My Chili’s Rewards – the loyalty program for Chili’s now that their partnership with Plenti is ending – is offering all members free chips & salsa or a free non-alcoholic beverage every time you visit.
The Deal
- Get a free chips & salsa or non-alcoholic beverage every time you visit Chili’s.
Key Terms
- Must be a member of My Chili’s Rewards.
- Log in to your account at your table’s Ziosk to redeem this offer at checkout.
- The free chips & salsa or non-alcoholic beverage can be redeemed with any other available rewards.
Quick Thoughts
This is a fairly good offer seeing as it’s free to join My Chili’s Rewards and you can use it every time you visit Chili’s. The chips & salsa usually costs $3.79, while the most expensive non-alcoholic beverage appears to cost $3.39 (assuming that the gallon servings for $7.09 aren’t included.)
Chili’s frequently sends me emails with an offer for a free appetizer or free dessert. Being able to stack one of those offers with the free chips & salsa means we’d be getting $10 of free food during every visit to Chili’s. There’s no minimum spend mentioned, so in theory there’s nothing stopping you (other than your pride maybe) from only ordering chips & salsa and a dessert and getting a free “meal” if you also have one of the free dessert rewards in your account.
We bought quite a few Chili’s gift cards for 40% off during last year’s Google Express Amex Offer. We’ve therefore eaten there several times over the last few months, having not visited for a few years. I have to admit, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by their new menu, so this gives us a possible reason to return once we’ve used up our gift cards.
Personally, I think it’s smart of Chili’s to offer this. Everyone loves free stuff, but it’s unlikely to cost them much given that chips & salsa and soft drinks probably have the highest markup of anything on their menu. That means it’s only costing them a fraction of the $3.79 / $3.39, a small price to pay if it encourages customers to visit more frequently. Hopefully it’ll be seen as a success so that other chain restaurants offer similar deals.
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How do you find code or password on your account— signed up and joined last time in and today wouldn’t accept our code— so need to find somewhere to change and make a new one or find the code that is on our account
[…] Chili’s has a loyalty program that gives you free chips and salsa or non-alcoholic beverage ev…, I’ll have to try this out at an airport location to ensure those aren’t excluded. […]
Not impressed. Local mexican-american restaurant gives everyone free unlimited chips and 2 house-made salsas as soon as you’re seated. Literally is the same as most restaurants offering free bread and butter…
Should not hide this benefit behind a “loyalty program”. Also, what if you want the soda benefit instead? Does it not include free refills and can every person at the table get one free if they are all loyalty members?
It’s true that most Mexican restaurants offer free chips and salsa, but the cost of that is presumably included in the price of the entrees. I’m not aware of any other chain restaurants offering one of their appetizers for free every time you visit, so this still seems like a pretty good deal to me.
If you want the soda benefit, you’d just select that when checking out on the Ziosk. You only pay for a soda once at Chili’s, so it would include free refills.
I doubt every person at the table can get a free appetizer / beverage – I’m assuming it works similar to Groupons and other similar deals where it’s one offer per table.
Funny enough, I went ahead and signed up yesterday just because there is Chili’s next to my office and I have a bunch of gift cards I got from the Google Express deal making my lunches about $3.50 for takeouts. Only after I signed up, I realized that they started offering this yesterday. So I used it for my to-go order (you have to add chips and salsa to your order for 3.99 then show them the reward barcode when you come in to pick it up and they take it off your bill). The bag of chips they are giving away for to-go orders is huge. It will probably last me for a few days.
Yep, we got a decent sized serving of them when we visited Chili’s the other week – good to know that the serving size is good on a to-go order too.
Strange, when I tried to sign up, it told me My Chili’s Rewards is not yet available in your area. Really strange a rewards program would not be available across the US!
That is strange – I’d have thought it’d be nationwide. It looks like they have an app, so it might let you sign up that way. Alternatively, maybe register with a friend’s / family member’s address, then change it to your address once you’ve registered.
Good idea, thanks Stephen. I signed up, now I will wait and see if they will allow me to use my account at my local restaurant.
OK, great! Seeing as you now have an account, I’d imagine that you would be able to use it at your local restaurant, but I also thought you should’ve been able to sign up with your home address, so what do I know?!
I too got the “not yet available” so I chose a Chili’s from a random zip code. I can’t change the address, but there doesn’t seem to be anything site-specific about the offer/QR code in the app. I tried to test it out at my local restaurant, but was thwarted: when I flashed the app’s QR code to my server, she simply brought out the basket of chips and left it off the bill…