Just got the Email. Restaurant .com is having another 50% off sale good through 2/20/05. The coupon code is 23301

Thanks - these certificates almost sound too good to be true. Now I can go out during the week for a $40-$50 dinner and pay effectively $20 less after the 50% discount. ^

They are not too good.... they are great!

We only have a few restaurants here in Rochester that participate... but it works out well.

I also buy them for gifts... especially around Christmas time.... I was able to give four different admins each $100 in certificates to four different restaurants... and cost me $20 per person.

I have yet to figure out the business model here.... but it works for me.

William

Maybe they get a kick back from the restaurants for bringing in business? Just a guess. Seems like a great offer, but there were no good places in my area

There's only really one good place I'd like to try around here, and of course there's no stock right now....

Another choice or two might be something I'd do, and maybe a couple more are actually good places but I'm not interested. And that's about it. Not that it's not a worthy offer, but there aren't many choices for me.

Having about the same luck with the Entertainment book too, although I can justify the cost of that easily with other non-dining discounts. (Just today I used one, 2 for 1 admission at the Carnegie Museums of Art/Natural History. That's 10 bucks off, half the price of the book right there.)

Too good to be true, maybe.

I bought a cert at 50% off during the last (January) offer. (By the way, why constantly start new threads on this? Just post the latest offers on existing threads.) I got a $50 cert for $25.

But the last time I checked availability of restaurants in San Francisco (at the end of January), this is what I found:

Only 26 restaurants in San Francisco participate. But I don't consider Mrs. Fields Cookies to be a restaurant, so really, there are only 25.

Of those 25, 14 of them said, "Sorry, dining certificates are temporarily out of stock."

Of the remaining 11:

6 of them require a minimum number of people in the party (or entrees ordered): 3 require 4 or more, 1 requires 3 or more, and 2 require 2 or more.

3 say "minimum purchase of $40" and other restrictions.

So that is 23 out of the 25 total that either have no availability, or onerous restrictions on their use. And I'm not even talking about the restrictions on days of the week when they can/can't be used, etc.!

So, just WHERE can I use these in San Francisco??? I realize they can be used anywhere in the country, but still.... I'm kind of disappointed.

Plus, I sent an e-mail to [email protected] detailing the above issues (two weeks ago), and received NO REPLY whatsoever.

OK, it was only $25, but was it really worth the expenditure if I can't use the certs?

The business model is they put up a canned web site to bring in new customers. The restaurant gets nothing and pays nothing they just give out free or discountd food. Restaurant.com's income is from the fact they keep all of the money from sale of the certificates.

Well, if the idea is that they're bringing new business to the restaurants, isn't that kind of breaking down if you can't find places to actually redeem the megacert?

And if the restaurants aren't accepting new business that easily (no certs available, or too many restrictions on redemption), what are they really gaining from it (other than the ill will, rather than goodwill, of potential new clients)?

I believe the individual restaurants only authorize a specific number of certificates to be sold/issued any given month, so the "popular" places can sell out fast. This makes sense - putting a limit on the number of freebies.

The problem may be in buying a mega-cert rather than a certificate for the restaurant itself (also offered on the site). If you look for the certificate for the individual restaurant, if it's available it shows up (and doesn't if it's not available, so less hard feelings). Also, you can read the certificate before buying to see what restrictions/conditions (number in party, limited dates, minimum amount) are there and whether you are willing to accept that.

Well, I bought a megacert because that made more sense! Redeemable in any city, at any restaurant that has certs available. Hopefully, sooner or later I will find places to redeem it.

There is a bit more to it than that. The restaurant does not exactly get nothing. Hence the restrictions. Ie: total bill must be at least $40 to use a $25 cert. You pay $5.00 for the cert and pay $15 to the restaurant, the restaurant gets exposed to 2-4 new people and basically offers a buy one get one free dinner. Of course the hope is that you or one of your guests will return and pay full price for a meal.

I think you are correct in that Restaurant.com keeps the money and as others have stated most of the restaurants only authorize so many certs to be sold a month.

It really is a win win for everyone.

Dead on. I picked up a handful of coupons for a local Indian restaurant in a city near where I was traveling for a month or to, figuring I'd give them out to coworkers ($10 off for $1.50 each cert). I ended up keeping half of them after trying the place, and since then I've been back in there at least once a week for almost 2 months, with or without certs. (Thanks for the post btw, 4 more $1.50 certs for my new favorite Indian restaurant!)

The restaurants really have little to lose, as many restaurants are quite empty (and have to employ as many staff and use as much electricity/water/gas on an empty Tuesday as they would on a full Saturday) during the week. They see a lot of this extra business as incremental revenue, and hey, if a guest happens to like the restaurant having used a $25 certificate on a $50 dinner, so be it - it's $25 that guest would not have likely (on average) paid to eat there on a Tuesday.

It's actually quite likely, I think, that that guest would come back on a regular night (one not allowed per the terms of the $25 certificate) and treat friends and family to dinner.

Some restaurants run Tue/Wed promotions like offering 50% off wine, or buy-one-get-one-free entrees for patrons dining during the week anyway.