Among the many ways to keep earning points and miles beyond a big welcome bonus, dining programs are among the best – just link a credit card and earn bonus miles when you dine out. And Bilt Rewards might have just taken the mantle as the best dining program, period.
Bilt – the novel program that allows renters to earn transferrable points on their monthly payments – launched its Neighborhood Dining program last year, allowing members to earn bonus points at participating restaurants. But its size was a problem: Since it was limited to just a handful of restaurants in only the biggest metropolitan cities, many Bilt members couldn't take advantage.
That's no longer an issue: Bilt just added 20,000 additional participating restaurants from coast to coast, putting it on par with many airlines' individual dining programs. And considering how valuable Bilt points are – you can transfer them to Hyatt, Alaska Airlines, United, Turkish Airlines, and many more – it could easily make Bilt your go-to choice to earn points on dinner.
To scale up its restaurant headcount, Bilt partnered with Rewards Network – which also powers dining portals for major airlines – and Seated, a popular reservations app that works similarly to Amex's Resy. Additionally, Bilt worked directly with restaurant groups and chefs to ensure members across the country can earn bonus Bilt Points for every dollar spent on dining.
While the biggest dining bonuses are reserved for members who pay with a *Bilt Mastercard*, you don't need a Bilt card to earn points through the Neighborhood Dining program. Simply add any Visa, Mastercard, or American Express credit or debit card to your Bilt Wallet and you'll earn extra points every time you dine at a participating restaurant. Exactly how many points you earn will vary from restaurant to restaurant but you can generally expect to get 3x Bilt points – and that's on top of what you'd earn from your credit card.
Let's cover the basics of how to earn more Bilt points through Bilt Dining.
Related reading: The 7 Best Credit Cards to Use for Dining
How Bilt Dining Works
If you're not already a Bilt Rewards member, you should be.
It's free to sign up – and even if you're not a renter or have no intention of getting the Bilt Rewards Mastercard, there are plenty of ways to earn valuable Bilt points. You can transfer those points to a growing list of airline and hotel partners or redeem them through the Bilt travel portal.
After signing up, you'll want to download the Bilt Rewards mobile app, available for both Apple and Android users. While you can link cards to your Bilt wallet online or through a mobile browser, using the Bilt app to find eligible restaurants will make for a far better user experience.
Once logged into your app, you'll want to navigate to the “Neighborhood” tab at the bottom.
After you've navigated to the neighborhood tab, you'll want to make sure Bilt Dining is selected at the top of the screen. Bilt's neighborhood tab shows additional ways you can earn Bilt points aside from paying rent or using the Bilt Mastercard, such as taking a fitness class or on Lyft rides.
If you currently hold the Bilt Mastercard, it will automatically be added to your wallet and linked up with the neighborhood dining program. Other cards can easily be added to your Bilt wallet down below.
Even if you don't know when you'll be able to take advantage of the Bilt Neighborhood Dining feature, it's still worth adding cards to your Bilt Wallet right now. No doubt in an effort to incentivize this new(ish) feature, Bilt is offering 100 points for every card you add, up to three cards. It's not much, but free points are free points!
After linking cards to your Bilt Wallet, you'll want to toggle on “Enable rewards at all restaurants” button. Even if you've previously used Bilt Dining, you'll need to turn this on in order to earn points at the restaurants that were recently added. Because many of these participating restaurants run on the Rewards Network, they're also available through other dining portals like American Airlines' AAdvantage Dining and Delta's SkyMiles Dining.
Just know that by turning rewards on for all restaurants with Bilt Dining, it will forcibly unlink that card from other participating dining programs. You can't double dip by earning Bilt Rewards and AAdvantage Miles or SkyMiles, for example. When I did this I instantly received an e-mail from AAdvantage Dining letting me know that my card had been transferred and I'd no longer be earning AAdvantage miles for my dining purchases. Fine by me!
With earning rates nearly identical between Bilt Dining and the airline portals, I'd much prefer to earn transferable Bilt points instead of an individual airline's miles. And if you ask me, you should too.
Remember: When you dine at a participating restaurant and use a linked card, you'll be earning Bilt points plus your usual credit card rewards for dining purchases. While there are a lot of great cards to use for dining, the Bilt Mastercard is a really strong contender in its own right. So long as you make at least five purchases per statement period, you'll be earning 3x Bilt points on dining.
Not just for renters: Read our full review of the Bilt Rewards Mastercard!
Learn more about the *Bilt Mastercard*.
Thrifty Tip: On the first of every month, you earn double points on all Bilt Mastercard purchases, up to 10,000 points. That's 6x on dining, 4x on travel, and 2x on everything else – this is in addition to 1x earning on rent payments.
Bottom Line
With the recent expansion of Bilt's Neighborhood Dining, you can (typically) earn 3x Bilt points at thousands upon thousands of restaurants nationwide – on top of your usual credit card rewards.
Given how valuable Bilt points are, this easily makes Bilt our team's new favorite dining portal. And it's not even close.