Have Trouble Reading Restaurant Menus in the Dark?

by PointsGuru | Sep 29, 2016 | Restaurants

If you are like me you do not have the best of vision especially when it comes to trying to read a restaurant menu in the dark. This is one of the biggest things I have trouble with when traveling to a foreign country or anywhere. It’s worse in a foreign country because of the language barrier on top of not being able to see the small menu print and find the English version if there is any.

You can use your iPhone as a magnifying glass to help with this problem in the new ios 10 update. This is a feature that no one really talks about but can be extremely useful.

Use Your iPhone As a Magnifying Glass
A new Accessibility function in iOS 10 allows you to use your iPhone as a high-tech magnifying glass. You can focus, zoom, turn on the LED light, use special light filters and even freeze the image.

How to Start using a Magnifying Glass on iPhone
Go into Settings -> then General -> then Accessibility -> Magnifier (Turn On)

It will be especially helpful ordering food in a theater grill when I can’t see the menu in the dark. Other uses are to check out anomalies on your skin that you can’t see that well. Although you can always just take a photo to have for your dermatologist or doctor. You can use it for the back of your TV or other electronics to see part numbers or other small print information you are seeking.

Earn Free Entrees with Chipotle’s Chiptopia Rewards

by PointsGuru | Sep 25, 2016 | Restaurants

The summer of 2016 is a great time to be alive according to many on Twitter as Chiptopia Summer Rewards will be available for a three month period from July through September. The program is basically Chipotle Rewards but it’s not exactly the easiest rewards program to follow as they have came out with a 3-minute video to explain parts of it. It also has tiered levels where you can earn more than just the typical free entrees.

Chiptopia Rewards has three status levels:

Mild- you need to make at least four purchases of at least $6 during the month, which gets you a free entree

Medium – you need to make at least eight purchases of at least $6 during the month, which earns you a free entree

Hot – make at least 11 purchases of at least $6 during the month, which earns you a free entree

Kids Eat FREE on Sundays!
Every Sunday in September kid’s can eat FREE whenever you buy a burrito, bowl, an order of tacos or a salad – NO coupon needed! The free kid’s meal comes with a Dragons Love Tacos activity sheet and includes fruit or kid’s chips AND an organic apple or milk drink. These kid’s meals are priced at $3.75-$4.75 at my local restaurant, so this is a nice discount! Please note that this offer is only for kids 12 and under and not valid for catering orders. You may try and see if this will work on a delivery order.

Your purchase total resets to zero every month so don’t plan on carrying over your totals for one month to another. When you redeem for a free entree that counts towards the next status level. If you drive for Postmates or have a family and want to add up more than one purchase per day that wouldn’t count towards status.

You will receive additional rewards if you qualified for status for all three months, as follows:

Earn Mild status for all three months, receive a complimentary entree

Earn Medium status for all three months, receive $20 in Chipotle merchandise

Earn Hot status for all three months, receive catering for 20

Basically if you eat Chipotle four times in a month you’ll get a free entree. It’s best not to sweat all the other tiers and obstacles when all you get is an $8 or so award. Although this program does compare higher to other restauraunt programs such as Pei Wei. Chipotle’s is very generous with its rewards, offering a free entrée after roughly $24 of spend. This compares to a reward threshold of $90 of likely spend at Domino’s Pizza, $40 at Dunkin’ Donuts, and $62 at Starbucks.

What’s the Catch?
The only cons to this rewards program is that only one entree a day counts, the resetting each month of entrees,  and that it only lasts for the summer (for now only 3 months long promotion).

New Menu Items Announced
The Mexican fast-food chain also announced it’s adding a spicy chicken and pork chorizo to the menu in select cities including Columbus, Ohio, New York City and Sacramento and San Diego Calif. It’s the first new meat rollout since the company’s founding in 1993. The chorizo is a take on the classic Mexican sausage, seasoned with paprika, toasted cumin and chipotle peppers. They expect to expand chorizo to all of its U.S. location by this fall.

Additional 5% Back on Fast Food or Restaurants on Chipotle using a Credit Card?
Bad news for those of you who have one of the worst credit cards in the U.S. Bank Cash+ Card which once was one of our favorite cards. They took away the 5% for restaurants and downgraded it to only 2%. Chipotle comes up as a restaurant with this credit card so you will only get 1%-2%. You will not get 5% on Chipotle transactions with this particular card. However, if you use a Chase Freedom card which offers 5% back on restaurant/fast food purchases for the 3rd quarter (July-September 2016) you will get the full 5% back up to $1,500. If they run this promotion again perhaps in the Spring that is around the time that Discover Card will also offer the 5% back promo again on restaurants which include fast food.