Written by Joseph Holevinski, Senior at Gwinnett School of Math, Science & Technology (GSMST)
Three years ago, I saw a video of people going to a few different restaurants on their birthday and getting free food. This inspired me to do a similar escapade but a little more extreme, and this has become an annual birthday tradition for me. I am going to tell you how I get free food from over 20 different restaurants on my birthday and teach you how you can do the same thing for your special day.
I first had the idea of spending my entire day going around and getting free food back in December (my birthday is in January). This was good for me because I was going to have to sign up for rewards programs and some require that you be signed up to them for a certain amount of time before your birthday, with the most requiring a month. And when I mean sign up for rewards programs, I mean a ton of rewards programs.
The first thing I did, and what I highly recommend you do if you try this out for yourself, is make a new email account with all of my information. This is the email that you will exclusively use to sign up for rewards programs so that the spam mail doesn’t fill up your main email’s inbox.
Then comes the tedious part, signing up for the programs. Once you do a few, you will get the hang of filling them out. Once you sign up for a program, if it doesn’t ask you when you sign up, find the spot in your account profile to add a birthday or join a birthday program so you are guaranteed to get that birthday gift. Also, check your email to make sure you signed up correctly.
The next step is to wait. You will start receiving emails constantly, but the birthday emails don’t usually start appearing in your inbox till your birthday month, week or even at some places, your actual birthday. Once you get all of the coupons and promotions in hand, plan out your food trips so you can hit as many locations as possible, one after the other, without much back and forth. What I usually do is hit all of the breakfast restaurants at breakfast, then for lunch and dinner, see where the most restaurant locations are clustered and then go there and go to as many restaurants as possible.
I usually go out, collect the food and head home with my bounty. Don’t worry about hitting every restaurant that sends you a promotion because that would be very difficult, and most of the time the coupons are valid after your actual birthday.
It is usually a very fun process especially if you go around with friends or family. Some restaurants are better than others (I highly recommend Krispy Kreme, IHOP, Jersey Mike’s and Red Robin rewards). It is honestly really fun and nothing beats free. So, next time it is getting close to your birthday, consider not sending all those promotions to spam!
