Is the Entertainment book worth it?

Anyone living near large cities like Naples,Fort Myers and Cape Coral that is budget conscious has probably heard of the Entertainment Book. They are sold in SW Florida, and while the majority of their coupons are usually for retailers in the sw florida area, they used to cover large enough areas to make them worth the purchase for many people. If you are not familiar with these books, they general had coupons in several different categories. One of the most valuable was the "fine dining section", there were also areas for chain and local restaurants that were less expensive in the local area. Other coupons usually included a local travel attraction, coupons for entertainment venues, and coupons for general retailers.

As I mentioned, the fine dining section was one of the best sections of the book in the past. It would include a large number of coupons for local fine dining restaurants that in general were high enough value for buy one, get one free entrees. They also included sample menus. In recent years that section has gotten smaller each year and the section in my local Entertainment Book is now about one third the size it was when I first started buying it in the mid 1990's. The coupons have also dropped in value, many times the average entree at one of these restaurants is over $20, but the coupon is for $16 maximum value or less. This year saw another disturbing development in my opinion. Many of the fine dining coupons now place restrictions on weekend use. Some will state "not valid Fridays or Saturdays", or "you must be seated before six or after nine on weekends". It's becoming clear that with the drop in the number of coupons, the lower values, and new restrictions that the restaurants are not getting the business they want from these coupons.

I have discovered many restaurants that I liked using these coupons and returned to visit even without the use of the coupon. Obviously that would be the restaurant's goal in advertising in the book. With the new limitations on the coupons my guess is that the restaurants are seeing more people use their Entertainment Book coupons on weekends, and then not becoming repeat customers. Now, it appears those restaurants have either decided to stop advertising all together or at least lower their loses by reducing the value of coupons, or requiring people to use them during their off-peak hours.