Pull up a chair – you’re about to make bestie best friends with tastecard. With lockdowns and restrictions now feeling like another land, there has been a massive increase in the volume of people dining out since the start of 2022; foodies have rushed back out to all their favourite spots.
But it looks like lockdown has expanded our food tastes (you can see how COVID affected our eating here) – apparently searches for Italian restaurants are more than double that of pre-pandemic levels. Same for indian restaurants. 50 per cent more of us are searching for French restaurants. Searches for Japanese restaurants have increased 222 per cent on 2019!
But at the same time, there’s no escaping it. The cost of living is HITTING. It’s a grim new world, and very few of us have the cash to splash on eating out or a night on the town whenever we fancy (let’s be honest, we all fancy it every night; oddly, just as making-dinner time rolls around, yes?).
So we choose not to go out, to save our spend… but it’s a pretty sad month when there’s nothing fun in the calendar.
So, here’s where tastecard steps in.
A tastecard membership gives you 50% OFF restaurants (that’s the total food bill!), plus up to 40% off cinema tickets & 50% off days out!
See? I told you this was a good’un.
It works a bit like Netflix – you pay a monthly subscription, and then have access to all the offers. And there are SO MANY . I live in a very rural area – the nearest McDonalds is a 40 minute drive from us, same for cinema (and hospital, actually. Our son broke his leg last week – that was a LONG drive to A&E!). But even we have some restaurants and takeaways that are part of the tastecard discount.
Last week (post-broken leg) we opted not to cook – like you do after a stressful 24hrs. We would usually have simply gone to the nearest takeaway and returned home to the sofa – but instead I used our new tastecard bestie and spotted that a local Indian restaurant is included. Cue spontaneous night out. It was the best thing we could have done – for less money than sitting on our sofa we made ourselves get up and get out of the house. We arrived a bit early, so we also walked round the corner to try a new-to-us pub. Two new local indepndents supported, a great night was had, and we saved ourselves 25% on our bill.
We do eat out less than we did pre-pandemic – but we do explore new foods more. It’s weird, isn’t it? And now when we go out, we’ll choose more wisely – and widely. Usually I’d be trawling through review sites hunting for the best places, trying to make a safe choice. It’s a bit stressy. But having an app with all the offers listed neatly in our chosen area actually makes it more fun. When you know you’re going to get a chunky discount on the bill, you’re more likely to gamble, and doing so we’ve found new places we never knew existed. Because it’s not just the big chains that are included – one of the things we love most is that small independents are supported too. We’ve found loads of little indie cafes that we’ve popped into for lunch. And while the little cafes need every bit of profit, increasing footfall and customer base and word-of-mouth is by far the best marketing tool they have. We’ll certainly revisit, with or without the discount. Oh, and top tip – use the app, it’s SO much easier than the website.
With over 6,500 restaurant partners and more than 2.4 million members, tastecard is the UK’s No.1 Diners’ Club. Membership gives you 50% OFF the total food bill, or ‘two meals for the price of one’ at thousands of participating restaurants – the average tastecard user saves over £500 a year using their card. And right now you get a 30 day trial for free!
(it’s not all about eating out either. using the app you can get 50% off your pizza delivery every time you order – and if you live near one of the thousands of participating restaurants you can get the normal 50% off on meal collections.)
And cinemas too – our local Odeon charges £8 per adult. If we go as a family, that’s now £40 for the five of us. Book through the tastecard app, and I’d pay £29.20 (you get the code in the app which you then use on the Odeon site).
And right now there’s a 30 day FREE TRIAL. Yup, all the discounts, but for FREE!
Oh, and there’s no tied-in contract – you can cancel your membership at any time. Just click on the box below to go straight to the offer.
We have a round up of our Eating out reviews here – take a look and see if there’s a restuarant you fancy! From lunch in Covent Garden to Dinner at Old Trafford, from a Harvester to a Chiquitos Poole review, we cover a whole range of family eating and sepcial date nights.
