part of their living off of tips, but you’ve got to earn the tip. It’s not an automatic.
Beware of restaurant.com’s surveys. After taking one of their satisfaction surveys they began charging my debit card every week or so. After 5 charges, I had to cancel my debit card. Just be sure and read the fine print!
As for tipping, if you can’t afford to tip $5 or 20% of the bill, whichever is more, then you shouldn’t go out to eat. If you have bad service talk to the manager don’t just leave a bad tip. Maybe your server has a much more needy table that is occupying all of their time. You don’t know what is going on when they are not at your table.
Woah, Sarah — do you have a link to one of their surveys, or any fine print I could look at? That alarms me. I don’t like being hoodwinked, and I certainly don’t want to be sending people off to have the wool pulled over their eyes…
My one tip is stop ordering drinks in restaurants and just ask for (non-bottled) water. This is where restaurants make their biggest profit off you. A large soft drink is carbonated water with corn syrup and some artificial flavorings. A lemonade is water with sugar or corn syrup and some lemon juice. A cup of tea, hot or iced, is boiled water with sugar and flavorings. Bottled water is just … water. And plastic (which may or may not get recycled). They all cost the restaurant pennies at wholesale and they charge you dollars.
Likewise on dessert. I know. I know. Dessert is the whole reason some people go out to restaurants. But for one slice of dessert, a restaurant may charge you what it cost them to make the whole cake or pie. If you must, go to the bakery next store, buy a cake and bring it home with you. You’ll pay less for the food and you won’t need to tip.
This is a great tip Jesse, I have been using restaurant.com for a few months, and it has helped keep my marriage happy! I say that completely without sarcasm, my husband (of almost one year) is a reformed 1-2x/week restaurant eater, as in sit-down, chain restaurants. This site has allowed us to eat out 1-2x/month, and experience new LOCAL restaurants. Great for our budget and great for the local economy.
Come to New Zealand.
Tips are not common, nor expected. Wait staff get paid (reasonably) well anyway. As such, any tips are generally shared between all staff, as it’s a team effort (you can have wonderful service but if the cook’s been slacking off, you’re not going to tip, are you?)
Anyway, tipping is not common here, but welcomed nonetheless. Come to my Dad’s steak house – best steak in town! (Christchurch, but I won’t be a spammer and say where it is. It’s obvious when you get here). LOL
Also, try http://www.groupon.com a deal every day where you can get gift certs at a huge discount for food, massages, auto work, you name it!
Alas, the site doesn’t work in Canada.