Back when I was editor in chief of The Bold Italic, Broke-Ass Stuart published an article about the best lunch in San Francisco you could get for under $5. “Can we go lower to — dare I say — four dollars?” I thought.
Our writer Shikha Kaiwar was up to the challenge, and I was surprised by how many under-$4 lunches she was able to find in hypergentrified San Francisco.
Still, as an inveterate cheapskate, I lay awake at night with visions of an even cheaper lunch in the City by the Bay. Was lunch possible at a $3.50 price point? $2.50? What about $1.00? Fast food didn’t count, of course. This had to be “real” food.
Years passed. Jobs changed. Life happened. But the thought still gnawed at me. How could I find the most inexpensive meal in San Francisco—the absolute minimum?
Then, one day in spring, it hit me. I was thinking about this all wrong. I didn’t want cheap. I wanted free. Economists say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But damn them and their dismal science. I want to believe.
Eventually, I found it, sometimes by luck, sometimes by skill, and sometimes by grift. I must note that I had no obvious political motivation for this quest; I merely love the challenge of obtaining for free as many of life’s goods as possible. I don’t know your own morals or scruples; a strangely large number of yuppies feel guilt when taking from large, anonymous corporations whose sole function is to extract money from them, a political inclination I don’t claim to understand. But you are hereby warned that this list makes no moral claims. (Still, nothing here qualifies as theft.)
Liquids are first on the list, because for some reason free drinks are easier than free lunches.
Option 1: Free Coffee at Trader Joe’s
Despite his nickname, you don’t have to trade any dough for this joe. Every Trader Joe’s has a small kiosk in the back of every store with one or two coffee urns. Well, almost every store — the big one downtown, on 4th and Market Streets next to Old Navy, no longer has coffee. “The machine kept breaking,” one cashier told me ruefully.
Most of the other Trader Joe’s in the world still do have free coffee, luckily. There are even milk and creamers to choose from, and you’re encouraged to drink away. Employees put it out in the morning and often take it away in the afternoon.
I asked an employee point-blank if it was cool to come to T. J.’s, drink the coffee for free and then bounce without buying anything. “It’s totally cool,” the clerk told me. “Some people do that in the morning. As long as you drink out of the small paper cups and don’t fill up your own to-go mug, it’s fine.”
Ah. That means you might have to fill up a few of their little four-ounce paper cups to get properly caffeinated. If you’ve ever been to Italy, perhaps you’ve been to one of those coffee shops where you order your espresso at one end of the counter and down it as you walk to the register at the other end. It’s sort of like that—a quick affair.
“Sometimes people bring their thermoses,” the clerk continued, “and try to fill those up. We can’t let them do that. But as long as you drink out of the cups, it’s cool.”
Plus, there’s usually a free sample of food you can snag while you’re there.
Bonus Pro-Tip: How to make a meal out of a cup of coffee (by Edward Abbey)
If you’ve ever read Edward Abbey’s autobiographical book, The Journey Home, you may recall the scene in which the hitchhiking protagonist gets a ride from a semitruck driver named Fern, who regales young Edward with life advice, then strands him at a gas station. In this scene, Abbey has only a few cents to his name — his backpack and wallet were in the semitruck’s cab — and, hungry, he is forced to subsist on coffee, which is all he can afford in that moment.
I had ten cents in my pocket and a jackknife. I was hungry. The first thing I did was put to good use one of the few useful things Fern had taught me: how to make a meal from a cup of coffee. Entering a drugstore and taking a counter stool, I ordered one cup of coffee and pulled the cream pitcher and the sugar bowl close. As I slowly drank the coffee, I kept adding as much sugar and cream as the mug would hold, making a thick, sweet sludge, highly nourishing, which I scooped up with the spoon. Fortified, I walked out. And I still had a nickel in my pocket.
Option 2: Free Espresso at Sur La Table in the Westfield Mall
This is perhaps my favorite “trick” on this entire list, because it’s both unexpected and totally legit. Everyone who hands out free samples probably expects to combat mooches, but Sur La Table isn’t a food establishment. No one expects you to be getting your morning caffeine fix in there.
Anyway, this Sur La Table store is in the basement level of the Westfield Mall, off of the food court. Inside there are a number of espresso machines and Keurig K-Cup machines that you can demo. So you have your choice of either a K-Cup or an actual espresso machine where you can pull your own shots. Some of them even have built-in grinders. I wouldn’t suggest doing this every day unless the (very kind) employees here cosign your operation — they’re the ones who will clean up if you spill, after all — but for a quick, free pick-me-up once in a while, it’s a great situation. This works best when it’s busy in there.
Option 3: Assorted Free Bites, Including Milk Shakes and Pretzel, at Westfield Mall
Is it “free” food if it’s a sample? Probably not. What about if you have five samples and you’re full afterward? OK, I think that could count as a meal. Continuing from our excursion through the Westfield in the previous section, I was gifted a smorgasboard of free samples in a matter of minutes, including pretzels, a milk shake, grilled chicken and a tea sample from DavidsTea.
What is it about the Westfield Mall that inspires such sample-gifting? I suppose there’s something about these confined shopping spaces, with vendors in direct competition with each other for customers, that inspires food-service establishments to give out free samples.
Option 4: Free Catered Food at the Basement of the UCSF Kalmanovitz Library
I wrote much of my last book at this library, as it’s one of those open secrets among San Francisco work-from-home folks that this public, university-owned library on Parnassus is an excellent place at which to relax and get some work done. The basement level is a frequent host of conferences and talks that are often catered; passers-by are encouraged to share in the spoils once the attendees have eaten their fill.
Option Number 5: Free Chocolate at Every Ghirardelli Store
It’s somewhat of an open secret that the moment you walk into one of the flagship Ghirardelli stores in San Francisco, you’re offered a free square of chocolate. What is less of an open secret is that if you change your outfit slightly or just walk back in again, they probably won’t notice, and you’ll get another one for free too.
The two stores that reliably do this are the one at 2 New Montgomery Street and the original location, which is actually in Ghirardelli Square.
Option 6: All Kinds of Free Food and Snacks at Tech Companies
OK, this article isn’t long enough to be a guide to sneaking into start-ups and tech offices. Every tech office is different and has different degrees of security and/or different means by which you can sneak in. But almost all of them have absurd food perks ranging from hummus to energy bars to kombucha to a candy wall. In any case, if you get trapped by a receptionist asking whom you’re there to see, a good rule of thumb is to say, “I have a meeting with Evan” — statistically, 85% of start-up CEOs are named Evan.
Beyond offices, you can also get free food and drink at catered tech-company parties. In his book Live Work Work Work Die, Corey Pein claims to have encountered local San Franciscans who ate and drank for free almost every night of the week just by looking for opulent tech parties on event sites like Eventbrite, then crashing them. Full-time tech-party crashers walk among us — let that inspire you, fellow cheapskates.
