The cost of getting a takeaway is astronomical! Whilst fakeaways (where you cook your own takeaway) are great, there are plenty of ways to trim down the costs whilst still enjoying your favourite take away.
Order less & share
Some of the portion sizes from your favourite take away are huge – more than you can reasonably eat in one sitting. Or sometimes they offer a great deal on a larger portion that can easily be split between two or more people. Subway is a great example of this – they have a 6″ sub and a drink for £3, or a foot long (12″) sub and a drink for £5. Whilst the saving isn’t massive and you don’t get a drink each, sharing a foot long sub saves you some cash. Another example is our local fish and chip shop. One order of large fish and chips feeds the two of us to the point of being stuffed (in fact, we often have to leave some) and saves us having to buy more.
Discounts & codes
Domino’s is famous for its discount codes, meaning that you can often save 50% or more. Be sure to compare what the best offer is though – we found it cheaper to use a 50% off coupon than ordering the “Two for Tuesday” deal. Takeaways may offer a weekday discount to entice business. Other discounts include military, OAP, carer and more.
You could also get a discount for ordering takeaway on a weekday instead of a weekend – our local Chinese takeaway offers a substantial discount for orders placed between Monday and Thursday.
Consider meal deals
Don’t assume that a set meal is cheaper than ordering the items individually…but they often are! Larger sharing meals may have exactly what you were planning on ordering individually, but at a much cheaper price.
Mystery shopping
If I told you that we regularly get to have pizza, chicken or sub sandwiches for free and get paid to report back, I am sure that you would love to get involved! It is a great money saving and money earner! Mystery shopping companies are always looking for people to carry out evaluations of the service and food provided by take away establishments. I would recommend Market Force, Grassroots and The Mystery Dining Company.
Get cash back
If you are ordering via Just Eat or Hungry House, remember that you can get cash back from Topcashback, Quidco or Fat Cheese.
Hungry House offer 4% back at Quidco and Topcashback.
Just Eat offer 6% for new customers and 3% for returning customers at Quidco and Topcashback.
Collect
Sometimes collecting your order makes you eligible for discounts that wouldn’t apply to online orders or delivered orders. By collecting you are also likely to order less because you don’t have to make up the minimum spend for delivery. Plus if delivery isn’t free, you save yourself that cost.
Win £20
I’m giving away £20 so that you can treat yourself to a take away in January. The competition runs from 1st December 2014 – 31 December 2014 and the prize will be sent to the winner via Paypal. To enter, simply complete any (or all!) of the Rafflecopter entry options below. Good luck.
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15 responses
I sometimes buy more food than I need because there is a deal on a bigger meal & eat the rest the day after
We go for the money off deals – even if there is more food – cheaper this way and can be eaten for other meals until gone
We avoid the fish at the fish and chip shop as it is sooooo expensive, instead opting for sausage or fishcake. Whatever is left over from the Chinese gets used in a meal the following day.
I save money on them by not buying them! Cooking at home is so much cheaper
I don’t know if they all do but our local dominos offers lunchtime 1 topping pizzas for collection at a cheaper price – eg large is £4.99, med £3.99. The offer runs till 4pm so I sometimes take the kids down after school to pick one up and reheat it at dinnertime. My kids between them can eat two supermarket pizzas usually on offer at £4 so it doesn’t cost any more to get a medium one from dominos which seem to fill them up better.
I don’t buy them as much as I can buy things like cheap pizzas and chinese meals from my local supermarket. Sometimes I order a curry but use my fried own rice from the supermarket- so that is a good saving tip!
I never buy them so compared to loads of others I save a fortune
I don’t buy them – I had to get an emergency “2 fish and one chips” last week – £8 – really!
I save money by limiting ourselves on when we have a take away.
i dont buy them
I save money by checking whether I could make a meal out of the extras the takeaway offers. Some takeaways offer sausages, fish cakes and chips in their extras menu which are usually pretty cheap when combined to make a meal.
We share food so we don’t have to get separate meals, there is more than enough with the takeaway we use so we usually have nothing left over
We try not to over order
We only have a take a way as a special treat, maybe once a month and then we usually get a meal deal or something on offer, though always something we know we like, so no waste x
Such a great load of helpful information 🙂 x