Groupon Gives You Food For Less and a Chance at $100,000

By Wynter Holden Thu., Feb. 4 2010 at 1:00 PM

Categories: Dining and Drinking Deals

Now that Phoenix is gearing up to tax grocery store bought food, we're looking for ways to eat out all the time. I mean, if we're going to pay tax on food, we'd rather have a beef torta from Gallo Blanco or a pulled pork sammy from Bryan's Black Mountain BBQ than a boring homemade burger.

Enter Groupon.com, a website that offers daily deals for discount food, services or supplies. Naturally, we're focused on the food deals, which have recently included Cork, Malee's Thai Bistro and Cartel Coffee Lab (though we heard there was a small problem with the latter not specifying the Phoenix location, causing tons of Groupon groupies to show up at their Tempe store with coupon in hand.) You can also score discounts on anything from hot air balloon rides to yoga and comedy shows. Sign up with your e-mail address to get first dibs on the daily deal.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/galant/ / CC BY 2.0

Groupon makes dining out cheap and easy.

Today, you can purchase a $25 gift certificate towards food and wine at Rare Earth Pizza and Wine Bar in Scottsdale for just $10. Rare Earth has salads, vino, gourmet thin-crust pizzas and a killer view of Pinnacle Peak.

So, where's that $100,000 we teased you about in the title? You're gonna have to work for it a little here -- or at least, your mouse finger will. Click through for details.

Groupon really wants you to use their services. A LOT. So much so that they're having a contest that will give one "lucky" person a chance to live off Groupons for a year. The upside is that you get all of your expenses paid for one year via Groupons.

The downside is that you have to pretty much give up your life -- your apartment, your bank accounts, your credit cards, likely your job -- and attempt to live on Groupons alone as you travel around the country. They'll also document your ~~inevitable humiliations~~ experience on video. If you manage to survive the year without cheating, you win $100,000 cash!

From their website: "Who shouldn't apply!? Probably everyone shouldn't apply. We want to be honest from the beginning: this will be a catastrophic disruption to your life. You'll be living out of hotels, eating a lot of sushi, and taking enough yoga classes to kill a small fox (which you may also have to do)." With that incredibly appealing sales pitch, who could resist?

Enter now through February 24 at www.liveoffgroupon.com.