How to split the bill at a restaurant without ending friendships

Splitting a bill at a restaurant can be a pain.

Whenever I go out with my friends for a meal, we split the bill proportionately.

Someone pays, and everyone transfers the payer cash according to what they ate at the restaurant.

However, complications may arise when it comes to shared items.

I recently had a chance to try out the TriplePlus membership program, a good reason to eat out more and share food with friends — which made me think about different ways of bill-splitting.

The membership program features more than 12 concepts across 40 outlets, including spots like Bedrock Bar & Grill, Swissbake, or Baker & Cook. Here are some of the outlets:

The program offers three tiers, with the base tier, Plus1, offering rebates and a birthday discount voucher.

The next two tiers, which are paid, offer a selection of additional vouchers with a fee of either S$20 for six months or S$38 per year, before GST.

Here are the benefits:

There is also a promotion, exclusively for Mastercard members, that ends on Dec. 31, 2024.

The promotion let me receive the benefits of a Plus3 membership while paying for a Plus2 membership.

This meant that for just S$20 a year, I could receive all the Plus3 benefits.

These include 17 per cent rebates, 30 per cent birthday vouchers, and more than 80 1-for-1 mains vouchers.

The 1-for-1 mains vouchers apply to one pair of mains ordered, and only one such voucher can be used per receipt.

However, a 1-for-1 voucher is best enjoyed with a friend.

Splitting the bill, while taking into account vouchers used, can be tricky.

Here are three bill-splitting methods I tried:

Method #1: Share the food & the bill

If the food is easy to share, splitting the bill is fairly straightforward.

For instance, my friend, Gulshan and I decided to check out PastaMania's newly renovated outlet at Causeway Point.

It looked quite different from other Pastamania outlets I have been to:

We decided to get a Truffle Mushroom pizza, a Hawaiian pizza, a Seafood Tom Yum pasta, some Cheddar Cheese Sticks, and two Iced Lemon Tea drinks.

I redeemed a “1-1 Mains” voucher for the two pizzas:

We dug into our pizzas, which were cheesy and delicious, and split up the tom yum pasta.

The cheddar cheese sticks were a nice little snack to round off our lunch break:

In this case, splitting the bill was fairly straightforward, since we shared everything pretty evenly between the two of us.

So, we went ahead with splitting the final total price, after the voucher was used, 50-50.

This meant that we each ended up saving S$16.40 each.

This method really only works if the food is somewhat easy to share, and everyone does indeed end up having an equal portion of each dish.

Method #2: Split the bill proportionately

If the food is not so easy to share, or if the prices vary quite a bit, it might be time to whip out a calculator.

This was the case when Gulshan and I went to Ginkyō by Kinki, a Japanese fusion restaurant at One Holland Village:

Splitting the bill in this case was a bit more complicated, given that we were not sharing the mains we ordered.

I ordered the "Best of Toyosu Market", a kaisendon dish priced at S$52:

Gulshan got the A4 Wagyu Hamburg, costing S$38, and served sizzling on a hot plate:

The “1-1 mains” voucher that we redeemed meant that we would be saving S$38 (excluding service charges and GST) on the bill.

However, Gulshan would have ended up paying much more (about S$14) on my behalf.

I therefore thought it was just fairer if we split the bill proportionately.

You could of course do the math by getting the percentage of the bill each person spent and multiplying that by the total amount.

I prefer to use phone applications, like Splitwise, that help you do the math on your behalf.

On Splitwise you can choose to split bills and receipts in different ways, or even just count the amount of money owed over the course of a few meals.

In this case, I just calculated Gulshan’s percentage of the bill, 42.2 per cent, and put that into the app:

The application even helps you do the percentage subtractions automatically, making things just a tad easier.

It is still a bit of a hassle to input the numbers and get the sums you need.

A fair method, definitely, but a little tedious.

Method #3: Just split the bill evenly

The last method is to split the bill evenly regardless of who ate what.

It probably applies best in situations where either party has ordered meals that are roughly equivalent in price.

Gulshan and I tried this method out at The Marmalade Pantry's flagship outlet at Ion Orchard.

Using the “1-1 mains” voucher, I ordered a "Seared Scallop and Prawn Pasta", and Gulshan got the "Chicken Tabbouleh", both of which were tasty:

Splitting the bill was a little tricky in this case, however.

Both of us had most of our respective mains, and their prices were roughly similar. The pasta cost S$30 while the tabbouleh cost S$28.

After redeeming the 1-for-1 voucher, we spent only S$30 on the overall bill, saving S$28.

We tried a bit of each other's dishes, but it would have been impossible to estimate just how much of each dish we tried.

We also were a bit too lazy to fuss over the S$2 difference owing to the dishes.

We certainly could have done the math and kept things very fair.

But when it comes to friends, I’m not too fussed about splitting things down to the cent all the time.

So, I just told Gulshan that I owed her S$2, and we agreed to split the bill 50-50 and move on.

Sometimes, if the situation calls for it, just settling the meal 50-50 can be the best way to go.

The verdict

In the end, how you split the bill depends on the context, as well as the mood of your friends.

Even if it is difficult to split the bill, having a nice meal with your friends makes all the number crunching worth it.

Especially when you have a bunch of 1-for-1 vouchers, discounts and rebates to redeem.

The sign-up process for the TriplePlus membership is fairly straightforward.

Head over to the website, put in your details and verify your email address:

You can then upgrade your free membership to the Plus2 or Plus3 tiers through the account page:

Mastercard users can get a “Plus-Size Membership” and enjoy Plus3 benefits at a discounted annual rate of S$20 till Dec. 31.

When paying with Mastercard, the Plus2 membership will automatically be bumped up to a Plus3 one.

All that is left, then, is to entice your friends to catch up over a meal with the 1-for-1 vouchers.

This is a sponsored article by TriplePlus and Mastercard.

Top image via Canva.