How to earn Virgin Points at your favourite restaurants with SquareMeal

Virgin Red has a partnership with SquareMeal, the restaurant booking service, to allow you to earn Virgin Points when you eat out.

There are four ways to earn.

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.

You can earn additional bonus points at certain restaurants for hitting spend criteria or visiting on selected days.

More interestingly, you can earn up to 3,000 bonus 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.

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

In theory you are ‘buying’ Virgin Points at 1p each by giving up SquareMeal points.

In reality, SquareMeal points are quite restrictive and expire quickly. Virgin Points are likely to be a better deal irrespective of what you think of the valuation.

Already got a SquareMeal account?

Log in and head to your profile. You’ll see that you can switch from earning SquareMeal points to Virgin Points.

Your existing points balance will NOT be converted. Only future points earned will be sent to Virgin Red.

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.

How do I earn Virgin Points with SquareMeal?

There are three routes:

100 Virgin Points for every booking:

Each time you make a restaurant booking via the website or app you earn at least 100 Virgin Points.

Earn bonus points at selected restaurants:

Some restaurants offer generous bonuses when you book via SquareMeal. Here’s an example:

Review a restaurant:

Each time you review a restaurant you have booked via the site, you earn 25 Virgin Points.

Benefit from card linked offers:

Each time you dine at a restaurant with an exclusive card-linked offer running, you receive up to 3,000 Virgin Points – even if you didn’t book by SquareMeal. You must register your credit card on the SquareMeal website to trigger these bonuses. Remember that you don’t need to have booked via SquareMeal.

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.

This is especially true of the card linked offers, where you can pick up Virgin Points simply by linking your payment cards to your SquareMeal profile. You never need to visit the site again if you choose, and you may pick up the odd chunk of points when dining out.

You can register here.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (March 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 8th April 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Business Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to 120,000 points. You receive 80,000 points when you spend £12,000 within three months and a further 40,000 points if you spend on the card between Month 14 and Month 17. Points convert 1:1 into Avios and many other programmes. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 8th April 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Business Gold is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 60,000 points. You receive 40,000 points when you spend £6,000 within three months and a further 20,000 points if you spend on the card between Month 14 and Month 17. Points convert 1:1 into Avios and many other programmes. Click here to apply.

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