A year ago Bilt Rewards added a card-linked dining program that let you earn points at participating restaurants whenever paying with a card linked to your Bilt account (it didn’t have to be Bilt’s own co-brand credit card). They were only in larger cities, but the curated lists of restaurants was outstanding.

Now they’ve done a couple of deals to hugely expand their presence to around 20,000 more restaurants in what they call their Neighborhood Dining program. They’ve folded in restaurants from:

• Rewards Network (which white labels dining programs with airlines and hotels)
  
• Seated
  
• As well as their own continued work adding restaurant groups

Unlike with Rewards Network, where you can only add a credit card to a single one of their dining programs, it is possible to add the same card with – for instance – United MileagePlus Dining as well as Bilt Rewards.

You won’t earn with both. Instead, where there’s a conflict restaurants will be greyed out and you’ll just toggle to enable Bilt and disable the other program. Earning a single Bilt point is more valuable than earning a single United, American, Alaska, Delta, etc. mile. Earn may not always be comparable, such as with promotions, but ceteris paribus I’d certainly prefer earning through Bilt Rewards (whose points transfer to United, Alaska, Hyatt and more). Though in the case of American it’s worth noting that crediting to them means earning Loyalty Points towards status as well.

This seems like it’s going to take away a bit of activity from other airline and hotel programs, though at the same time Rewards Network dining has always been lower volume than I’d expect.

In the fall I noticed that Bilt’s dining program added my home town of Austin and what struck me at the time was that every place on the list was good and somewhere that I actually go. That differentiated their program from the Rewards Network-driven dining programs of the airlines and hotels where it’s frequently struggling bad restaurants in need of capital. It was on-brand for Bilt and unique.

Austin restaurants included at the time Kemuri Tatsu-ya (a personal favorite); Uchi and Uchiko (good but overrated); Monger Market (a sleeper); Dai Due (arguably best burger in Austin but not only that); Salty Sow; Foreign and Domestic; Emmer & Rye; L’Oca d’Oro; Lenoir (50% off wine nights!); Peached Tortilla; Odd Duck; Olamaie; Jeffrey’s.

Now, adding many more restaurants is better in the sense of more points. It gets them scale, but dilutes the imprimatur – Bilt has had an art program, their merchandise has been interesting, and their restaurants all good. In a sense it’s like Amex adding Walmart+ to their Platinum product – it adds a lot of value but also seems dilutive?

Meanwhile this also means the end of double dipping across Bilt and these other platforms. There have been restaurants that Bilt had, where you could earn points with them, and those same restaurants were also on – say – a Rewards Network dining platform like SkyMiles Dining. You were able to earn with both. Now you toggle which one you want to earn through.

What I’m looking forward to – and more on-brand – is that next year Bilt says they’re launch benefits and not just points-earning with Neighborhood Dining program restaurants. Free appetizers, desserts, or a welcome drink maybe?