DailyDirt: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

TANSTAAFL is usually true, especially if you're counting opportunity costs. However, some deals are too attractive for some people to pass up -- especially offers of free food. Occasionally, folks even get the better end of the deal by exploiting loopholes, and the "free lunch" turns out to really favor the eater. Here are just a few examples of getting some free food (with an asterisk).

• Some airlines offer free meals to their first-class customers, and one man from China ate for free in the VIP lounge of China Eastern Airlines for an entire year. Nice. But not quite as crafty as David Philips scheme that got him free airline miles for buying pudding. [url]
• Taco Bell ran a contest called "Eleven Everlasting Dollars" that offered free food for life (at Taco Bell). The fine print defined free food for life as $10,000 in gift cards -- which apparently was based on an average consumption of $216 per year for 46 years. [url]
• Alan Marin from North Carolina bought a "Never Ending Pasta Pass" from Olive Garden, and he's eaten over a hundred meals with it. It's a limited time pass, but he's already saved himself several hundred bucks (but on the other hand, he's had to eat nothing but pasta for over a month). [url]
• If you want to try getting as much free food as you can in a year, mark your calendars for all of the annual free food promotions from Ben & Jerry's and other retailers. Not too many free lunches, but you'll be eating a lot of desserts and donuts. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alan marin, contests, food, free meal, pasta, promotions
Companies: ben and jerry, china eastern airlines, olive garden, taco bell