InKind Dining App: How It Works, And My Experience

There are all kinds of ways to maximize your return on dining, from using the right credit card, to taking advantage of airline and hotel dining programs. Along those lines, I just used InKind for the first time, which is an interesting app that can save you money on dining.

I don’t know what took me so long to finally download this and use it, but it’s great, so I wanted to share my experience. Long story short, I find this to be significantly more rewarding than your typical airline or hotel dining program, with the caveat that it has a smaller network of restaurants. Separately, I also shared my experience using the Seated dining app.

What is the InKind dining app?

On the most basic level, InKind is a free app that offers a 15% discount (or more) at over 2,000 restaurants around the United States. The participating restaurants are primarily in major cities, from Chicago, to Los Angeles, to Miami, to New York, to San Francisco. So if you live in a smaller market, unfortunately this app probably isn’t for you, unless you’re traveling.

What impresses me about InKind is that the restaurants on the list are actually largely high quality and popular, unlike with many other dining rewards programs, which basically try to incentivize you to eat at crappy restaurants. For example, I live in Miami, and several of the restaurants participating on InKind are ones I’d frequent anyway, from Chug’s Diner, to Maty’s, to Michael’s Genuine, to Phuc Yea, just to name a few.

I also find it interesting that InKind’s business model is different than that of most other dining rewards programs. With most other dining rewards programs, the dining network simply takes a percentage of the bill in exchange for offering guests rewards for using a particular credit card.

InKind, meanwhile, seems to work more closely with restaurants, and has a different business relationship, whereby it provides financing to restaurants. The idea is that ordinarily when private equity firms invest in restaurants, they take a huge stake. Instead, InKind provides capital to restaurants, in exchange for dining credits.

It’s a very interesting business model. Obviously I can’t speak to it from the perspective of a restaurant owner, but I appreciate the concept that InKind is going for.

How does the InKind dining app save you money?

There are so many ways that the InKind app can save you money for dining at a participating restaurant. At a minimum, you should look at it as receiving 15% off your bill, though potentially you can get a much better return than that. Let me go through each of the ways you can save.

Get a $25 refer a friend credit on your first meal

InKind has a refer a friend program. When you’re referred by an existing user, you’ll get $25 off a bill of $50 or more, to use at a participating restaurant. Similarly, the friend who refers you can get a $25 credit as well, and each person can refer up to 20 others.

You can find my refer a friend link here, and others are welcome to leave their link in the comments section as well.

Get $10 off a meal of $30 or more monthly

Every calendar month, InKind members receive $10 off a meal of $30+. It’s that straightforward, as this is available at all restaurants across the network.

Get 15% off at InKind restaurants

If you’re going to pay with your card linked to your InKind account, then you can always receive 15% off your meal, with no maximum savings. That 15% back comes in the form of credits you can use toward future dining at InKind restaurants. Note that you don’t receive the 15% back on tips, fees, or portions of the bill covered by discounts or paid with InKind Cash.

Buy InKind Cash at a discount

The InKind dining app also lets you purchase InKind Cash at a discount. For example, in my account I can buy a $312 InKind dining credit for $250, or an $8,700 dining credit for $6,000. As you can tell, this offers anywhere from a 25% to 45% bonus.

If you go this route, then you won’t earn the 15% back, but instead you get this larger discount. Of course you should only use this if you frequent restaurants that are part of the InKind network, so I don’t recommend taking advantage of this if you’re just trying out the app.

For example, I decided to buy the $312 credit for $250, since I know I’ll spend that at participating restaurants.

Pay $9.99 per month for InKind Pass

While the standard version of InKind is free, there’s also InKind Pass, which costs $9.99 per month. This comes with two primary advantages:

• Instead of receiving 15% back, you receive 20% back; keep in mind you only get that return if you pay with a linked card, rather than with InKind credit
• Instead of receiving $10 off a $30+ meal monthly, you instead receive $50 off a $150+ meal monthly

I’d argue this is primarily worth it if you otherwise spend at least $150 per month (in a single transaction) at a restaurant participating in the program. The incremental 5% return is good as well, but you can also get a bigger discount by pre-purchasing credit.

Keep an eye out for other InKind promotions

Beyond the above, InKind often has other promotions you can take advantage of, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for those. For example, sometimes there are promotions with Amex Offers and SimplyMiles, which can be stacked with the above.

Furthermore, InKind often emails members with targeted and other limited time promotions. For example, I have an offer on my account right now whereby I can get an additional 10% back if I make two InKind transactions in the near future.

How does the InKind dining app work at restaurants?

All of that sounds great, but what’s it like using the InKind dining app at when you’re actually at the restaurant? Is there confusion from the servers? Do they roll their eyes? Well, that’s what delighted me most about the experience.

When using InKind to pay, you don’t need to make a reservation in any particular way, there are no restrictions on what days or times you can dine, and you don’t even need to let the server know when you’re seated that you’ll be paying with InKind.

There’s not even any confusion, since you actually pay the bill on your end, without even interacting with the server. That’s because all InKind restaurants use the Toast platform for payments, so it’s all connected pretty nicely on the backend.

For example, this morning we went to Chug’s Diner with our son (as a party of five), and had a delicious breakfast. Miles recommends the french toast. 😉

At the conclusion of the meal, I was presented with a check, so I pulled up Chug’s Diner on the InKind app, and then clicked the “Pay Bill” button.

The app asked to enter the check number, which was clearly visible on the check.

I was then asked how much I wanted to tip. Note that the gratuity will always be charged to your card on file, and will not be taken from any balance you may have.

No matter how I paid, I could apply the $10 monthly discount. Beyond that, I had two options for how to pay. I could either use my existing InKind balance (which I acquired with a 25% bonus), or I could pay with my linked credit card, and receive 15% back, in the form of InKind credit.

I competed that all on my phone, and a minute later our server showed up, and said we were all set, without me even having to mention that I paid through InKind. It honestly couldn’t have been more seamless.

In the end, I saved $10 using the monthly credit that app users get, plus I used $95.03 from my InKind balance, which I acquired with a 25% bonus, meaning I got that credit for ~$76. In the end, I saved around $30 on a meal we would’ve had anyway. I’ll take it!

You can link any credit card to your InKind account, so I recommend using a card that maximizes your return on dining spending. For those curious, any portion of your bill paid by credit card will show the merchant as a restaurant, as usual.

Bottom line

I finally used the InKind dining app for the first time, and I can’t believe it took me this long to do so. Personally I like this a lot more than most of the dining rewards programs out there. While InKind doesn’t have the largest network of restaurants, I find them to overwhelmingly be good quality.

With InKind, you can save at least 15% every time you dine at a participating restaurant. Unlike some other dining programs, there are no restrictions on when you dine, and there are no reservations requirements.

The best part is that you can save way more than 15%, by using a refer a friend link, taking advantage of the additional once monthly savings, and even by buying credits in advance.

If you live in a major city that has restaurants you like that participate in InKind, then using the app is a no-brainer. There are several restaurants on the list that I frequent, so I’m happy to finally be using this.

If you’ve used the InKind dining app, what was your experience like?