Now that Thanksgiving has passed, people are starting to purchase gifts for holiday gift-giving.  If you’re at a loss about what you should get for your roommate, family member, friend, coworker, or significant other, I invite you to consider Drink Deck.

Drink Deck is a deck of 52 playing cards – available as a physical set of cards or an app on your iPhone or Android phone.  Each playing card depicts a local bar along with the following information:

• Bar genre (such as Wine Bar, Hip Hangout, Sports Bar, etc.)
• Address with nearest cross streets
• Neighborhood
• Photo of the bar
• Discount amount
• Venue contact information
• Any discount restriction (this is rare, but double check before you go out to make sure you aren’t heading to a bar during the one time when you can’t use the discount)

If you spend a minimum of $30 at a bar you can get discounts of either $10 or 15-30% off your total bill. To redeem these discounts, show the card to your server or bartender and they will either tear the corner off the physical card (and return it to you so you can continue your game of poker) or tap the corner of the card on your smartphone.  Drink Decks typically cost $29.99 for a set of 52 cards, but you will sometimes see sales on the website.  A portion of the proceeds of each purchase goes to One Hope Foundation.

Drink Deck is available for purchase online for the cities of Chicago, Portland, and New Orleans.  To see a list of the available bars in each city, click here.  The deals are scattered across various neighborhoods, making the deck helpful if you decide that you want to try out new locales or have a mini bar crawl with friends.

One of the best parts of purchasing a Drink Deck is that, unlike some of its discount industry counterparts, the deals at the 52 included bars never expire.  Additionally, if any of the bars in your deck should go out of business, you can get a free replacement card by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to Drink Deck. Android and iPhone users will get free updates whenever the physical deck is reprinted.

I recently used Drink Deck while visiting the John Hancock Observatory with my sister and cousin.  The discount on our 94th floor drinks brought the price of our three cocktails down to $22.  Trust me when I tell you that my Skyy High Cocktail tasted even better with the knowledge that I paid less than $7.50 for it instead of the full $11 listed price.

As someone who is a big fan of non-expiring discounts, exploring the city, and always having a deck of playing cards handy, I enjoyed the Drink Deck experience and believe that there’s a good chance that you or someone you know might as well.

Chicago Chic readers can get a discount of 20% off any physical Drink Deck by using the code “ChicagoChic” during checkout before December 22nd.  To purchase a physical Drink Deck online, click here. If you want to purchase an app or view a list of retailers, click here.