Money Saving Girl Money Saving Tips and Ideas
How to get an equivalent of Tastecard for FREE
What is Tastecard?
It is a physical or digital voucher card allowing you to benefit from 2-4-1 or 50% off offers in about 6000+ restaurants in the UK. These include Pizza Hut, Zizzi, Bella Italia, ASK, Cafe Rouge, Strada, Prezzo and many many more.
Where do I get the card from?
Typically you get it from the Tastecard website, where you can get one month FREE trial, alternatively you can get the Tastecard for 2 months for just £1.
Why Clever people do not go for Tastecard and you shouldn’t too?
Getting the card for free or a fraction of its cost (£1) for a short period of time (1- 3 months) is fine as this is when you benefit from having it the most.
Paying the regular annual fee for it is simply not worth it unless you do ‘live’ in restaurants as the annual card fee is £79.99. However using the card can be sometimes tricky especially if you have a big family or want to use it in a specific place or on a specific date (Fridays and Saturdays are often excluded) as there are some restrictions you ought to check before booking to avoid disappointment…Tastecard can’t be used for getting takeaways nor drinks when dining in the restaurant.
Are there any alternatives to Tastecard?
Yes – Gourmet Society – it is a bit cheaper than Tastecard and includes discounts on drinks as well. The rules of getting it are pretty similar – you can get it for £1 for 3 months or for a whole year for £39.99 at the time of writing, RRP is £69.99 though. You can also get the card for £3.99 when you have NUS student card (and you don’t have to be a student to have a NUS card – I will explain how to get it in my next post).
How can you get Gourmet Society card for FREE?
If you are a Lloyds Club account owner one of their lifestyle benefits is a FREE Gourmet Society card. See below what are the other 2 you can choose shouldn’t you be convinced Gourmet Society Card is worth it.
What do I need to do to open up Lloyds Club account?
-
- Setup 2 different direct debits from the new account
- In order to avoid £3 account fee you need to pay in £1500 to the account monthly ( it can be your salary, if however your salary reaches your other account you can use a trick and transfer £1500 to Lloyds account for a day or so and transfer it back to your main account when using a standing order which will mean you neither have to remember nor do it yourself every month – just be careful to not to choose dates of your bills payments so you do not get overdraft).
Is tastecard going to save me money or waste my cash?
In the light of the above – if you are a foodie or just love to go out to dine in restaurants Gourmet Society membership is a much better option for you than the Tastecard. Especially given the fact you can get it for as little as £3.99* or for FREE :-)–> This blog post title may be a bit misleading but ultimately this is it you cant get a FREE Tastecard for longer than a month, whereas you can get the Gourmet Society membership totally for FREE ! There is not much difference between these two cards as majority of the high street restaurants allow to use either.
* Depending on the benefit selection it may be worth to get the Gourmet Society club card for £3.99 (plus the NUS card – which will be a cost paid back to you quite quickly so it is well worth it) and choose 6 free cinema tickets from Lloyds – the best combination of choosing benefits depends really on your lifestyle preferences though and can’t be really defined by me here as it is rather very personal at the end of the day!
** NUS card offers discounts in many shops, such as:
- Amazon – 5% off
- Accesorize – 10%
- Superdrug – 10% off
- Pizza Hut – 20% off
- Pizza Express – 20% off
- ASOS – 10% off
- CrossCountry Trains – 10% off
- Staples – 10% off
- New Look – 10% off
- Oasis – 10% off
- Odeon Cinemas – 25% off the student price
- JJB Sports – 10% off
- Game – various offers
- Orange – free SIM and £10 credit
- Ticketmaster – various offers
What does MoneySavingGirl use?
I go out rarely and when I do I use either my Entertainer app (variety of 2-4-a offers) or boosted Tesco Clubcard vouchers (I can exchange points worth £2.5 for a £10 voucher in many chains such as Zizzi, Cafe Rouge, Pizza Express and more). So for me it’s Club Card boosters which do the magic when dining out. Obviously I have mentioned above Lloyds account but given the fact how rarely I dine out I went for 6 free cinema tickets rather than the Gourmet Society membership card.
I believe this is the right combination for people who go out more often to the cinema than to the restaurants. I also believe that once I open a joint account for myself and my husband Lloyds will offer us yet another lifestyle benefit for this newly opened account – which will mean we can get the card then as my husband gets his free cinema tickets due to a subscription to work health insurance from Vitality 🙂