Don't you encounter either a refusual or a surcharge on those transactions? Seems to be getting more and more common here these days, and others have said so about other parts of the country.

Penny: Don't feel too bad - we don't have such coffee/sandwich options here either. Cheapest I can manage is a happy hour beer, which didn't help much with the previous AA promo and its one-transaction-per-restaurant-per-day restriction, even though the bartender was more than willing to ring up each beer separately.

Roadtripman: You shouldn't feel too bad either. The Traveler's reference to Seattle was a good one; the situation here is pretty dire compared with other parts of N. America of similar size. Restaurants come and go - things were so bad here last summer that when Alaska Airlines Rewards Network had a "triple miles on your first three dines" promo, I only used two of them: one I knew would be overpriced (expense account crowd downtown with not-up-to-tariff fare), but I was in the area and hungry and it was 3x miles. The other was a joint I'd never been to, had been curious about, and decided to try during the promo period. I gave up after that as the rest of the then-AS participants (my regular three were blacked out for AS credit [all other partners okay], SEA being a hub and all) were either inconveniently located, or I'd tried them before and firmly decided once was enough.

Things are somewhat better now - I could fulfill such an AS promo these days with the addition of a couple of new joints, and the subsequent acceptance of AS credit again by one of the blacked-out three above.