$2 Chipotle Burritos!
The graduation season means that a new wave of Americans are either starting to accumulate or starting pay off student debts. To recognize this harsh reality, Chipotle is currently running a promotion to subsidize everyone’s food expenditure: Buy a gift card of $25 or more by June 10, and enjoy a free meal on your next visit by June 30. Your “next visit” may be within 5 seconds of the gift card purchase, for anyone who cares.
Being a McDonald’s guy in San Francisco, I get a lot of scolding from the health conscious folks. To defend my occasional lunch choice, I’ve exchanged a fair share of smack talk with coworkers who prefer Chipotle. The outbreak in recent memory gave me ammo in declaring Big Mac as the healthier option over the pretentious Mexican fast food. Deep down, however, I do like Chipotle, too. And I certainly would not turn down a good deal on good food.
Since a basic burrito at Chipotle costs $8-9, this deal is approximately equivalent to buy-3-get-1-free, or four lunches for $25. Better yet, that free meal has no cap – you can ask for extra steak and overpriced guacamole, turning the fat burrito into a feast that lasts all day.
That’s not bad at all. However, at Hungry for Points, we are always hungry for more than the face value.
Burrito Churning
Folks who manufacture spend should be familiar with the concept of gift card reselling. Most of us don’t bother with it on a regular basis, but this is a good time to consider doing it. Currently, on CardPool.com*, a $25 Chipotle gift card sells for $20.25. Going through a portal like TopCashBack* earns you an additional 2%, bringing up the value to $20.65. As long as you don’t mind the two extra steps, the net cost of your 1,000-calories super burrito goes down to $4.35. Rinse, repeat, and the same $25 now buys you almost six lunches! Time to cancel all your afternoon meetings and prepare for massive food coma!
* My referral links
Hungry for Burritos AND Points?
In a city like San Francisco, $4.35 lunches are already difficult to beat. What makes the deal even sweeter is that you can use a credit card and earn points on the full $25 of the gift card purchase. At the minimum of 1 point per dollar, you get 25 points to go with your Chipotle meal of choice.
If you have a Discover IT (5% on restaurants in Q2) and are signed up for the double points promotion, you will get $2.50 cash back for each purchase. This brings down the net cost of the super burrito to $1.85. Alternatively, if you have the legacy Citi Forward (5x points on restaurants) and make your purchases by June 4, you will earn 125 Thankyou points with each $4.35 meal. If the food is worth at least $4 to you, the latter is akin to buying Thankyou points at 0.28 cents apiece.
The Hard Question
For those of you who don’t mind eating at Chipotle and regularly spend $5+ per meal, the hard question is – why would you go anywhere but Chipotle for your next 60 lunches? I’d say that too many consecutive burritos is bad for your health, but you wouldn’t take health advice from a McDonald’s guy, would you?
The $2.50 double cheese burger and fries special at the “Create Your Taste” McD’s near Union Square allows you to load it with free options like guacamole, grilled mushrooms, red onions, and cheddar cheese. Can be customized on their touchscreen order panels so you don’t hold-up the line building your configuration.
Sounds neat! I’m gonna go check it out… on 7/1, after the Chipotle deal is gone 🙂
Great tip on the loading up on guac and extras on the free burrito. I love me some Chipotle!
Great tip! If you have say 4 x $25 gift cards…how do you sell them all at once on Card Pool? I would like to just ship one package. Do I just put in $100 as the value and they are okay with it being in 4 separate cards? Thanks again!
Mark
What you need is to add a $25 card at a time. Once it’s in your basket, you can add another one (see “Add Another Card” on the upper right-hand corner of the screen). It’s slightly tedious but it definitely helps to package multiple cards in one shipment.
Thanks much!