McDonald’s launches a loyalty scheme – and you can get a free Big Mac or nuggets

MCDONALD’S has launched a new loyalty scheme where you can earn points and exchange them for free food like Big Macs or McNuggets.

MyMcDonald’s Rewards is available to McDonald’s app users and will be rolled out to 75 restaurants by the end of the month.

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It works by customers collecting points by buying food from the fast food chain, and exchanging these points for their fave meals.

There are 15 items you can get for free once you’ve earned enough points, including popular breakfast items and McFlurries.

But it means you have to part with your cash beforehand at the chain in order to rack up points.

You will earn 100 points for every £1 you spend at the chain, and you have to collect more points for certain items to get them for free.

That makes each penny worth one point, and you can also exchange your points to make a donation to a charity.

You have to collect 1,500 in order to bag these goodies:

• Small Fries
• Mini McFlurry
• Regular McCafé
• Hash Brown
• Side Salad
• £1.50 to donation to charity

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While bagging 2,500 points will get you:

• Double Cheeseburger
• Veggie Deluxe
• Bacon Mayo Chicken 
• Cheesy Bacon Flatbread
• Medium Fries
• £2.50 donation to charity

If you rack up 4,000 points, you can choose from the following:

• 6 Chicken McNuggets
• Big Mac
• McChicken Sandwich
• Double Sausage and Egg McMuffin
• Premium Salad
• £4.00 donation to charity

But the catch is you could end up spending up to £40 to get the items on the menu worth the most points.

To get the items on the menu worth 1,500 points, you would have to fork out £15 worth of food, for treats worth 2,500 points you’d have to spend £25, and for grub worth 4,000 points you would have to part with £40.

How does it work?

To sign up to the loyalty scheme, you’ll need to download the MyMcDonald’s app which you can do for free via Google Play or the App Store.

You’ll then be able to opt into joining the MyMcDonald’s Rewards scheme when you’re close to a branch which is taking part in the loyalty scheme.

Not all restaurants are rolling out the loyalty scheme just yet, which means you may have to wait a while before your local branch offers the service.

From today, 10 restaurants in the North of England are trialling the service, with a further 65 rolling it out by the end of the month.

The first 10 stores trialling the loyalty scheme are:

• St Helens, Church Street
• Aintree
• Formby
• Kirkby, County Road/Hall Lane
• Liverpool, Kensington
• Liverpool, Switch Island
• Runcorn
• Skelmersdale
• St Helens, Linkway
• Widnes      

To find out if your nearest McDonald’s will be taking part in the scheme, its a good idea to ask for more information – you can find where your nearest branch is using the fast food chain’s store locator tool.

If you order and pay through the MyMcDonald’s app, your points will automatically be banked.

If you’re not paying through the app, you can get a one-time code – available in the “code” section of your app – at the start of ordering your food in the restaurant or using the drive-thru.

Once you’ve racked up enough points, you can use your app to cash them in to get your food the next time you make a trip or order from the chain.

To do this, you can enter in a code you will get in the “code” section of the pp – enter this into a kiosk or tell your server at the till or at the drive-thru counter when you are paying.

If you’re ordering through the McDonald’s app, select your reward from the rewards menu tab and add to your order, where money will be taken off automatically.

You’ll be able to check your points balance at the “rewards and offers” tab in the app.

McDonald’s hasn’t said if there are any purchases you can’t earn points on, and if it will be doing offers to give you extra points, but we have asked for more information and will update you as soon as we know more.

McDonald’s isn’t the only chain offering a loyalty scheme to customers.

KFC has its own scheme where you can download its app and collect stamps to earn free food.

You have to spend £3 to collect one stamp, or you’ll get two stamps if you spend £15 in a single transaction.

Once you rack up 11 stamps, you’ll find a reward in the “My Rewards” section of the app to claim.

Pizza Hut also has one, called Hut Rewards – you earn “slices” and cash these in for a reward.

You earn one slice for every £10 you spend – 10 slices will get you a free large pizza.

An ex-McDonald’s worker has revealed tips to getting food for less – and what it’s really like working for the chain.

Here’s how you’ve been ordering your Nando’s all wrong – and how you should tweak your order to save over £21.

And here’s how shopping at Greggs, Boots and Primark can slash the cost of your phone bill.

This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk