{"id":825,"date":"2016-05-18T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/?p=825"},"modified":"2016-05-18T07:22:34","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T13:22:34","slug":"a-free-lunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/a-free-lunch\/","title":{"rendered":"A free lunch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"I'm<\/a>
Bart knows how to birthday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don’t get as many birthday freebies as Bart Simpson does, but I think that I’ve signed up for more than most people. It takes a special kind of shamelessness to show up to a restaurant and only order what you’re getting for free.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The price you pay… and the secret<\/h2>\n

Many restaurants have email clubs that you can sign up for to get a free meal on your birthday. The price you pay for that freebie is that they get to market to you all year. Some send you an email once a week, some once a month, but all of those emails throughout the year add up to a significant drain on your time.<\/p>\n

Here’s my trick for dealing with those emails: filters<\/strong>. Every time I sign up for a restaurant’s emails, I add their “from” email address to a filter in my Gmail<\/a>. (Many chains use the the same email marketing company, Fishbowl, so you can add the fbmta.com<\/code> domain to your filter and kill a whole bunch of birds with one stone.)<\/p>\n

\"Gmail<\/a><\/p>\n

Whenever I get an email that matches the filter, Gmail adds a special label and automatically archives the email, so that I don’t see it in my Inbox. I get the best of both worlds: I’m not spending mental energy on reading and archiving emails throughout the year, but when my birthday rolls around, I can pull up that label folder and find all of the emails that have the birthday deals.<\/p>\n

The other reason that the restaurants have these birthday freebies is that they assume that you’ll bring your friends or family with you and spend a bunch of money. I generally short-circuit this by only bringing Sarah with me, since her birthday is just a few days after mine and we have the same coupons. A lot of the time, we’ll go into a place and walk out with two completely free meals, no questions asked.<\/p>\n

The list<\/h2>\n

My philosophy for email-club mooching is that the restaurant should give you a real meal for your birthday, not some of this “buy an entree and we’ll give you a dessert or an appetizer” silliness. (You can get that deal at basically any restaurant without<\/em> having the hassle of being part of their email club.) When I sign up for restaurant’s emails and I just<\/em> get a coupon for a dessert or appetizer with purchase when birthday time rolls around, I unsubscribe from that chain’s emails.<\/p>\n

This year, I added a few new restaurants, so I ended up with more freebies than I ever have before. I’ll go through them in the order that we redeemed them this year.<\/p>\n

Dickey’s Barbecue Pit<\/h3>\n

Aside from a toxic tea<\/a> scandal a couple of years back, we’ve always enjoyed Dickey’s. Their Big Yellow Cup Club<\/a> gets you a free Big Barbeque Sandwich that expires a week after your birthday.<\/p>\n

Rodizio Grill<\/h3>\n

This is a Brazilian steakhouse with an all-you-can-eat salad bar and grilled meats on skewers. Similar to Tucano’s, they require a purchase to get your free meal. This was the first year since we signed up for their Club Rodizio<\/a>, and I assumed that it would be similar to Tucano’s, so we were happy to do the BOGO deal. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in both the selection on the salad bar as well as the quality and taste of the meats. (They also didn’t do very well at bringing out a variety of doneness of meats. Everything was far too rare for our tastes.) I don’t know if we’ll go back next year.<\/p>\n

Denny’s<\/h3>\n

This is the only freebie that I have that you don’t have to sign up for. Anyone can go to any Denny’s restaurant to get a free Grand Slam combo (four of their breakfast items). The only caveat: you have to go on<\/em> your birthday to get the free breakfast.<\/p>\n

Krispy Kreme<\/h3>\n

When you join their Friends of Krispy Kreme<\/a> club, you get a free doughnut of your choice along with a free fountain drink.<\/p>\n

Noodles and Company<\/h3>\n

Their Eclub<\/a> used<\/em> to be good for a free noodle entree for your birthday. This year, we got a coupon for a free Rice Krispie treat instead. I like rice krispies just fine, but not enough to stick around for just that, so I’m unsubscribing from this email. At least it was a free-free dessert, not free-with-purchase.<\/p>\n

Rita’s Italian Ice<\/h3>\n

Joining their birthday club<\/a> gets you a free italian ice near your birthday. One of my favorites!<\/p>\n

Red Robin<\/h3>\n

This is always one of our favorites — a great value. Get a free burger and fries (or side salad) as a member of their Red Robin Royalty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Baskin Robbins<\/h3>\n

Get a free 1-scoop cone when you join their birthday club<\/a>. We have all of our kids signed up for this too, but a lot of times we don’t make it down to Orem before it expires.<\/p>\n

Rubio’s<\/h3>\n

This was the first year that we’d signed up for the Rubio’s Beach Club<\/a> and we think that this was a great find! Plenty of great-tasting food! You get a full entree (plus chips and salsa) to be used around your birthday.<\/p>\n

Pizza Studio<\/h3>\n

Another first for us this year, and another enthusiastic thumbs up! Joining their rewards program<\/a> gets you a free whole pizza. Quite nice.<\/p>\n

Culver’s<\/h3>\n

I have all of my kids signed up for their eClub<\/a> to get this freebie, so I’m there getting a free 1-scoop sundae every few months. (It’s a nice daddy-daughter date that we do with the kids, and it’s more conveniently located than Baskin Robbins for me.)<\/p>\n

Tucano’s<\/h3>\n

We saved the best for last this year. This is the way that Brazilian churrascaria should be. So good. Joining their Club Tucano’s<\/a> gets you a free meal anytime during the month of your birthday. The catch is that it’s not actually free, but a BOGO deal. We usually take another couple to share our two free meals, and each pay for one of the meals. Still so totally worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t get as many birthday freebies as Bart Simpson does, but I think that I’ve signed up for more than most people. It takes a special kind of shamelessness to show up to a restaurant and only order what you’re getting for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[161,163,162,164],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-birthday","tag-cheap","tag-freebies","tag-utah","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":839,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtisgibby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}