Friday night circuit-breaker dinner with BB at home — delivery dinner from a restaurant that threw in a complimentary ice cream with the order. Small touches like that mattered a lot during the lockdown stretch.

We ordered:

Mains delivered
Sides
Complimentary ice cream (promotional throw-in)

The dinner spread was the kind of comfort delivery order we kept ourselves to during circuit breaker — a hot main, a side, and the surprise of finding a small ice cream cup in the bag when we unpacked the order.

Restaurants during lockdown were pushing every possible angle to keep customers coming back. Free dessert was one of the simpler ones: the marginal cost on the restaurant side was low, but the psychological win on the customer side was high. We felt like we got a treat for ordering, and the restaurant got the repeat business.

The ice cream itself was the standard small-cup vanilla — nothing complicated, just a clean dairy flavour, properly cold even after delivery (the rider’s bag held the temperature). Came with a small wooden spoon and a tiny napkin tucked in.

Eating ice cream after a delivered Friday-night dinner with BB at home, in our pyjamas, watching whatever was streaming — that’s the lockdown TGIF in a sentence. Different from sitting at a restaurant, but not necessarily worse.

The complimentary ice cream got the restaurant a follow-up order from us. Marketing math works.

Overall: 4.5 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Solid lockdown TGIF dinner — the free ice cream sealed it.

Original IG post