Just recently I celebrated my birthday. At age 34, I’m officially in my mid-30’s now. In some ways I’m feeling like I’m at a turning point in my life. Am I too old to be taking advantage of restaurants’ free birthday food?
Thinking about it a little bit, I’ve decided that I’m not. Free is free… and I like free. Also restuarants tend to make some good money with these promotions. For example, earlier this week I took advantage of Red Robin’s Free Birthday Burger and Coldstone Creamery’s Free Small Cup. Each of these restaurants made out pretty well by offering me free food. Red Robin got me and my wife in the door. We each had a beer and with her food tacked on we spent a little over $20 there. It’s not a bad deal for the restaurant for a burger and a sandwiches, some fries, and some cheap beer. Later, Coldstone Creamery also did quite well as my wife’s ice cream clearly covered the cost of the free one they were offering me.
I’m on the fence if I should expand my efforts for “free” birthday meals. GenXFinance points out some birthday deals that I could take advantage of. There’s a Denny’s and a Baskin Robbins near me. Do I really need multiple ice cream freebies deals?
I should also point out that if you lean towards the dark side, you could scam all these restaurants for free food. I have never had one of these places actually check my identification, which I find quite odd. I bet there are hundreds or thousands of people out there signing up for clubs under different email addresses so that each month they can take advantage of free food. I’ve seen people do a lot worse for a free meal. I suppose if you were going to pull it off, you’d want to claim to have no identification on you and see if they allow it or not. If they get to be a stickler and call your bluff, you’d have to leave to come back another day. Not that I’ve thought this too much…
Do belong to any birthday clubs? What’s the best perk you’ve gotten?
Benihana Birthday Dinner certificate, maximum value of $30
Taking a restaurant up on its offer of free birthday food – perfectly fine, even if you hit freebies at multiple restaurants in the same day. They’re doing it to make you a loyal customers (or a blogger who mentions them in an article), so they do get some value.
Lying about your birthday to get free food? Fraud, pure and simple. If you wouldn’t steal money out of the cash register, then don’t scam free birthday deals four months after your birthday.
You always need multiple ice cream freebies.
oooooh. Any mention of Benihana makes me salivate. :) Was it your birthday? I just had mine a few days ago too…. :)
I always do Benihanas and Chevy’s. Benihanas is really great, if you go at lunch, the 30 dollars covers you and 2 friends, since their lunch speacials are 10-12 dollars. Chevy’s gives one free entree, so I always get the free fajitas (in my area, a 15 dollar value). I usually don’t bother with the free desserts, because its usually ends up with me spending more money than I planned.
I printed out about 4 of these for my birthday this year and didn’t use a single one of them. Too many of them were for unhealthy food I don’t eat too often or maybe I just eat it at different places. The others were B1G1 free….that’s not a very good deal IMO.