Eating for Charity, Dining Out For Life

I love eating out in Vancouver and so getting to eat out and at the same time support a good cause seems like a no-brainer, but for some reason, I've never been to Dining Out for Life. I got an email the other day that this annual is happening again this Thursday, March 29th and although it immediately got added to my calendar, I'm still hemming and hawing about this one.

So what happens is that you go out for dinner (or lunch, or a snack) to one of the participating restaurants and they will turn that around to contribute 25% of food proceeds from your meal to
A Loving Spoonful and Friends for Life, 2 Vancouver charities working to support local people living with AIDS. Nothing wrong with that. As their slogan says, "You've got to eat. Why not support a good cause at the same time?" and with 200 restaurants taking part, you're guaranteed to be satisfied.

I guess the reason that this is massively popular is because people love to help out, but they also like to get something in return, so this is like a guilt-free evening out. For me, the issue is that it wouldn't be guilt-free. I'd be eating my dinner thinking of how much more I could have contributed if I had stayed at home and donated the entire cost of the dinner. And then this is when I have to sit myself down and be completely honest with myself - would I actually send them a donation? And would I send them that much? I do donate to A Loving Spoonful, but it's not a regularly committed donation, so maybe this is a way to make it an annual occurance and have some fun doing it. I imagine if I went to one of the less trending restaurants, it wouldn't be that busy and that uses up all the excuses I had.

It did make me kind of mad that Wolf Blass Wines are planning to donate 75 cents from every bottle purchased because hey? do you know what the markup is on wines in restaurants? I don't know the exact amount either, but it's a lot. Then I read that they are donating 75 cents from every bottle sold in restaurants AND liquor stores, and also for the entire month of March, so that makes it a little better, but it still seems like much more of a publicity gain for them than a charitable act. Am I wrong? I guess in the long run, a donation is a donation and every bit helps.

Has anyone been to this in the past? How is it? I think I might just make a point of it this year.