As a MyPanera coffee club subscriber for the past two years, I’ve generally been pleased with the program. So when Panera recently introduced its new Unlimited Sip Club for just a buck more a month (allowing me to drink unlimited cups of iced tea) I didn’t think twice about subscribing. What works for me however, may not be a good fit for you.
If you love unlimited coffee, tea, or lemonade this is pretty much a no-brainer especially for the free six months or 3 month offers they are giving out to customers right now across the U.S. If you live by a Panera restaurant then the deal is better than making it yourself.
The unlimited drink club or Sip Club just got upgraded across the U.S. from just hot coffee to now covering most of the drinks you can self-serve which is an amazing thing for drink lovers!
If you haven’t yet heard of Unlimited Sip Club, it’s because the program was currently available in select test areas. It has finally rolled out nationwide. If you’re curious about this new subscription model or are on the fence about becoming a member, I hope this guide helps you decide.
What is the Panera Beverage Club (AKA Unlimited Sip Club)? The Panera Unlimited Sip Club replaces the MyPanera coffee club subscription. For $8.99 a month (plus tax), the original program included an unlimited cup of brewed or iced coffee, per visit. Panera introduced its extended version last year, originally calling it Panera Beverage Club (technically MyPanera+ Beverage Club). It was originally $14.99 a month and was changed to its current price of $9.99 a month.
The program is still being tested in certain areas so it may not be available in your location just yet. Or if it is available, the terms might differ by location.
How to purchase a Panera Unlimited Sip Club membership To purchase a Sip Club subscription, you need to be a MyPanera rewards card member. If you don’t have a MyPanera card, signing up for one is free and effortless.
Once you’re a rewards member, you can sign up for the Sip Club, provided it’s offered in your area. Your credit card is automatically charged each month, though you can cancel at any time.
Benefits of a MyPanera rewards card Even if you decide not to purchase an Unlimited Sip or coffee subscription, consider signing up for a free MyPanera Rewards membership. Aside from special member perks, you get closer to receiving a free reward with every purchase (Sip Club orders don’t apply to purchases for rewards). The system is completely random, and can take anywhere from three, four, or seven visits to qualify for a freebie.
Some rewards are along the lines of $2 off a sandwich or $1 off a pastry, while others have included free Pick Twos or flatbread pizzas. This week, I redeemed two rewards: a free café latte, free muffin, and an iced tea that was pre-paid through my Unlimited Sip Club membership.
How to redeem a Panera Unlimited Sip Club membership One you’ve subscribed to the Panera Unlimited Sip Club (AKA Panera Beverage Club), your membership status will appear in your rewards area on the My Cart page when you’re ready to check out. Whether you order via the kiosk or your Panera phone app, simply click Redeem. Or if you like to place your orders with live staff, they should ask if you’d like to redeem your reward.
If you ever forget your MyPanera card, the system can find you by the phone number you used during registration.
How often can you use your Panera Unlimited Sip Club Membership? You can get an unlimited amount of one type of qualifying beverage per visit, every two hours. So for example, you can’t get an unlimited amount of both iced tea and coffee during the same visit (unless you pay for the second drink, of course). You can, however, get an unlimited amount of coffee (or whatever qualifying beverage you choose) in one visit, then two hours later during a separate visit, get an unlimited amount of iced tea or whichever qualifying beverage you choose.
What’s Included With a Panera Unlimited Sip Club Membership Availability can vary by store, but this is what I’m currently eligible to receive in my area.
Brewed coffee. Flavors include dark roast, light roast, hazelnut, and decaffeinated Iced coffee Iced tea Hot tea Pepsi drinks, including Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper Lemonade and lemonade chargers What’s not included Cold brew coffee Espresso type drinks, like lattes and cappuccinos Smoothies and frozen drinks Bottled or container drinks
Panera-Coffee-Flavors
Is a Panera Unlimited Sip Club Membership Worth the Price? It depends on what you like to drink, how often you visit Panera, and whether you like the taste of their beverages. I’m a regular at Panera and drink a lot of their brewed coffee and plain iced tea – so for me, membership is definitely worth the price.
Here are some numbers to help guide your decision.
What it would take to break even It depends on the beverage, but say you like to order plain iced tea. At $3.19 for a large cup, you’d need to visit Panera about three visits per month to make membership worth your while. At $2.59 for a regular-sized of brewed hot coffee, you’d need to make about four visits per month.
Your savings could be more substantial, though Using the coffee example above, if you normally visit Panera 12 separate times in a month, you’d save about $21 dollars (per month). Visiting 16 separate times per month would yield a savings of $31 per month. And 30 separate visits per month would save you about $67.
This number can go higher if you visit more often than this. If, for example, you drink coffee for breakfast, lunch, and dinner 30 times per month, that would be a savings of about $223.00 each month.
This is money you can use to buy something else, pay bills, or invest into a 401(k).
Additional Thoughts on Panera Beverage Club Though I think Panera Unlimited Sip Club (Beverage Club) is an amazing value, if there’s one thing I could change, it would be the two-hour rule. While I understand that some people might abuse the program (like getting free drinks for everyone in their party), it’s just not practical to stop what you’re doing and return every two hours.
I’d also like to see Panera bring back their sugar-free flavored iced teas. Managers have offered to make them upon request, but it’s not the same as having them readily-available.
Panera is usually, in my experience, responsive to customer needs, so this may very well change at some point. It’s also a relatively new program, so I’m sure they’re still tweaking the details.
If you’re already spending money on drinks and visit Panera frequently enough, their beverage club is a decent investment.
What is the Panera Unlimited Sip Club Subscription? For $10.99/month plus tax, you can enjoy any size drip hot coffee, charged lemonades, hot tea, iced coffee, lemonades, and fountain beverages every two (2) hours during regular bakery-café hours, including free refills of the same beverage at any participating U.S. Panera Bread bakery-cafes. You can choose any size drip hot coffee, charged lemonades, hot tea, iced coffee, lemonades, and fountain beverages when redeeming your subscription benefits. Cold Brew, espresso drinks, and other beverages are not included in your subscription.
How do I sign up for an Unlimited Sip Club Subscription? You can subscribe online through the link you received in your email, on the web at PaneraBread.com/UnlimitedSipClub, in the Subscriptions section of the Panera Bread app, or at a kiosk where available in participating U.S. Panera Bread bakery-cafes.
What kinds of coffee can I get with my Unlimited Sip Club subscription? Your subscription includes one (1) cup of drip hot coffee, charged lemonades, hot tea, iced coffee, lemonades, and fountain beverages every two (2) hours during regular bakery-cafe hours, including free refills of the same beverage at any participating U.S. Panera Bread bakery-cafes. Cold Brew, espresso drinks, Iced Tea, and other beverages are not included in your subscription.
How do I redeem my subscription? It’s easy! Your Unlimited Sip Club Subscription benefits work just like MyPanera rewards. When placing an order, you can either swipe your MyPanera Card, enter your phone number, or log in to your MyPanera account to access your rewards. Look for a reward with the name “Daily Unlimited Sip Club” and redeem it as you normally would.
The food takeout wars have been heating up as new entrants into the market set their sights on market leader GrubHub which currently controls 20% of the $70+ billion market. GrubHub is the most established online ordering service, with over 8.75 million active diners ordering more than 324,600 grubs a day in over 1,000 cities.
Enter your address into the Grubhub app or online here and a list of local restaurants appear. You can refine your search by type of cuisine, rating (one through five stars and up), time of delivery, price, or restaurants that have tracking for your order, restaurants that are new, or restaurants that have coupons.
Restaurant options
I had around 25 restaurants on my list. Most of them require you to order about an hour in advance. Only one had an option to order 30 minutes in advance. Nearly every restaurant also had an additional fee, from $2 to $6. Make sure to plan ahead when making orders with any delivery service as it may take an hour.
Compare Grubhub to Postmates
One of the biggest problems with using Grubhub and Yelp Eat 24 compared to Postmates is that you cannot order from any restaurant. You can order anything from virtually anywhere with Postmates even if they do not have a relationship. You also are not stuck with trying to come up with a minimum order. Minimum orders are not a thing at all with Postmates are you can just order a Starbucks Latte if you pay the delivery fee. Although, Postmates does not offer ratings of restaurants to help you decide which ones are best they also do not let you use coupons. The best thing to find which app offers a better deal from the restaurant you frequent the most. One other benefit of using Grubhub is that when they give you a promo code you can use it towards the entire bill and you cannot do this with Postmates. For example. The current promo code for Grubhub is $7 off which you get off the total bill compared with Postmates you only get $10 off only the delivery fee and not the food or drink.
How Does Grubhub Make Money?
GrubHub’s success has been driven by providing a superior customer experience on both sides. For its restaurant clients, its online ordering platform provides an instant boost in takeout sales. For its grubbers, they promise a fully cooked made-to-order meal at their doorsteps within an hour of ordering.
Diners can even track their orders on a special GrubHub app. GrubHub charges the restaurants 14.2% of the food bill. Although it doesn’t charge diners for using its service, restaurants can apply a small delivery charge.
The food delivery business is still growing rapidly. The only way to determine which one deserves your business is to try them both and compare them to their next competitor such as Door Dash or UberEats.
Compare Grubhub to Yelp and Eat24
Yelp has more than 1 million restaurants reviewed on its site, it also owns OpenTable and UrbanSpoon where its users can make reservations at restaurants they have reviewed. Yelp’s purchase of Eat24 added online ordering of restaurant takeout food. For the restaurants that Eat24 serviced, which numbered about 20,000 at the time, Yelp added a widget to takeout diners’ orders after they reviewed the restaurant.
At the core of the services offered by both companies is an online ordering engine that quickly connects diners with the restaurants of their choice. Both of their applications, which are available on desktop and mobile devices, provide users with easy navigation experiences to search for restaurants by a multitude of criteria. With Eat24, users can find their restaurant directly through the Eat24 application or from Yelp’s review site. The list can be parsed by categories like “Top Rated,” “Distance,” “Newest,” and “Minimum Order.”
In comparison, GrubHub has a library of twice as many restaurants to order from. Both offer free delivery in one hour or less, notifications updating order status, 24/7 customer service and order recall. Eat24 relies on the restaurant’s own delivery driver or a third-party service. GrubHub has operated the same way in the past but uses its own drivers in certain cities. That gives GrubHub an edge in the delivery wars because the biggest complaint from food delivery customers is late delivery.
Grubhub has a larger footprint and has built a solid reputation for customer service. Eat24 is less established, but it has access to Yelp’s 130 million monthly visitors. If you use Yelp to look at restaurant reviews, you connect to Eat24 by clicking a button.
Update: Recently Grubhub bought out the Eat24 service from Yelp. They will now begin to combine the two to grow Grubhub.
Postmates has been an incredible freebie generating app since its debut. The on-demand app that delivers food, coffee, and alcohol has also brought us many free food offers which are better than a free sample people chase around the web. These are legit freebies such as Potbelly sandwiches, Free Pizza Slices, Free Smoothies On-Demand, Free Lattes at Starbucks and so on.
Update: Now that UberEats has bought Postmates we recommend DoorDash.
To start using Postmates we can also save you $100 in delivery fees so you can start out with several free deliveries. Once you sign-into the app and enter the promo code 478n you should be able to see if there are any freebies available that day for your area. Last week we had Free Thai On-Demand and Free Chili’s Burgers On-Demand which was fantastic! The $100 in credits offer is limited and may go back down to $10 soon.
Here is how to get your $100 Free Credit on Postmates: 1. Download the app or head over to Postmates.com to sign up. 2. Select your location then and add any free offers to your cart or the meal that you wish to have delivered or good from any local business. Add them to your cart, and create an account. Use this promo code 478n and you should get $100 in credits to cover the delivery fee.
Postmates Party means Free Delivery on each order (but watch the service fees) 🥳
You won’t pay delivery fees on “Party” orders, no matter the size of the order. Joining the Party means you’ll never pay blitz pricing at peak times either. You just sign-in to your Postmates app and tap the “Party” tab which basically means someone else is ordering delivery from that same restaurant and there will be “no delivery charge.”
If this sounds familiar it’s because UberEats does this same thing where you can get a free delivery by ordering when someone else does within a certain time frame.
As soon as UberEats copied off of the outrageous service fees of Postmates and other carriers it didn’t take Postmates long to copy something of UberEats. Now that all the delivery services are pretty much even on service fees that are hidden until you make your order they are all saying you will get FREE delivery on restaurants that others are buying food from at the time.
Get your FREE crunchwrap from Taco Bell. 🌮🔔 Get a FREE crunchwrapfrom Taco Bell this weekend before this offer expires. When the deal is as hot as the sauce, you don’t want to miss out. 1. Download the app or head over to Postmates.com to sign up. 2. Select your location then and add any free offers to your cart or the meal that you wish to have delivered or good from any local business. Add them to your cart, and create an account. Use this promo code 478n and you should get $101 in credits to cover the delivery fee.
Check For Free Offers: To get a FREE Starbucks Drink Delivered select your city, and look for the “Free Starbucks On Demand” box (or other free promotions for your area). You should have enough delivery credit to get the free drink delivered with free delivery once you use the promo code above. Just last week they were giving away Katy Perry albums!
Earn Rewards Postmates is currently rolling out a new rewards program which will make it more competitive compared to Grubhub and Door You will receive an email that states “You’ve been selected to try Postmates Rewards. It’s our brand new, invite-only loyalty program. Best of all, it’s free! To sign up, just open your iOS or Android app. Each purchase you make after that will count towards your rewards (it could be free delivery, it could be a boat—the sky’s the limit).” You’ll also get a stamp card to track your progress in-app! We are excited they have added this new program.
Alcohol To Your Door – Free! In some cities you can order just one margarita to your door if you wish. Texas was one of the states that recently got added to the beer delivery and they are delivering free throughout most of July. You may check to see if your town’s Postmates app is offering this freebie as well. All you need to do is add something to your cart now, and they’ll reward you with 100% off delivery fees on all your DRINKS orders through July 27, 2017. They added a Drinks tab to browse through categories by selecting from the drop down menu at the top of the screen.
Postmates Vs. Grubhub Another one of our most recommended websites to order food online is GrubHub. You can score $12 off including fees and food right now! Postmates has a promotional link to get $10 off but only includes service fees. Postmates is growing to be the biggest foodie app and delivery service so it’s definitely a good download.
If you want authentic and incredible “fast food” chicken that beats Chick-fil-A hands down then check out Cowboy’s Chicken. They make some of the best wood fire chicken including sandwiches and enchilada plates.
Cowboy Chicken is celebrating the grand opening of a new location in Fresno, CA so they are giving all the locations a reason to join in and save. Wednesday, Oct 16 they are rolling back prices on the original menu items back to 1981 pricing. This is an app promotion only so you must download the app and then order to get some of these at ridiculous prices: — Half Chicken Meal with signature Twice Baked Potaters and Ranchero Beans for only $3.29 — Homemade Peach Cobbler for only $1.19 Umm can we just live in 1981 again?
Once you download the app you’re one step closer to unlocking rewards!You automatically receive $5 off your first transaction with the app. You will also receive a $5 credit for every $50 spent, pay at the counter, receive birthday treats and other great offers year round. An alternative way to order with Cowboy’s chicken is to use Chase Pay.
Budweiser is offering a “pay it forward” rebate to people in states such as Washington, Oklahoma, Colorado, and others (some are not permitted to do alcohol promos) during this stay-at-home Coronavirus pandemic. If you spend $5+ on carry out and food delivery you can get a rebate of $5. This can be done up to four times for a total of $20 per address.
All you have to do is take a screenshot of your delivery or to-go order and fill out the date and your address then upload the screenshot of the order. If you do all 4 of the $5 rebates right after each other you don’t have to retype the address info.
You then get to select if you want a prepaid visa mailed to you or one you can use online (virtually). Some have reported getting the virtual gift card within the same day!
To get the offer go here and use the offer code AB-2040.
The Fine Print
No Beer Purchase Required. Save $5 via rebate on your purchase of Carry Out & Delivery Food.
Purchase price of food must exceed $5.
Paid via Budweiser Prepaid Mastercard.
Offer valid to residents of AL, AK, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, HI, ID, IL, IA, KS, KY, ME, MD, MI, MO, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, and WY who are 21+.
Purchase Must Occur Between: 03/18/20 – 05/01/20.
Request Must Be Submitted By: 05/15/20.
Limit $20 per address.
Allow 6-8 weeks for receipt of your rebate.
Fraudulent submission could result in federal prosecution.
It says you need a UPC but you really don’t need it for this offer so just ignore that part.
While we have a handful of options when it comes to food delivery services DoorDash is normally our favorite. Chase cardholders may find an even better reason to use DoorDash over UberEats, Postmates and Grubhub. They are allowing you to link your Chase Freedom or Sapphire card to enjoy free delivery for at least three months.
In partnership with DoorDash, Chase has launched a new promotion offering select cardholders discounts on DashPass, DoorDash’s unlimited delivery program.
DashPass normally costs $9.99 per month. It provides customers with lower service fees and free delivery on all orders of $12+, saving members an average of $4 to $5 off every order.
Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Preferred cardholders will get two free years of DashPass, while other cardholders, like those with the Chase Freedom and Freedom Unlimited, are being offered three free months of membership.
To activate the offer, just visit DoorDash or download the DoorDash app. You’ll be able to register for the deal by adding your eligible Chase card to the DoorDash app and clicking to activate the offer any time before Dec. 31, 2021. Just remember, your DashPass subscription will renew at the full $9.99 monthly price after the offer runs out, so be sure to set a reminder for yourself in case you want to cancel.
In my case I have a Chase Freedom Card so it gave me three free months but if you have a Sapphire card you will get two years of this freebie from Chase and DoorDash! If you use the Cash App for 15% off of DoorDash this is actually stackable with Cash App’s debit card boost for 15 percent off. You do not have to use your Chase Cards for orders to get the free delivery just for the signing up for this offer.
