4 Easy Ways to Save Money When Dining Out

If eating out costing you a fortune, here’s some easy ways to save money when dining out. Have your cake and eat it too!

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If I’m honest, I dislike cooking very much. Naturally, I love going out to eat.

What I don’t like as much, is spending over $20 per person on one. single. meal.

So I set out to find some easy ways to save money in a way that I could still eat out at least a couple of times a month.

Here’s what I found.

Soft Drinks Are Incredibly Overpriced

This may an obvious one, but for the price of a single cup of soda at a restaurant, you could buy about two big bottles.

Not only that, but sodas are generally known to be bad for you. A healthier – and cheaper – alternative? Stick to water with lemon.

Add a little sweetener to turn it into a delicious lemonade.

Love Rewards? There’s an App for that!

Do you have a few restaurants that you visit often?

If so, an easy way to save money without cutting out dining completely off your budget is to sign up for your favorite restaurants’ rewards programs.

Not only do these programs offer regular discounts as well as birthday and special occasion discounts, but you’ll also be the first to know about special offers and promotions.

Some of my favorite?

Chick Fil-A

For a fast and casual dining experience, Chick-Fil-A offers you a reward of your choice for every few visits.

If you use their app (get it here for iPhone or Android), you can track how far away are you from your next reward, order ahead, and more.

Chili’s

By signing up for their rewards program, you get a choice of chips and salsa or a soft drink in every visit.

Get their app for iPhone or Android to easily add and reorder your favorite meals, find the nearest restaurant, and more.

Starbucks

For the coffee lovers, the Starbucks rewards program allows you to accumulate points through their app (click here for Android devices).

This can then be used to pay for a drink later, as well as receive special offers on your birthday and promotional times throughout the year.

Dine Rewards

This program offers up to $40 off your meal every fourth meal. It’s available at participating restaurants and without a limit as to how many rewards you can earn. Check it out here.

One Meal is Often Too Much

Another easy way to save money when dining out is to well, eat less.

Do you routinely find yourself feeling stuffed before finishing your restaurant meal? Next time you’re dining out with friends or family, split a meal with someone else.

If you don’t think it will be enough to fill out both of you, compliment it with a side soup or salad.

This will ensure you both have plenty of delicious food and your tab will still be cheaper than two full meals.

You may also ask your server about portion sizes and the difference between a regular and a large, for example.

While dining at a Tex-Mex restaurant recently, I had ordered two regular chicken quesadillas to feed two people.

The server was nice enough to let me know that if I upgraded to a large, I would be getting the exact amount of food for almost half the price!

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Menus May Set You up to Fail

Have you ever wondered how much thought goes into a restaurant menu?

A lot!

From the font that is used to how the prices are presented, menus are often designed to lower down your defenses and make you spend more than what you have to.

Here’s some common tactics to watch out for:

Missing Dollar Signs

Many menus present their prices as a nice whole number, like 14, instead of stating the price at $14.30.

By doing this, menu designers hope to make your brain ignore the fact that your meal will actually cost money.

One simple way to combat this is to think of your purchases in terms of hours worked.

Is that meal you’re about to have worth an hour of your work?

By thinking this way, you can determine more objectively how much things are worth to you. This way you can ensure you’re only spending money on items that are truly going to add value to your life.

Item Placement

The first couple of items listed at the top of the menu are often the most ordered.

Whether this happens out of laziness or convenience, restaurants may take advantage of this! They’ll place items that have been more heavily marked up at the top of the page.

Featured Items

Similarly, restaurants will often present items with a higher profit margin as a featured item, devoting more space on the menu to it.

Wordiness

Restaurants may also use more words than needed to describe an item.

They often using words that feed our imagination and tickle our taste buds, in order to make a sale based on emotion rather than logic.

Beware of these tactics!

To avoid overpaying for an item, take a couple of minutes and, in your head, think at a high level about how much the item will cost. Include tax and tip!

Additionally, be sure to see the menu item for what it really is.

Instead of focusing on the wording on the menu, break it down to the basics of the ingredients the item contains.

This will help you determine if that particular item is worth it to you, instead of buying something out of impulse.

I fell for this one just the other day.

It was lunchtime, and I was trying to find something healthy but not completely overpriced. I settled for a salmon dish that said came with cauliflower, spinach and other items.

It sounded delicious, hearty, and reasonably priced.

I was really surprised when the dish came out! That’s when I realized all those extra ingredients were part of a sauce that sat under the salmon.

I ended up paying a whopping $18 for a small piece of salmon sitting on a fancy sauce.

Even more sad, I was still hungry by the time I finished eating it 🙁

Final Thoughts

I do want to emphasize that cooking at home will almost always be cheaper than going out to eat.

Since we often eat out because of the convenience of the food being prepared for us, an easy way to save money is to avoid the temptation of going out to eat. To do this, make sure you have the right tools at home.

Personally, I have purchased a few small appliances that pretty much cook for me. That way dinner is ready when I get home in the evening or I can prepare it in a matter of minutes.

However, if you’re used to eating out quite often, it’s probably a bad idea to cut it out of your budget completely.

If dining out truly brings joy to your life, be sure to include a meal or two in your monthly budget. Then, use these tips to stick to it.

Better yet, use the experience of dining out as a reward to stick to your budget all month long.

By not making your budget feel like a prison to you, you’ll have a better chance to succeed at, and even enjoy, budgeting.

Speaking of budgets, if you want to find out more about sticking to yours, check out my free Guide to Budgeting here!

If you enjoy dining out as much as I do, you don’t have to blow your budget to have a great time at your favorite restaurant.

Use rewards as much as you can, beware of marketing tactics, and remember to have an awesome time!

What is your favorite restaurant and why? Let us know in the comments below!