for my 50th birthday, the best price is FREE!

Last night on CTV News there was a story about getting stuff for free on your birthday. I found the website for the book they talked about in the story. I have decided to try to get some free stuff for my 50th birthday. I'll blog about that later. Today I have the story of my first birthday freebie of this year, my Red Robin Restaurant lunch.

Red Robin is a hamburger restaurant. There's one across the street from the community centre where I work (just past the Creative Nails store and Huku Ya Sushi restaurant).

I must have signed up to be on the Red Robin email list at some point, because I have received a birthday email from them each year for a couple of years now. It says, "You get a free burger for your birthday!" It's a nice offer. You don't have to go on your actual birthday, and it's good for a chicken or beef or fish or veggie burger of which there are many versions and varieties. You don't have to bring a friend or buy a beverage or show ID. You just have to show up and eat your burger. Here's what the coupon looked like when I opened the email in Eudora and printed it. Red Robin even accepted it scramble-printed.

Being not very much of a burger person, I invited Alex to take me out for lunch. We go for lunch together every couple of weeks, and take turns paying the bill. It was Alex's turn, so this made for an easy and cheap lunch-pay for him, seeing as one lunch was free. Also, Alex is a burger person. So he ordered the burger, which was also okay with Red Robin (a friendly, flexible Robin it is!) Here is Alex, with the birthday burger.

It was a nice big burger with a healthy pile of fries. At Red Robin they give you fry refills, but Alex declined. He said the burger was very good. Here's a picture of me, with my salad.

Oh dear, Alex, I said, "Take a picture of the salad and me." I meant, "Take a picture of me and the salad, or everyone will think I was wearing a party hat, or maybe a narwhal costume, and trying to hide my tusk outside of the frame!"

That's better. See how happy I am now? And isn't that a huge salad? I don't know if they give refills on salads. I bet nobody has ever asked. You need a snow shovel and an extra 15 minutes to eat that salad. So I talked while Alex ate his big burger very fast. Then Alex talked while I worked on that big old birthday salad. We even remembered to calculate the tip on the value of the meal before the burger was subtracted. And nobody sang happy birthday. Thank goodness. I would have stood on a chair without even being asked, but Alex would have crawled under the table. Bless Red Robin for its wise restraint.

Red Robin free burger gets 50 birthday candles out of a possible 50, for its faithful sending of birthday emails year after year, the early arrival of the coupon (a week and a half before my birthday), its flexible redemption policy, and its big salad and big burger with no fuss.

question: what is your favourite burger?

mompoet - Oh Look! I just got an email from Baskin Robbins reminding me to get my free birthday ice cream cone!