I'm looking for a list of national chains that offer some sort of dining rewards (other than through opentable...but I don't know enough about opentable to understand if that probably is the way I should be going).

I know that the Hard Rock has a program...I'm thinking about Longhorns, Olive Gardens, Applebees, etc...

Any suggestions?

thanks.

T.G.I. Fridays has the Give Me More Stripes program.

It's not really what you were asking, but I have found that the best benefit at many of the chains is the gift cards, where they are either available at a discount or they offer you free meals with a purchase.

For example, Sweet Tomatoes gives you a free meal with a $100 gift card, and they offer other savings, etc.

Mimi's Cafe http://www.mimiscafe.com/EClub.aspx gives you a free breakfast when you sign up for their E-club. I think you also get another one on your birthday too.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaE71-2/100.07.76; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

Fleming's Steakhouse has a promo where you get an additional $20 gift card when buying $100 worth of gift carda.

Pei Wei restaurants have a free frequent user card that you can sign up for. You present it, or just your phone number, every time you eat there, and after 10 entrees, you get one entree free. Most times, we find that our lunch order counts for at least 2, maybe 3 entrees, so you'll get to the free entree pretty quickly. Good food - a "cafe" subset of P.F. Chang's, I believe.

The palm has one too, totally forgot about that. The 837 club. $25 to join, they give you a $25 GC to use. You earn points and can convert them into food, etc.

http://www.thepalm.com/index.cfm?page_id=7

Mccormick and Schmidt has a very similar program - http://www.mccormickandschmicks.com/...-overview.aspx

The Clubhouse (Really Nice Restaurants) has a very similar program http://www.theclubhouse.com/

http://www.theclubhouse.com/valuedmembers.cfm

McCormick and Schmicks
http://www.mccormickandschmicks.com/...-overview.aspx
In addition to points, you get a free entree for your (and spouses) birthday!

RUI
http://www.r-u-i.com/page/eat-drink-earn

Depending on the area (and your stomach), www.rewardsnetwork.com sometimes includes national fastfood chains, but this is usually a rarity. Examples I have found are Sonics in the Columbia, SC area and Steak & Shake & Denny's in the DFW area, Denny's, Jersey Mikes & Burger King in the L.A. area. Each quarter, different airlines offers bonuses through rewardsnetwork. Currently Delta has a 500 mile bonus for each $50 spent on restaurants in the program, on top of the 5 miles per dollar spent (if you are at the highest level). Last quarter AA offered the same deal, up to a total of 5000 miles. However their current bonus for the 4th quarter is only a "plus 2" or 7 miles (highest level) per dollar charged.

If you like Sweet Tomatoes, I have found the best deal would be the discount coupons they offer in the Sunday ads, about once a month. Lately they have been including a BOGO with their coupons. I also use or have coupons for Longhorn, Mimi's, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Perkins, Jersey Mikes, again all from the Sunday ads.

Although Mrs. Outoftown and I have been to all of the above, we have also used $10 & $25 GCs obtained for coke points from mycokerewards.com for Subway and Panera Bread, since they quit offering Delta miles and Hilton Points. See the SPAM forum for more info on this.

Personally, I like to quadruple dip by combining a coupon + rewardsnetwork miles + stamps for free food + AMEX Costco, which has a 3% rebate reward for restaurant charges. In my area (RDU), Sunset Grill restaurants meets this criteria, so they are naturally our favorite restaurant.

HTH,

-outoftown

Unfortunately, it looks like the Pei-Wei program applies only to restaurants in California. A pity too, as I love going to Pei-wei.

You might want to add AA Rewards Network to the list. The rewards are AA miles. I seldom fly AA so an occasional resturant mile keeps my miles active.

There are some decent resturants in N. VA that are AA Rewards and Open Table. Pay with a rewards credit-card and triple-dip.

I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but Qdoba has a rewards card - buy some number of meals, get one free.

My husband does pretty well on this - it's one of the places he'll eat when I'm out of town and not cooking for him .

The Palm just sent an e-mail, for every $250 you spend on a gift card, you get another $50 gift card for free.

http://palm.fbmta.com/members/ViewMa...lm+One+and+Too