How To Get Free Food With Mystery Shops – 8 Best Platforms to Eat For Free

I’ve started getting a lot of free food with mystery shops just a couple months ago and they’ve been one of my favorite side hustles to do lately. I’m a pretty frugal person and don’t spend much money eating out. But these mystery shop opportunities have allowed me to enjoy eating out and focus on my experience as a customer!

I’ll be updating this article as I find more platforms that I have success it so bookmark this page if you want to keep posted. 🙂 Or subscribe to get updates!

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What are Mystery Shops?

Mystery shops, sometimes called “secret shops”, are a market research strategy that companies use to get genuine feedback about a customer experience from a customer. In this case, the customer would be you! These restaurants hire third-party companies to hire the mystery shoppers and evaluate a business’s service, products, or customer experience.

What is Required From Mystery Shops?

Mystery shops vary from shop to shop. For restaurants specifically, some may require you to order a certain item on the menu. Some may require you to visit the bar and order alcoholic drinks. Other I’ve shopped allowed me to order anything on the menu but required me to order at least 1 appetizer, 2 entrees, and 1 dessert. It all depends!

Many of the ones I’ve done allowed me to bring a guest, which is nice because I can discuss the observations I have to make with my fiancé beforehand and he’d serve as a second pair of eyes for me.

Mystery shops expand to more than just free food. You can find shops in almost everything imaginable from movies, gas stations, auto shops, postal services, and more!

What Kind of Questions Do Restaurant Mystery Shops Ask?

Mystery shops ask a variety of questions. For the ones specifically for restaurants, they might ask questions like these below.

1. Did the server use a tray to serve your food?
2. Did you feel welcomed?
3. Was your food the right temperature?
4. Was the bathroom clean?
5. What items did the waiter/waitress recommend?

And a variety of other questions. Some may also require you to make a reservation beforehand and discuss your experience over the phone.

How To Get Free Food With Mystery Shops

Many third party companies are looking to hire people just like you for their clients to test out various restaurants. Just in the past month (December 2024), I was able to get almost $500 worth of free food for me and my fiancé!

Many of these third-party companies partner with either Sassie or ShopMetrics to develop their platforms, so don’t be surprised if many of the platforms look the same.

Best Practices With Mystery Shops

There’s a couple things you can do to prepare yourself for mystery shops. When I did my first one, I was a little nervous that I’d forget something. But once you do your first shop or two, you’ll get used to the things that you should be looking out for!

Make Sure You Read the Shop Report Beforehand

The shop report will tell you exactly what questions you have to fill out and be on the lookout for. They’ll also tell you your expense limit, what items to order, and more. Make sure you read it beforehand and stick to the requirements or your shop may not be reimbursed.

Take Brief Notes

Take brief notes on your phone during the shop but don’t make it obvious! The whole point of mystery shops is so that the restaurant thinks you are a real customer. If you expose yourself, it’s possible you may invalidate your shop.

I usually jot down quick things like what the waiter/waitress looked like, what time they came by first, etc. But I never write down full sentences. I also never write down how I felt about certain interactions because that is easier to recall than what someone looked like.

Don’t Reschedule Often

The schedulers who are scheduling you for shops are also doing this as their job. So don’t flake on them or reschedule often or you may not be assigned any future shops.

Read the Budget and Pay

Mystery shops will often give you a budget. Most of the times, this is more than enough to pay for the average item on the menu including tax and tip. However, if you’re wary of paying a lot out of pocket, make sure you’re reading your expense limit beforehand! I’ve never had a problem with the mystery shop covering the entire bill of my restaurant shops.

Mystery shops will also often pay you a “shop fee” on top of your reimbursement for the food you bought. This has ranged from $10-15 for me.

Don’t Reveal Clients

These third party companies want to keep their restaurant clients to themselves. So make sure you never reveal which restaurants are partnered with which third party companies. You’ll sign an agreement that you won’t reveal these restaurants but this is just a reminder that this is super important for those companies!

How Often Can I Do Mystery Shops?

You can do mystery shops as often as you want! Most of them have deadlines of 24 hours after your shop has been finished so make sure you’re keeping track of what mystery shops you’re doing and when your deadlines are.

The only caveat is shopping at the same restaurant multiple times in a row. Many mystery shopper companies have a cooldown period that ranges from 30-90 days. For example, if you shopped at Restaurant ABC on December 1, you might not be eligible to shop there again until January 30 if it’s a 60 day cooldown.

Are Mystery Shops a Good Side Hustle?

If you’re doing mystery shops solely for the purpose of earning money, I wouldn’t say that they’re a good side hustle. I personally enjoy higher hourly rate side hustles such as research studies or tutoring.

However, if you take into account how much you get reimbursed for your purchases and consider that as part of your hourly rate, you could consider it a good side hustle!

When Do I Get Paid for Mystery Shops?

Mystery shops typically pay you 2 weeks up to 90 days after your shop. You have to be willing to front the cost of your shop beforehand.

Many of these platforms pay via PayPal and some pay via direct deposit after your provide your checking and routing information.

8 Best Platforms and Apps to Eat For Free

Here are the ones that I’ve used in my past couple months of experience with mystery shopping. I’ll be updating this article with other platforms as I vet them out and deem them good to work for, so make sure you subscribe for more updates!

A Closer Look

This is the very first platform I ever had a mystery shop with and I’ve had continued success with it. The UI is very nice and you can self-assign yourself to many shops. I’ve shopped at yogurt shops, sandwich shops, and even a nice sit down restaurant via A Closer Look.l

Be careful with this one though. If you unassign yourself from a shop twice, you won’t be able to self assign shops anymore and you’ll have to get approval. Mystery shop schedulers want people who are committed to completing their shop and won’t flake last minute because they have deadlines to meet too.

Presto Shopper

Presto Shopper is one of three aggregate platforms that I currently use to find mystery shops. Presto Shopper has its own shops that you can instantly assign to yourself. It also displays shops from other companies where you can click out to externally apply on their website. I’ve had success with a fast food restaurant via Presto Shopper and got to eat free food with mystery shops.

I’ve seen a lot of financial shops in this platform where they pay you to go open a new checking account, a new credit card, make an inquiry at a bank, etc. I’ve also seen restaurant shops, postal shops, and gas station shops.

I even got to see Wicked for free back when it came out through a mystery movie shop! The shop provided two tickets so my fiancé got to see it for free too.

GigSpot

GigSpot is an aggregator for many other mystery shop platforms. They not only have restaurant mystery shops, but also hotel, golf courses, auto shops, and more!

I’ve done a recent free food with mystery shops via Sentry Insights through GigSpot which required me to order two alcoholic drinks, two entrees, and a dessert. I had no budget limit and I was able to order the most expensive items on the menu for everything. It was a lot of fun!

iSecretShop

I was able to ship a couple packages for free for the holiday season through mystery shops with iSecretShop. I’ve also seen car wash shops, breakfast shops, fitness facility tour shops, and more!

I’d recommend downloading the mobile app for iSecretShop for the best experience. You can browse for shops easily there!

Sassie and ShopMetrics Shops

The following platforms are all Sassie or ShopMetrics powered third party companies that I’ve had success doing a mystery shop with. Once you create an account, the websites and job boards may look pretty similar but they’re all for different brands!

HS Brands

HS Brands has been good for me lately because I’ve had a lot of success with getting assigned shops from this platform. They approve your shop report pretty quickly as well. I’ve always known within 24-48 hours whether my shop report needed revisions or whether it’s been accepted.

CXE View

I had a shop here via CXE View recently that allowed me to check out an Asian restaurant which was cool! Prior to CXE View, I thought only bigger restaurants had mystery shoppers but it seems like that’s not necessarily the case.

Customer Impact

I was able to (almost) get a free turkey from this platform during Thanksgiving! I was a mystery shopper to find a certain type of turkey in store but it turns out they didn’t have it in stock. I was still paid $10 to try though.

The Jack Network

The Jack Network hasn’t had a lot of shops that I’ve been able to sign up for in my area (maybe your area will be better!) but maybe you might have more luck! I saw one shop recently but I already shopped at that location within the past 90 days, so I couldn’t sign up for it.

Free Food With Mystery Shops – Summary

And that’s it! Hope that gave you a bit of a summary on how getting free food with mystery shops works and how you can get started doing it. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!

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