Groceries for Free?!?!?
I was thinking through recently what I want to write about here on the Salty Zebra Blog. A while back I started to develop rhythms of Travel Tuesdays, Wellness Wednesdays, and Potluck Saturdays, with Bible study filling in the rest. These were intended to inspire me, but eventually became a constraint instead. I felt like I had to write about wellness on Wednesdays, but sometimes I didn't have anything on my heart to write about. So, I'm breaking out of the mold and just writing about something fun that I've been enjoying lately that, perhaps, you might too!
As I've written about before (1, 2, 3), I've been learning about how to use credit card sign up bonuses (SUBs) and other benefits to further my travel dreams and daily living. The key to this, as I've mentioned before and will mention every time I talk about credit cards, is PAYING OFF YOUR BALANCE EVERY MONTH! If you don't do this, you negate any benefits you get and can find yourself in quite the pickle! That said, today I want to explore a little known benefit of many cards from Chase, Door Dash.
If you're not familiar with Door Dash, it is a delivery service that will bring you food from a restaurant, groceries from a store, even a tool from Home Depot. If you can buy it somewhere, Door Dash will probably bring it to you! Of course, there is a markup on the prices of the items, and if you don't watch yourself, you can drown in the delivery fees, service fees, tips and other price hikes. So what benefit could Door Dash bring you, or Chase bring you through them? Free stuff!
Door Dash has a program called Dash Pass. Pretty much every service out there has a loyalty or subscription service you can purchase and this is theirs. With Dash Pass, you can get a $0 delivery fee when you meet the order minimum (usually $12 at this point) as well as reduced service fees. The standard service fee for most restaurants is 15%, with a minimum fee as well as a maximum cap, but with DashPass you only pay 5%, with the same min and max, or nothing at all on some pickup orders. There are other fees that may apply including express fees if you need your parmesan cheese right now because you're in the middle of cooking dinner and you realized your cheese is moldy (I'm looking at you, son!) or long distance fees if your driver has to bring you something from another city. You also receive member-only discounts which can really add up!
Another side benefit of Dash Pass is through Lyft, a ride share service. If you link your Door Dash account that has a Dash Pass with your Lyft account, you can get $10 off your first 2 rides (for new users), 10% off scheduled airport rides (this can really add up!), 5% off on-demand rides, and 2 free Priority Pickup upgrades per month. If you use Lyft a lot, like my flight attendant daughter does, then this could really be a useful perk!
So, how much will all these benefits cost you? If you wanted to sign up for the program on your own, you would pay $9.99 a month or $96 a year ($8 per month). Instead, though, you could sign up for one of many Chase credit cards that offer this membership for free! Currently, you can receive an ongoing Dash Pass through the Chase Sapphire Reserve*, Chase Sapphire Preferred*, and Chase Business Ink Preferred* cards. Many of the Chase co-branded credit cards, like our favorite, the Aeroplan Card, also have Dash Pass benefits, but these only last one year and then your account will automatically be charged the regular fee. You can avoid this by using one of these benefits at a time for each co-branded card you open, essentially having ongoing Dash Pass. Finally, some of the junior cards at Chase, like the Freedom and Slate cards, offer six months of Dash Pass which also revert to a paid membership at the end, but can be linked one after the other like before.
If you are someone who would pay for Dash Pass on your own, apart from having a credit card benefit, than this would more than justify the standard $95 annual fee on most of these cards (the Chase Sapphire Reserve is MUCH more). But wait, there's more! With the Chase Sapphire cards and the co-branded cards with a $95 annual fee, you also get $10 a month to spend on a non-restaurant order. With the Freedom and Slate cards you get $10 per quarter. These credits do not carry over and must be used all at once, you can't do one order for $4 and another for $6. They also stack with other discounts, though, so if you play your cards right you can do really well!
When I first learned about these benefits, I would use my $10 credit to order last minute groceries I needed and didn't want to have to find a way to get to the store (I wasn't driving at the time). The $10 pretty much covered the service fee, tip, and markup on the groceries, so I felt like I was coming out even. One time I ordered hair brushes I was needing from a beauty store. With my $10 discount I ended up getting them for less than I would have paid on Amazon, and they were delivered within an hour. But I knew there had to be more I could do with this! So I did a little research (you know I love to do that!) and found that you could order things for pickup at a few stores. There aren't many options and they are primarily convenience stores and gas stations. The prices are ridiculous, but free is free! So, for about $1 an order I would have my husband swing by 7-11 and pick up a couple of tubs of Ben and Jerry's. Not bad! But could it get better yet? After a while, the 7-11 near our house dropped off the pickup options and I had to find a new place. I put in a couple of orders at the Jackson's convenience store, but that was even more out of the way and I still felt like I was missing out on what this benefit could bring. So I started to look farther afield at pickup places in Tacoma near where my husband serves at the Rescue Mission. Low and behold, there was an unusual sounding place called Dash Mart.
The Dash Mart stores are brick and mortar Door Dash businesses. You can order for delivery from them or pick it up yourself. Remember, though, that with pickup you skip out on the minimum order, service fee, and tip. You still have to pay the Pacific Northwest bag fee, but you can't avoid that anywhere. And Dash Mart has a lot more options that we will actually use in our home! They have a full produce and meat section, dairy, and even pantry items. Here's the difference between Dash Mart and a grocery store - you don't do the shopping yourself. Now, to be honest, most of the time lately I order my groceries online, so I don't do the shopping anyways, so this makes little difference to me. The other unique thing about Dash Mart is their store front. If you've ever been to a dispensary, you'll get it. You walk into a small lobby with one or two windows, and you ring a bell for service. Someone comes and gets the name on the order, then they grab it from the shelf and pass it to you. Strange, but practical!
The prices you'll find at Dash Mart are a little higher than those at the grocery store, but not a ton. And with Dash Pass, you'll get regular discounts that can make this really worth while! Here's my first few Dash Mart experiences:
- On my first two orders through my Chase Ink Business Preferred card, I received a code that gave me 60% off my order, up to $15. I quickly did the math and realized that I would need to spend $25 to receive this $15 maximum. So, once I applied the coupon and my $10 monthly credit, my order came out to $0.44. For this I received four pounds of organic grass-fed grass finished beef tips (equivalent on Butcher Box is $26.99/lb) that were on sale for $5.89 each plus an avocado and a lime I threw on to bring the order to $25.44.
- My next Dash Mart order was even more exciting because I used a $10 off of $15 coupon, my $10 monthly credit, and a save $5 when you buy two Ben and Jerry's coupon. This meant my grand total for two tubs of ice cream, four-4oz wild caught cod fillets and a basket of mushrooms was $0.12. Even better? I clicked through the Capital One credit card portal when I placed my order and received 3,000 Capital One miles as a bonus, worth at least $30! So I got paid to take home yummy groceries!
- Not every purchase can be amazing, but I was very satisfied with the orders I put in today for my husband to pick up. On the first I got 2 red onions, 3 roma tomatoes and 5 oz of Organic Super Greens. The second also had the 5 oz of Super Greens, a tub of sour cream and a bunch of cilantro. It's not as sexy as organic grass-fed grass-finished beef tips, but they are items that were on our grocery list this week that we would have paid full price for at the grocery store. Using two Dash Pass benefits though, my grand total was $0.59 and my husband was going to be nearby anyways, so no gas was wasted.
Here's The Thing: Does this give me a little dopamine hit each week or month when I put in an order and find a way to get the most out of it? Yes, yes it does. Is it a really big dopamine hit when I get paid $30 to take home $25 in groceries? Definitely! I've been having a ton of fun with this recently, and I wanted to share it with you in case you might enjoy it too!
* These are referral links through which you and I will each receive a bonus if you use them!
·
Chase
Sapphire Preferred
o
Earn
100,000 bonus points with Sapphire Reserve® or 75,000 bonus points with
Sapphire Preferred®. I can be rewarded if you apply here and are approved for
either card.
o
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/19t/B5DPR7IJTM
·
Chase
Ink Business Preferred
o
Earn
200,000 bonus points with the new Sapphire Reserve for Business® card, Ink
Business Unlimited® card or Ink Business Cash® card. I can be rewarded if you
apply here and are approved for the card.
o
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/21u/7UYV2N4TQK
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