Dining Rewards... a.k.a. Airmiles for Eating

Most airmiles programs partner with the Rewards Network and allow you to also earn miles when dining at certain restaurants. The Rewards Network is often seamlessly integrated with your airmiles program. There are no extra or hidden costs for you, and it is completely automated once you take a few minutes to set things up. You just need to open an account and register your credit card numbers with the program... up to 5 cards, and, then any time you dine at a participating restaurant with one of these cards, airmiles will magically post directly to your airmiles program account usually within a week. These really are free miles that you are likely missing out on, especially if you eat out with any regularity.

Generally, you will accrue miles at a rate of at least 3 per dollar spent, however, there are often promotions and incentives that can increase that rate. Our favorite is the one that kicks in after a number of dines within a calendar year (usually between 10-15); the rate then jumps to at least 5 miles per dollar spent for all dines for the remainder of the year. When you do this on a credit card that also gives you miles for purchases, these miles are in addition to the miles that you get per dollar spent on the card, so this often means you are getting at least 4 miles per dollar spent. The particular rates, of course, vary depending on the airmiles program.

Although only a small percentage of restaurants in a city will choose to participate, you can often find a few that you like. You can search for participating restaurants here. We have our favorites, but it is a nice surprise when we eat someplace new and discover it has netted us some additional miles. And, every now and then, we browse the list and look for a new place, esp. if we know we are about to spend a lot on a meal.

You can belong to many dining rewards programs, i.e. one for each participating airmiles program, however, a credit card can only be associated with one airmiles program at a time. We recommend choosing the dining rewards for one airmiles program and adding all of your credit cards to it.

For your reference, here are some quicklinks for registering for dining rewards with our favorite airmiles programs. Happy Dining!

• Northwest WorldPerks Dining for Miles
• Delta SkyMiles Dining
• United Mileage Plus Dining
• Unfortunately, Continental OnePass no longer participates in the Rewards Network and has no dining rewards program at the moment.