In her 35 years as a journalist, she has written for papers ranging in size from the weekly Portland Tenn. Leader to The Los Angeles Times. She was an editor for the Miami Herald for more than 17 years, overseeing coverage of home, real estate, family and other subjects. She has also been a contributor to The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News and other publications.

Teresa owns and operates Miami On The Cheap , Florida On The Cheap , Fort Lauderdale On The Cheap , Palm Beach On The Cheap and Orlando On The Cheap. Local on the Cheap sites. Join 8, cheapskates and get our free daily newsletter, filled with valuable advice to help you live better on less.

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Search this site Photo: Deposit Photos. Photo: MOD Pizza. Tuesday Drops at Taco Bell Every Week am to pm Discounted Taco Bell. Einstein Bros. Bagels Offers FREE Coffee Every Day am to pm FREE Einstein Bros.

Reusable Cup Earns Bonus at Starbucks am to pm Discounted Starbucks. Enjoy FREE Buttermilk Pancakes at IHOP am to pm FREE IHOP. Amid rising costs, ways to save may require thinking outside of the box.

This may include, for example, using coupon apps, loyalty programs and cash-back credit cards with high cash-back rates. As the holiday season nears another way involves looking for more more deals. Last year, major retailers including Walmart and Kroger offered discounts for bargain holiday meal planning.

Jamie Feldman is a journalist, essayist and content creator. Her journey out of credit card debt, which she chronicles on TikTok, has amassed a loyal social media following. Her story has been featured in Fortune, Business Insider and on The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CBS News, and NPR.

She is currently producing a podcast on the same topic and living in Brooklyn, New York. Are you ready for retirement but uncertain about what comes next? Proactive planning can help ensure your path to a happy retirement.

The Kiplinger Letter Drinkers of Anheuser-Busch beers may want to stock up soon. A looming strike threatens to shutter its U. breweries later this month. By Sean Lengell Published 10 February Kiplinger is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

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We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around

Economical food promotions - Missing We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around

Charlotte on the Cheap. Chicago on the Cheap. Columbus on the Cheap. Mile High Denver on the Cheap. Hawaii on the Cheap. Kansas City on the Cheap.

Vegas Living on the Cheap. Madison on the Cheap. Myrtle Beach on the Cheap. Orlando on the Cheap. Phoenix on the Cheap. Portland Living on the Cheap. RVA on the Cheap. Greater Seattle on the Cheap.

Triangle on the Cheap. South Florida on the Cheap. Southern Maine on the Cheap. All Our Cities. Skip to primary navigation Skip to secondary navigation Skip to main content Skip to primary sidebar Skip to footer.

Search this site Latest Restaurant Coupons and Deals Red Robin is offering two sweet deals for Valentine's Day couples! Tuesday Drops at Taco Bell Every Week am to pm Discounted Taco Bell. Einstein Bros. Bagels Offers FREE Coffee Every Day am to pm FREE Einstein Bros.

Reusable Cup Earns Bonus at Starbucks am to pm Discounted Starbucks. Enjoy FREE Buttermilk Pancakes at IHOP am to pm FREE IHOP. Panera Bread's Unlimited Sip Club Offers Discounted Beverages am to pm Discounted Panera Bread.

Red Robin Offers Gift Card Discount Online am to pm Discounted Red Robin. Taco Bell's Cravings Value Menu am to pm Discounted Taco Bell. Red Lobster Offers Family Meal Deals am to pm Discounted Red Lobster.

Kids Eat FREE at Red Lobster am to pm FREE Red Lobster. Get Buy-One-Get-One FREE Shake at Shake Shack pm to pm Discounted Shake Shack.

IHOP Happy Hour Specials at IHOP pm to pm Discounted IHOP. Half-Price Cheeseburgers at Sonic pm to pm Discounted Sonic Drive-In. FREE Pie Wednesday at Village Inn am to pm FREE Village Inn.

QDOBA Mexican Eats: Buy-One-Get-One-FREE Entree on Valentine's Day am to pm Discounted QDOBA Mexican Eats. Tips and Tricks for Eating Out for Less. Get Our Free Newsletter! Find Deals and Free Events in These Cities. Footer Atlanta on the Cheap. You can get a cheap meal for two people right now at Popeyes.

And if you get there before Feb. Wendy's has all kinds of freebies and coupons in the Offers section of its mobile app this month, including a free Dave's Single burger with any purchase. Check out more Wendy's deals for this month , including Rewards and delivery specials.

Choose a specialty like a Crunchwrap, plus a taco or Beefy 5-Layer Burrito, a side, and a drink. Related: Live Más and Stretch Your Dollar With These Taco Bell Value Menu Items. McDonald's has brought back its best deal for Free Fries Friday.

Related: How To Get Free Fast Food. Burger King is continuing its free fries promotion in You can get one free any size fry each week with purchase when you use the mobile app. For more great fast-food tips, please sign up for our free newsletters.

Buckets of KFC chicken make for an easy meal on busy weeknights or a stress-free Super Bowl party. Little Caesars does cheap pizza well, but the prices have recently increased — the second time since the pandemic started.

We still recommend paying a dollar more to get Extra Most Bestest pies for more cheese and more pepperoni, making the chain noticeably better than cheaper pizza chains. The upgrade is worth the extra change.

Family meals at Panda Express are a crowd pleaser. Who doesn't like orange chicken and fried rice? If that code doesn't work, give FLBOGO for buy-one-get-one-free-footlongs a try, because Subway tends to cycle between those two codes.

For once, Pizza Hut's deals recently got better. Options include medium one-topping pizzas, Melts, boneless wings, cheese sticks, breadsticks, pastas, and desserts.

The Boneless Meal Deal comes with 20 boneless wings tossed in up to four sauce or rub flavors, plus a large fries and two dips. Plus, you can get boneless wings for 70 cents each on Mondays and Tuesdays. Trying to decide which flavors to order? We ranked the best Wingstop flavors to help you make the call.

Domino's has a unique, free "emergency" pizza deal going on right now to promote its new rewards program launch. Plus, you can get bread, chicken, sandwiches, pasta, salads, and dessert for the same price. The best Arby's deal in years decades? has ended, but another has appeared.

You can mix and match from Classic Roast Beef, Crispy Fish, and Fish 'n Cheddar sandwiches. Like Domino's and Pizza Hut, Papa Johns has a buy-two-or-more deal. That's a lot of variety to satisfy everyone.

Most people know about Sonic's happy hour, but you can actually get the same deals all the time. All you have to do is order online or in the app. You can also get half-price cheeseburgers every Tuesday after 5 p.

when you order online or through the app. The best deal at Del Taco is the long-running Taco Nights promotion.

February Food Deals: 6 FREE Wings at Buffalo Wild Wings on Feb. The Krazy Coupon Lady is an independent service supported by TL;DR - Top 10 Proven Restaurant Promo Ideas For In a hurry? We' We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted: Economical food promotions

Don't be fooled oromotions there Economical food promotions such a thing Free sample website comparison a promotionw lunch. Drive more prmotions orders to your restaurant. Hundreds of brands like Epic Meal Time Sample travel resources created multimillion-dollar media empires with over-the-top, showstopper meal creations that are more about the spectacle than the meal itself. Google is so important to your restaurant that we created this guide on restaurant SEO. Offering samples is a great way to drive sales. Take back control of your margins, customer data, and online reputation.	Restaurant Weeks are very popular and tend to get coverage from both social media and local media. A lot of restaurants using a point system forget to tell their customers exactly how it works or help them track their points, which ultimately defeats the purpose of having the system in the first place. One creative idea is to partner with businesses and organizations that need meeting space during your non-service or even low-service hours. There is no better advertising than word of mouth, which means new customers guaranteed. And if you get there before Feb.	We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around	February Food Deals: 6 FREE Wings at Buffalo Wild Wings on Feb. The Krazy Coupon Lady is an independent service supported by At Taco Bell, one of the cheapest, but most delicious options on the menu is cheesy nachos for just around $2 We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around	We have compiled a list of our favorite restaurant food deals from the week for all you busy or tired peeps out there! 1. Popeyes: $12 Two Can Dine Meal · 2. Wendy's: Free Dave's Single Burger · 3. Taco Bell: $6 Build Your Own Cravings Box Missing
This one is less about Free art supplies for photographers offer you fod and promktions about how Sample travel resources present your brand. Southern Maine on the Cheap. Vegas Economical food promotions on the Cheap. Share this: Click to share on Facebook Opens in new window Click to share on X Opens in new window Click to share on Pinterest Opens in new window Click to share on H2S Email Opens in new window Click to share on SMS Opens in new window. Einstein Bros.	To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. Business card giveaways are an old strategy, but just like many of the strategies in this category, they remain effective today. CNET rating out of 10 9. Good for Keto, paleo, Whole30, gluten-free Mediterranean, vegan, vegetarian, high-protein. Just like a popup allows you to experiment with creating a new experience, you can achieve something similar while also building customer loyalty by holding exclusive dining events for members. Our list of the healthiest meal delivery services for is a good place to find all the most nutritious options.	We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around	1. Popeyes: $12 Two Can Dine Meal · 2. Wendy's: Free Dave's Single Burger · 3. Taco Bell: $6 Build Your Own Cravings Box If you're looking for the best fast food deals to keep your wallet and your stomach full, take a look at these great deals available right now! Burger King Large Fries for $ -- app has free fries with any purchase, choose inexpensive purchase	We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around
The code will issued via direct message prlmotions Instagram and Consumer Sampling Programs be used Promtions curbside takeout or delivery from February 19th through March 8th! Better Planet Mondays. Cons Not as many healthy options No customization allowed. Russia-Ukraine War. You can unsubscribe at any time. Feb 09, PM MST.	At the same time, these types of accounts tend to grow so quickly that k followers nowadays is considered pretty small. Her story has been featured in Fortune, Business Insider and on The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CBS News, and NPR. Sign up for our newsletter. South Florida on the Cheap. Restaurant Weeks are very popular and tend to get coverage from both social media and local media. Some of the services listed here are healthy prepared meal delivery services , sending fully cooked meals -- often frozen or partially frozen -- and ready to eat when you receive them. Who says you have to dine at a fancy … [Read More	We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around	Craving some incredible food? Look no further for amazing deals on dining experiences at your top-choice restaurants There are so many FREE and cheap food deals you can get today! Here are the top 10 favorites! TL;DR - Top 10 Proven Restaurant Promo Ideas For In a hurry? We'	There are so many FREE and cheap food deals you can get today! Here are the top 10 favorites! If you're looking for the best fast food deals to keep your wallet and your stomach full, take a look at these great deals available right now! Here are the best restaurant deals we know of for the upcoming week. Plan your meals out for the best day of the week for a discount
Skip to Economical food promotions navigation Ecknomical to secondary navigation Skip Fitness freebies main content Skip Ecoonmical primary primotions Skip to footer. Our platform then automatically sends out periodic offers to each customer based on their order history. Double Big Macs, Fish Sandwiches, and More New Fast-Food Items To Try This Month. You can get a cheap meal for two people right now at Popeyes. Subscribe to Thrillist Daily.	A looming strike threatens to shutter its U. The same thing less the juice box from the adult menu costs slightly more. Charlotte on the Cheap. It takes all the hard work you are already putting into your restaurant business — all the branding, marketing, customer service, menu optimization, etc. Israel at War. Consider inviting these partners along on your tour nights so customers can learn more about their offerings as well. The Longmont-based coffee shop is showing its loyal customers lots of love by offering them sweet surprises all month long.	We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around	1. Popeyes: $12 Two Can Dine Meal · 2. Wendy's: Free Dave's Single Burger · 3. Taco Bell: $6 Build Your Own Cravings Box Here are the best restaurant deals we know of for the upcoming week. Plan your meals out for the best day of the week for a discount If you're looking for the best fast food deals to keep your wallet and your stomach full, take a look at these great deals available right now!	At Taco Bell, one of the cheapest, but most delicious options on the menu is cheesy nachos for just around $2 Craving some incredible food? Look no further for amazing deals on dining experiences at your top-choice restaurants Burger King Large Fries for $ -- app has free fries with any purchase, choose inexpensive purchase

Economical food promotions - Missing We've rounded up all the current restaurant specials, including free food, weekday food deals, BOGO offers, restaurant coupons and discounted 1. The meal has to be right around $5. 2. We're looking for the best food the joint offers on a budget. It's not about We've found every way you can score discounts, use coupons, and find the cheapest fast food around

This one is for the adventurous only! Tongue blistering, one slice of that pizza would be doused with a chilli sauce they claimed to be as hot as police pepper spray.

coffee card and offer to trade it in for a free coffee at your restaurant. You may see your restaurant as just a normal business, but to a diner, there is always a little bit of intrigue about what happens behind the scenes.

If you get a new staff member, proudly introduce them to your customers. The U. There are companies like BuffetGo and Food For All, that allow customers to buy your leftover meals at discounted prices.

Craft festivals, food markets, or music events are all great places to have a small pop-up restaurant. Head over to Google My Business and set up your restaurant for free, and make sure your customers have everything they need to find you. Google is so important to your restaurant that we created this guide on restaurant SEO.

People love a bit of digital validation, so why not give it to them on Instagram, by making them famous for a day? Praise them for their fine choice in dining as well as their photography skills.

Returning customers will always be your best customers, so by looking after them, you will see familiar faces filling tables consistently every night. We live in odd times, where some people enjoy taking photos of their food - perhaps even more than eating it.

Let your snap-happy foodies do some free restaurant promotion for you by encouraging them to share their images on Instagram. This is free advertising from your customers themselves. There is no better advertising than word of mouth, which means new customers guaranteed.

Like it or not, food delivery is here to stay. You can add a lot of revenue to your bottom line with a food delivery system. But that doesn't mean you have to "bend the knee" to the ridiculously high fees of companies like DoorDash and Ubereats.

In fact, you can build your very own delivery system with the Owner platform. com restaurant partners:. The Owner. com platform does all of these things automatically through our software, but you can do these manually as well. When done correctly, great restaurant promotions get people in the door AND keep them coming back.

It takes all the hard work you are already putting into your restaurant business — all the branding, marketing, customer service, menu optimization, etc. com restaurant partners double their monthly revenue within a year by adding in the right promotion strategies. And to be clear, you don't need to implement everything on this list just doing a few of these things can really make a difference for your business!

Most of the ideas in this guide focus on taking simple actions that will result in moderate bumps in attention. Many can be done repeatedly and only take a few minutes to set up.

These viral promotion ideas will require a bit more creativity, time, or investment. Hell Pizza had its biggest sales day of all time during this promotional event and saw an overall increase in sales at a time when the local economy was struggling. This is a great example of how running a challenge-type event for your customers can grab attention and increase sales.

At the same time, these types of accounts tend to grow so quickly that k followers nowadays is considered pretty small.

The rise of food bloggers and micro-influencers has been a mixed bag of experiences for restaurant owners. Every other week, we hear a new story about entitled influencers walking around demanding freebies.

But in reality, the vast majority of these individuals are just regular people who are passionate about food and working hard to create content to build what is essentially a media business. The key to this type of restaurant marketing is understanding how to align your incentives with the influencers you are trying to work with.

One of our partners named Leo Mattias — owner of Cilantro Lime in downtown Los Angeles — has nailed this formula. He reaches out to micro-influencers like Mexi Papa and offers to name a new menu item after them while inviting them for a fully filmed, behind-the-scenes tour.

In many cases, these types of collaborations only cost the restaurant some time and effort. What can we learn from 33 million people watching a video of random guys turning fast food into a giant lasagna?

One of the great things about social media is you no longer have to guess about what draws attention. All you have to do is look around to see what gets people excited. Hundreds of brands like Epic Meal Time have created multimillion-dollar media empires with over-the-top, showstopper meal creations that are more about the spectacle than the meal itself.

Is there a showstopper dish you could create in-house that could really get people talking? Sit down with your chef and see what you can come up with to make a splash on social media.

This restaurant promotion idea can potentially combine the benefits of both a showstopper meal and a micro-influencer. Today, thanks to sites like Youtube, Tiktok, and Instagram, there are millions of amateur, semi-pro, and professional chefs with large online followings.

A large percentage of these chefs are solely online content creators and have never worked for a restaurant. They are struggling to monetize their following, and many of them are looking for ways to establish their cooking legitimacy offline.

This is a great opportunity for local restaurants to partner with popular online chefs who are looking to make offline moves that build their brand. This type of promotion has a ton of upside and very little downside, and I could see it being a staple strategy for restaurants five years from now.

In a low-margin industry like restaurants, the best promotions maximize perceived value while minimizing cost. This is a concept the gambling industry has perfected, and we can take a page out of their book with a promotion where the house always wins.

Promotions like this are fun, funny, and endearing, and they provide some buzz and entertainment value rather than feeling like a sales technique. If you check your wallet right now, you probably have a handful of loyalty cards from various restaurants, cafes, or other businesses.

All you have to do is offer a low-cost freebie — for example, coffee — in exchange for loyalty cards from local companies. You could even offer better freebies for cards that have been marked with points.

This is a fun way to steal even loyal customers from your competitors while making the customer feel like you are trading them high-value food items rather than low-cost freebies.

There are a wide variety of motivations behind this, but if you can facilitate this documentation as a restaurant, you are going to get thousands of dollars worth of free advertising from the people who visit your restaurant. A selfie station is an aesthetically pleasing backdrop designed and placed in a way that people can easily sit or stand in front of and take pictures of themselves or have others take pictures of them.

These photos and hundreds more if you keep scrolling were all taken and published by customers on their own individual Instagram accounts.

This is for a very small, local cafe with just over 4, Instagram followers, and this one little wall is generating hundreds of free advertisements for their business. A food truck is the perfect way to show up wherever the action is and put your brand and food in front of new people in your local area.

Food trucks are also relatively low cost, extremely lucrative, and double as an ongoing, mobile source of promotion for your restaurant. Imagine bringing in that extreme income while ALSO getting a bunch of those customers as repeat business at your restaurant. Perhaps most importantly, they are an example of a brand that leveraged a strong local fan base into becoming a national chain.

This is how you make a secret menu feel special. You can also make this part of a loyalty program, where secret menu items are announced to and even decided by VIP members only. One of the best ways to turn a local fan base into brand ambassadors is to create branded merchandise that they then wear wherever they go.

Well, Chick-fil-A grew to be one of the largest privately held companies in the world by offering a full year of free food to the first visitors to each new location. Every time a new location opened, people would camp out in the nights leading up to the opening, hoping to be one of the winners.

This phenomenon was frequently covered by local press and resulted in millions of dollars in free advertising over the years.

You can do just one winner instead. Nearly half of all workers are employed by small businesses. This includes thousands of potential customers in your local area.

A great way to get in front of these customers and generate some viral buzz is to simply show up and provide food for free.

You could provide lunch for the entire staff of most small businesses at a very low cost. Try just showing up with enough food for 20 people, or if that results in some problems, try calling ahead and arranging things with the owner or office manager. Start with small businesses, but you can also aim to give back to the community while gaining more attention when you provide food for teachers, nurses, and other employee groups that are highly regarded in the community.

On the topic of giving back, one of the best ways to gain attention in your community is to give something to that community. Regularly and visibly giving to the community and well-regarded groups in the community is a great way to make people feel like you are on their team rather than simply attempting to profit from their patronage.

The key here is being genuine and offering something that feels meaningful. Just like marketers, journalists are always looking for a good story. Give your local newspaper or TV station a call and see what sort of stories they might be looking for. Sometimes the simplest things work the best.

These promotion strategies are simple, proven, and can be used over and over again. This is as simple as it gets, but percentage discount promotions are consistently the most profitable campaigns for our restaurant partners here at Owner.

You also want to create some urgency by saying the quantity of offers is limited and on a first come, first serve basis, AND the promotion will only run for a limited time. com platform. For our restaurant partners on the Owner. Our platform then automatically sends out periodic offers to each customer based on their order history.

At this restaurant, people who order Chicken Parmigiana often order the Creamy Garlic Chicken Pasta as well. Our software will take note of that and then automatically send the customer a discount offer for the Creamy Garlic Chicken Pasta about two weeks after their Chicken Parmigiana order.

com was built specifically to address these frustrations and help grow your restaurant business. Promotions are all about getting customers to take action, and few things motivate action quite like a deadline. Regularly offering limited run items also opens the doors for additional promotions down the road.

You can run polls allowing customers to vote on which items to bring back and possibly make voting a perk of your loyalty program , or you can simply take popular items and give them an encore.

Happy hour specials are a niche staple that should be a near-universal practice for restaurants open during the afternoon. They provide an affordable first-contact point for new customers, and they provide an easy focal point for ongoing promotion on social media. When done correctly, Happy Hour ticket prices often average out higher than lunch tickets.

The key is being strategic about the food you offer in addition to the drinks. If you run a more upscale restaurant, try offering scaled-down versions of your dinner menu at an enticing price point while keeping drink prices close to retail.

While BOGO buy one, get one free offers tend to be associated more with fast and casual restaurants, they can be used effectively by virtually any restaurant. The restaurant now has 2, people to reach out to with additional offers, AND a large chunk of those customers are very likely to return.

The reach you get from offering a compelling promotion goes far beyond the actual people who walk in and redeem the deal. These menus and any little freebies or specials you attach with them make for an evergreen source of promotion as well.

Check out this great example from Shake Shack:. Free appetizer campaigns are another type of promotion that work really well for our Owner. com partners but require a bit more effort and intentionality. The key is finding a menu item that has a low cost and brings in a high margin — think chips and queso, fried pickles, fried onions, mozzarella sticks, salads, desserts, breadsticks, egg rolls, etc.

If you can find something that can be given away sustainably, that allows you to consider the campaign for an ongoing promotion. You can also limit the quantity of the free items given out, creating urgency to take advantage of the offer before it runs out.

Business card giveaways are an old strategy, but just like many of the strategies in this category, they remain effective today. The process is simple: offer customers a chance to win a free meal in exchange for dropping their business card in a bowl. Make the prize a free meal for TWO and then advertise that you select a new card from the bowl every single week.

We want as many cards as possible because our modern twist takes advantage of every card we get. Family-sized meals have been a staple tool in the fast and fast-casual eatery toolbox for decades, but this concept remains underutilized elsewhere on the restaurant spectrum.

As we talked about earlier, people care a lot about the experience of eating out, and that experience is often deeply connected to the people they are eating out with. When a person sees a meal-for-two-offer, they think about sharing that meal with someone they know. Offering shareable meals and preset, multi-course menus for specific group sizes is a great way to get people thinking about the experience they want to create and envisioning themselves having a great time with people they love at your restaurant.

Offering samples is a great way to drive sales. According to The Atlantic, free samples at stores like Costco can help boost sales considerably. If you have one or two dishes that always score big with customers, have a staff member outside the restaurant offering bite-sized samples to passersby.

If someone is in the mood for Indian food, they are usually going to choose their favorite Indian place. Your real competitors have the same or similar cuisine, the same or similar mood appeal, and the same or similar location. Local ingredients, foods, and craft drinks tend to be more expensive, but they also tend to be very well received by local customers.

Choosing local suppliers, loudly advertising that fact, and collaborating with them provides a great focal point for ongoing promotion. If you are already sourcing local ingredients, foods, or drinks, reach out to the supplier and invite them to collaborate.

Pro tip: it will be a lot easier to set something up if you have a clear game plan to propose from the beginning. In addition to non-competing restaurants, there are tons of non-competing local businesses in your area that would love to cross-promote with you in order to mutually grow both businesses.

One creative idea is to partner with businesses and organizations that need meeting space during your non-service or even low-service hours. This gets people in the door who will likely be interested in coming back later to try your food.

You could also arrange to serve food to the group as part of the agreement, either as a promotion or a paid service.

The point here is to be conscious of your assets and how you can use those assets to grab attention to your core business. Despite all that focus on non-competing businesses, sometimes it even makes sense to partner with your direct competitors.

Restaurant Week and similar local events are a great time to put competition aside and celebrate all the restaurants in your local area.

Restaurant Weeks are very popular and tend to get coverage from both social media and local media. Hand out flyers, offer discounts, and encourage people to come in and try a dish made by the people in their own community. If your restaurant is a great place to work, the entire service staff network in your city, plus all their friends and family, is going to know about it.

Get your staff involved in providing ideas for improving the restaurant, and then use those ideas. Offer individual and team bonuses when possible. Be conscientious with scheduling and allow added flexibility for longtime performers. If you want to really go above and beyond, find out what would be personally meaningful to your top staff and try to give them that as best you can.

Holidays can be a massive source of new business, but they also bring their fair share of competition. Every restaurant in your area is going to be running promotions and specials to compete for that holiday dining dash. This is a day to pull out all the stops and celebrate someone incredibly important and special.

You want to offer a great experience and charge a price that makes this an incredibly successful day for your restaurant. This phrase is intentionally vague but entails a limitless supply of alcohol. Mimosas or wine are great options here, where you can supply a large amount of drinks at a relatively low budget.

Instead of ignoring this or trying to fight it, why not profit from it? Create a ready-to-grill, take-home package that people can order to make their cookout easier AND higher quality at the same time.

You can even offer to grill it yourself for people who want the cookout experience without needing to do any work. The demographic for this celebration tends to skew a bit younger, however, and while diners are willing to spend money, cost is still a consideration. A prix fixe menu is the perfect fit for this holiday.

It lets your customers receive an upscale experience while also providing a fixed price they can commit to before arriving at your restaurant. For the 14th year, QDOBA Mexican Eats is spicing up Valentine's Day with big savings. Choose from burritos, tacos, … [Read More More butter and syrup, please!

Pancakes make everyone happy. And hungry bargain hunters will definitely flip for this … [Read More Super Bowl Sunday is a day for fun and festivities for football fans, but you don't have to spend a fortune … [Read More Valentine's Day is a holiday full of love, laughter and, if you're a bargain hunter, lots of sweet savings.

Most will … [Read More Check, please! Dining out can be very expensive and seems to be getting more costly all the time — especially for … [Read More When you take a whole crew out to eat, it can burn through your food budget.

Thankfully, many national and local … [Read More Arby's has the meats! Fortunately, for hungry bargain hunters, the popular fast-food restaurant also has "the … [Read More After the kids moved out and I had to cook for one, I quickly grew tired of it. At home, I get caught in a routine of … [Read More Sugar and cream, please!

Bagels' signature brew, served hot or iced, is the … [Read More Say cheese! Bargain hunters always smile when they can stretch their dining-out budget — especially when it comes to … [Read More See More Restaurant Deals.

Disclaimer: Not all local restaurants participate in all national promotions, so please call your local restaurant and verify the deal is valid there before going out. If you see a deal that you know is no longer in effect, please email editors livingonthecheap.

If you need a last-minute lunch or dinner plan, look here for ideas about how to feed yourself or your family for less. Even procrastinators can save because there are plenty of restaurant deals to be had right now. Here are the best restaurant deals we know of for the upcoming week.

Plan your meals out for the best day of the week for a discount. Invite a friend along for any twofer or BOGO deals, or bring an extra home to enjoy later. Learn about dollar menus and happy hour deals that can help you save on dining out every day.

Eating out at a restaurant can fit in your budget when you take advantage of all these free and cheap food deals available this week. Don't be fooled — there is such a thing as a free lunch.

More Dining Tips. Join 8, cheapskates and get our free daily newsletter, filled with valuable advice to help you live better on less. Atlanta on the Cheap. Charlotte on the Cheap. Chicago on the Cheap. Columbus on the Cheap.

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