How I earned 6,337 Virgin Points from one lunch booked via SquareMeal

Back in February we covered the launch of a new partnership between Virgin Red and SquareMeal, the restaurant booking service. This would allow you to earn Virgin Points when you eat out.

It has taken us three months, but I finally got to try this out on Monday when we headed up to the roof terrace of the HfP office building for lunch at Coq d’Argent, for a little 10th birthday celebration.

There are three ways to earn points via SquareMeal.

You can, as you would expect, earn 100 points when you book a restaurant via the SquareMeal website. You can get an extra 25 points by leaving a review afterwards.

More interestingly, you can earn points when you pay with a registered credit card at selected restaurants – even if you didn’t book via SquareMeal.

How does the offer work?

If you don’t already have a SquareMeal account, you can register via this page of the SquareMeal website.

The link above is my refer a friend link, which will earn you an additional 500 points after your first meal booking.

During registration, you will be asked if you want to earn SquareMeal points, worth 1p each towards future meal bookings, or Virgin Points.

You need a Virgin Red account

In order to earn Virgin Points from SquareMeal, you need a Virgin Red account. It isn’t enough to have a Virgin Flying Club account.

If you are not already registered with Virgin Red, download their app, create an account and link it to your Virgin Flying Club account. You should do this anyway, as Virgin Red has lots of additional ways to earn and spend Virgin Points.

SquareMeal will ask for the email address linked to your Virgin Red account as part of the registration process.

What did I earn from our birthday lunch?

Here are the earning options for Coq d’Argent:

There are two things to note here:

• the offers do not stack – you only receive the most generous one

• when a restaurant is part of SquareMeal’s ‘card linked offers’ scheme, as this one is, it is almost certain to be the option which is triggered

From our team birthday lunch, I received 6,337 Virgin Points.

This is based on the full bill of £422 (we had external guests, it wasn’t just Rhys, Sinead and me!) including VAT and service, which is what you’d expect as it’s a card-linked offer. SquareMeal only sees the total charged to the credit card and not what was spent on it.

Conclusion

SquareMeal doesn’t have the range of OpenTable – it is primarily used for booking business lunches – but it offers an easy way of picking up some extra Virgin Points.

6,337 Virgin Points for one – admittedly expensive – lunch at Coq d’Argent isn’t bad going, especially as 90% of people paying for a meal there will be reclaiming the cost on expenses.

You can register for SquareMeal via my referral link here which will get you an additional 500 points after your first completed booking.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 50,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 50,000 Virgin Points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points.