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Dining at restaurants can be a tasty experience. It can also be a pricey one.
That’s one reason why fewer people are going out to eat. A YouGov report from October found that 37% of American diners said they were eating out less often than they had a year earlier, driven away by high menu prices and a desire to save money. Only 8% said they were dining out more.
Yet many of us will do it anyway, whether to get a break from cooking a meal at home or as a way to spend time with friends and family. Eating at restaurants may even boost our mental health.
Luckily for us, personal finance and nutrition experts say there are some simple strategies that make it possible to eat out without spending a fortune.
Think about why you’re dining out
Is your goal to try a buzzy new restaurant? Or are you just going out to eat to socialize?
Kimberly Palmer, a personal finance expert at NerdWallet, says determining why you’re eating out can help you choose a restaurant that meets your needs and doesn’t cause you to overspend.
“You might be getting just as much value and enjoyment by going out for a less expensive pizza than a nicer restaurant,” Palmer says, “so just putting some time into thinking about why you’re going out, what you want to get out of it, that can help guide your decisions.”
Give yourself a restaurant budget
Personal finance experts say it’s also worth looking back at how much you’ve been spending on food outside your home. That way you have a starting point to create a dining-out budget. (If you use the 50-30-20 method of budgeting, restaurant trips would fall in the 30% discretionary spending category.)
Whatever budget you choose for dining out, financial counselor Lindsay Plumb says it’s critical to separate it from your grocery money.
“My grocery money does not touch, I call it, our ‘spend-with-joy’ money,” Plumb says. “The spend-with-joy money I get to spend truly with joy, not worry about whether or not I can pay my mortgage or buy the groceries or if the kids need cleats.”
To stretch that dining-out budget even more, look for restaurants with loyalty programs that offer free or discounted items.
Peruse the menu in advance
Take a few minutes and read the restaurant’s menu before you sit down. You can plan your meal ahead of time and avoid having to make a last-second decision at the table, where you might panic-order the ribeye.
Registered dietician Amy Lawson says this small bit of research can also help you eat healthier while dining out.
“Especially when we go to a restaurant, and we get there, and we are really hungry. Our hunger hormones are really loud, and they are telling us: ‘Give me all the carbohydrates … Give me the quickest source of fuel,'” she says. “It can kind of muddle in our brains the choices in terms of making the healthiest choice.”
Fill the to-go box early
Another tip from Lawson that does double duty as a money-saver: put half of your meal in a to-go box right away.
Restaurant portions can be excessive. In an analysis from the nonprofit ReFED, 25% of restaurant customers said they leave food on their plates always or most of the time.
Immediately socking away half of your meal can help you avoid overeating and prevent food waste. It also means you’ve got lunch for the next day at no additional cost.
Dine out … at home
Alternatively, you can get creative with takeout. Palmer of NerdWallet says she sometimes orders catering trays from a local restaurant and invites company over. This lets her enjoy restaurant food a bit more cheaply and socialize at the same time. Leftovers go in the fridge for the week.
Some NPR readers also suggest getting takeout for part of your meal and cooking the rest. That could mean ordering something that you can’t whip up quickly or easily, such as a pizza or stir fry, and then supplementing it with a homemade salad or steamed rice.
Pick up your takeout
While we’re on the topic of takeout, it can pay to pick it up instead of having it delivered.
Takeout orders are ballooning, with three out of every four meals served by U.S. restaurants last year taken to go, according to the National Restaurant Association.
But the website LendingTree found that fast-food and fast-casual delivery orders in the top 10 U.S. metro areas cost nearly 80% more than if customers had picked them up themselves.
If it’s the convenience of delivery you’re after, you can factor those extra costs into your budget, experts say. But if you’re able to pick up your order yourself, save the dough.
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The story was edited by Alina Hartounian and Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is CJ Riculan. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.
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