There are two avenues I use to save when I eat out.

First up: Card-Linked Offers – These are programs whereby you can enroll your major credit and/or debit card and when you dine at a participating restaurant you can earn cash back, hotel points and/or airline miles.

Typically you will see a mix of local and national chains in these programs. And you will see the same restaurants across many programs b/c many companies license the same restaurants from a company called RewardsNetwork.

I highly recommend you utilize the following programs to receive cash back when dining:

Cash Back:

Rakuten Dining – Please see my full review on Rakuten (my favorite cash back general service) but as well they added dining a couple years back and you do NOT have to activate the offers to earn, just spend on the card you linked to the account you create, that is it! You will get a whopping $30 bonus upon your first use of Rakuten for cash back if you sign up via this link.

GetUpside – Please see my other review of GetUpside but a high level this is THE app to get discounts on gas fill ups! And it also has discounts at various restaurants too. The key is you MUST activate the restaurant offer before you spend at the restaurant (same with the gas discount offers too). You will get an extra $.15/gallon bonus when you use this link.

Note: Your favorite airline/hotel program likely also has a dining rewards program. Most major airlines work with RewardsNetwork to enable you to earn miles/points when you dine including but not limited to: Marriott Bonvoy, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Hilton Honors, Alaskan Airlines…Please visit these sites to double up on the reward opportunity (note: you will only be able to enroll your payment card into one of the airline/hotel programs at a time so choose your favorite).

Second up: Gift Cards – There are a host of platforms that sell discounted gift cards to various restaurants and retailers. For instance, as a write this you can purchase a California Pizza Kitchen gift card for 18.8% off…and who does not want to save that cash, seriously.

Not to mention a 7.1% discount at Lululemon, 4.2% discount at Starbucks, etc…. is available for purchase at the moment. And if you have a teenage daughter, like I do, you will need that 7.1% Lululemon discount!!

Raise is the most frequent app that I use to buy gift cards. Please follow this link to download the mobile app and you will get $5 in Raise Cash for using this link.