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Bilt Neighborhood Dining: Earning Bilt Points with Linked Cards
Over the three-day holiday weekend, my wife and I (along with our dog) had a chance to hang out at one of our favorite local breweries: Hold Fast Brewing. Between the dog-friendly patio, selection of NA brews for me, and, on this occasion, $5 pints, there’s a lot that we love about this spot. But, what makes it even better is that it’s part of Bilt’s Neighborhood Dining program, meaning I can earn extra Bilt Points on purchases I make there.
So what is Bilt Neighborhood Dining, how does it work, and is it stackable with other rewards programs? Let’s jump into my experience with the platform.
Bilt Neighborhood Dining: The Basics and My Experience
A history of Bilt Dining
In April 2023, Bilt launched Bilt Dining. With this addition, Bilt Rewards members could earn 5x bonus points on purchases from select restaurants (although that has seemingly since changed as many options appear to be 3x now). Unfortunately, the list of participating locations was initially fairly short as the program was only available in five cities.
The debut of Bilt Dining coincided with the arrival of Bilt Wallet, allowing customers to link most Mastercard, Visa, or American Express debit or credit cards to Bilt. In turn, not only could Bilt Mastercard customers take advantage of these Bilt Dining deals (meaning they could earn 5x Bilt Points on top of the 3x points that the card offers on dining), but regular Bilt members could also participate.
Since then, Bilt Dining has continued to roll out to more cities and more locations. However, it wasn’t until the addition of Bilt Neighborhood Dining that I — as someone living in Springfield, Missouri — could finally start earning bonus Bilt points on dining.
Linking cards and activating cards
As I mentioned, you can earn rewards on Bilt Neighborhood Dining by using cards linked to your Bilt Wallet. Currently, this Wallet supports Mastercard, Visa, and Amex cards (leaving out only Discover). Adding a card is as simple as going to the Wallet tab in the Bilt app, tapping “add new,” and then entering your card info. Then, on that Wallet tab, you’ll be able to see all of the cards you’ve connected and can unlink them if you so choose. To do that, just tap the card, hit “edit,” and then “unlink.”
One other thing to note is that, before you can start earning with Bilt Dining Rewards, you’ll need to make sure you toggle on the “Enable all restaurant rewards” option. As we’ll discuss later, this is key as there are other platforms that run on the same service. In turn, activating this feature will disable any enrolled cards you may have on those other apps.
Earning points
What’s great about Bilt Neighborhood Dining is that, once your cards are connected and enrolled, you can automatically earn rewards on eligible purchases. This means that there is no need to activate individual deals or anything else of the sort. In fact, you might end up accidentally earning Bilt points if you happen to visit a restaurant you didn’t know was part of the program!
It should also be noted that on top of the bonus Bilt Points you’ll earn from BND, you’ll also earn your regular credit card rewards. For me, that meant that I was able to earn 3x Bilt Points plus 4x Amex Membership Rewards points from my Amex Gold on our most recent visit to Hold Fast. In the case of the Bilt Mastercard, customers could earn 3x Bilt points from the program plus 3x points from the card’s regular rewards category — or 3x points from BND plus 6x from the card on Rent Day.
Once an eligible purchase is made, you’ll see it pending in your points history. Then, before too long, your bonus points will be applied to your account rewards balance.
Double dipping – what works and what doesn’t
Remember when I said that I earned 3x Bilt Point and 4x Amex points on our Hold Fast visit? Well, in addition to that, I also earned 5% cashback. How? Well, it turns out that Hold Fast Brewing is also available on the app Dosh — and so I was simultaneously able to earn rewards on Dosh in addition to Bilt Neighborhood Dining using my linked card. That’s a total of 12% back overall, which is pretty wild.
However, the same cannot be said for other, similar platforms. For example, when I activated Neighborhood Dining, I immediately received an email from T-Mobile Dining Rewards informing me that my card had been unenrolled. The same situation happened in reverse when I re-added the card to T-Mobile.
Looking into it, I found that both Bilt Neighborhood Dining and T-Mobile Dining Rewards are powered by Rewards Network. This service is also behind several other loyalty program-linked platforms in this vein, including SkyMiles Dining, Rapid Rewards Dining, etc. So, if you’re already using any of those platforms, then you’ll need to choose between them and Bilt Neighborhood Dining. But if you can find other, non-Rewards Network affiliated options, such as Dosh, then double dipping is indeed possible.
Final Thoughts on Bilt Neighborhood Dining
When Bilt Dining first launched, I was a bit frustrated that the program seemed a long way from ever making it to my city. That’s why I’m glad that a solution of sorts has come around in the form of Bilt Neighborhood Dining.
Thankfully, earning bonus points with this platform is effortless and I love that I can use any card in my wallet (not just my Bilt Mastercard). That said, I do wish the list of participating locations was longer as it’s mostly a bunch of Domino’s locations at the moment. But, hey, at least my go-to brewery is on there!
As for downsides, even though Bilt Neighborhood Dining is powered by the same platform that’s behind other similar offerings, the rates aren’t exactly the same. For example, while it was 3x Bilt points for Hold Fast on BND, T-Mobile Dining Rewards offers 5% back. Depending on how you value Bilt Points (hint: unless you’re using them for travel, it’s not very high), T-Mobile may be the better deal. Then again, that platform requires customers to accrue $10 in cashback before withdrawing, while points earned from Bilt Neighborhood Dining are applied to your account with no minimum.
All in all, I am glad that the Bilt Neighborhood Dining program made it so that Bilt Dining is now available in Springfield. If nothing else, I’ll definitely continue to use it at Hold Fast and other locations around town.
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