In this guide
A free children’s meal in London almost always costs you an adult main course at full price — and at ten of Bella Italia’s eleven London restaurants it is not available at any price. Kids eat free is real, but it is an outer-London offer wearing a central-London name, and the small print is where the money actually is.
Everything below was read off each operator’s own website on 3 September 2026. Anything that could not be verified at source was left out, and where an offer names branches it cannot be used at, those branches are listed.
💡 The Short Version: Bella Italia runs kids eat free Sunday to Thursday all year — but its terms exclude ten of its eleven London restaurants, leaving only Croydon. Morrisons Café is the best unconditional deal at seven days a week, though only one of the ten Morrisons nearest Covent Garden has a café. Prezzo’s £1.99-a-month Kids Club feeds up to three children free on one adult main, which no free offer matches. IKEA charges 95p for a kids’ meal with no adult purchase at all. And Premier Inn feeds two under-16s free at breakfast, which is the one that matters if you are staying the night.
⚠️ This page only lists offers that run all year. Several chains — ASK Italian, Zizzi, TGI Fridays and Toby Carvery among them — run kids-eat-free during school holidays and then withdraw it. Those come and go on a few weeks’ notice, so check the operator’s own page in the fortnight before each half term rather than trusting any list, including this one.
What counts as kids eat free
Three different things get sold under the same headline, and they are not equally good:
A free kids’ meal with an adult main. The commonest form. You buy a full-price main — £13 to £18 at the Italian chains — and one child eats free. The saving is the kids’ menu price, typically £3.50 to £4.
A free kids’ meal with a spend threshold. Morrisons wants £5 on an adult main, Dunelm £5 in the café, YO! Sushi £10 on food per child. Lower bar, and you can hit it with breakfast.
A £1 kids’ meal. Sizzling Pubs, Hungry Horse and Travelodge breakfast. Still needs the adult purchase, but the wording is honest about it.
Every offer at a glance
| Where | Offer | Age | When | Adult condition | Central London |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bella Italia | 3 courses + drink free | Not stated | Sun–Thu, all year | 1 adult main per child | No — 10 branches excluded |
| Las Iguanas | Main + 2 sides + dessert free | Under 12 | 7 days, all year | 1 à la carte main per child | No — 2 branches, both outer |
| Prezzo Kids Club | 3 courses free, up to 3 children | 2 to 12 | 7 days, all year | 1 full-price main + £1.99/month | Yes — check the app finder |
| Morrisons Café | Meal + drink free, worth £4.00 | Under 16 | 7 days, all year | Adult main £5 or over | No — nearest café Acton W3 |
| Dunelm Pausa | Main + drink + 2 snacks free | Not stated | All year | £5 spend in the café | No — 11 stores, all outer |
| Sizzling Pubs | Kids’ meal £1 | Not stated | Mondays from 12pm | 1 adult main | No — 5 pubs, all outer |
| Hungry Horse | Up to 2 kids’ meals £1 each | Not stated | Mon–Fri | 1 adult main | No — 2 pubs, both outer |
| IKEA | Kids’ meal 95p | Not stated | All year | None | No — 3 Swedish Restaurants |
| YO! Sushi | Kiddos bento free | 12 and under | Mon–Fri, school holidays | £10 food spend per child | No — 4 restaurants, all outer |
| Zizzi via Kids Pass | 1 Bambini meal free | Not stated | 7 days, all year | 1 adult main + paid membership | Yes — 28 London branches |
Offers that run all year
These are the ones worth building a habit around, because they do not vanish the week term restarts.
Bella Italia — and the exclusion list that matters
Three courses and a drink free, Sunday to Thursday, every week of the year, with one adult main per child. No voucher, no app: tell the server when you order and remind them at the bill. Dine-in only, and it does not combine with any other offer, set menu, voucher or Tesco Clubcard voucher.
Then read the terms. Bella Italia’s own page excludes Cranbourn Street, Paddington, Irving Street, Queensway 110, Queensway 55, St Martins Lane, Strand, South Kensington, Shaftesbury Avenue and Wellington Street. Bella Italia has eleven London restaurants. Croydon — Valley Leisure Park, CR0 4YA — is the only one the exclusion list does not name.
That is the single most useful fact on this page. Every national list still sends families to the Leicester Square and Covent Garden branches for a deal those branches do not run.
Las Iguanas
A free kids’ main, two sides and a dessert from the Niños menu for every adult who orders an à la carte main, seven days a week, all year. Children under 12. You claim it as a perk in the Las Iguanas app, and the lunch menu does not count as a qualifying main.
Las Iguanas has exactly two London restaurants — The O2 and Wembley — and the terms exclude “event or selected days” at both, because both are named Event Locations. On a gig night at either, assume the offer is off.
Prezzo’s Kids Club
The odd one out, and arguably the best. £1.99 a month or £19.99 a year through the Club Prezzo app buys a free three-course kids’ meal for up to three children per visit, any day, with one full-priced adult main. Once per day, unlimited visits, cancel or pause in the app.
Three children free on one adult main is a ratio no free offer here comes close to. The standard kids’ menu is labelled ages 2 to 8 but Prezzo states it is available to any child aged 2 to 12. For a family of three children eating out twice a month, £19.99 a year is the cheapest line in this guide.
Morrisons Café
A free kids’ meal and any kids’ drink — normally £4.00 — with an adult main of £5 or over, every day, seven days a week. Children under 16 and with an adult. The adult main has to come from “The Breakfasts” or “The Classics”; extras do not count. The free meal is Birds Eye chicken dippers, fish fingers, veggie fingers or a Goodfella’s mini pizza, and it also works on the Kids Pick n Mix deal.
The catch is geographical. Of the ten Morrisons nearest Covent Garden — Southwark, Camden, Camberwell, Holloway, Peckham, Stamford Hill, Canning Town, Wood Green, Stratford and Acton — only Acton, on King Street W3, lists a café.
Dunelm Pausa, Sizzling Pubs, Hungry Horse and IKEA
Dunelm’s Pausa cafés do “kids eat free with every £5 spent” — one kids’ main, one drink and two snacks. Dunelm has eleven London stores: Beckton, Catford, Colliers Wood, Croydon, Enfield, Feltham, Greenwich, Kingston, Romford, Wandsworth and Greenford.
Sizzling Pubs does kids eat for £1 every Monday from 12pm with an adult main. Their London-area pubs are in Dagenham, Northolt, Bexley, Bexleyheath and Chessington. The ordinary kids’ meal deal is £4.99 for under-6s and £5.99 above, every day — so Monday saves you about a fiver.
Hungry Horse does one adult main plus up to two children’s meal deals at £1 each, Monday to Friday: a main, two sides, a pudding and a drink. There are two Hungry Horses in London — The Greene Man in E4 and The Honeycombe in Hounslow.
IKEA charges 95p for a kids’ pasta with tomato sauce, a soft drink and a piece of fruit in the Swedish Restaurant, with no adult purchase condition attached. The three full-size London stores with a Swedish Restaurant are Croydon, Greenwich and Wembley; Oxford Street and Hammersmith are small-format stores with a Swedish Deli and a bistro instead. This is the only entry on this page where the child eats cheaply whether or not you buy anything.
The two that survive the school holidays
Most of the big chains treat kids-eat-free as a school-holiday campaign: it appears a week or two before half term and is withdrawn the day the term restarts. ASK Italian, Zizzi, TGI Fridays and Toby Carvery all ran one over summer 2026 and all closed it in early September. Expect them back around autumn half term, which most London boroughs run from Monday 26 October to Friday 30 October 2026, then Christmas from Saturday 19 December, and February half term on 15 to 19 February 2027. Academies and individual boroughs shift by a day or two.
Two things run without a published end date, and they are the ones worth knowing now.
YO! Sushi
One free kiddos bento for every £10 an adult spends on food, Monday to Friday. Children 12 and under. YO! Sushi ties the offer to local school holiday dates rather than one national window, so it reappears whenever your borough breaks up rather than on a fixed calendar. Its four London restaurants are all outer.
Zizzi through Kids Pass — the only year-round route in the centre
Separately from its holiday campaign, Zizzi’s own site says it has partnered with Kids Pass, whose members get “one free Bambini Meal with the purchase of an adult main meal, seven days a week at participating restaurants”. That is the only year-round kids-eat-free we found at a chain with this many central London branches — Zizzi has 28 in London, including Bow Street, The Strand, Central St Giles, Bankside and Paddington Central.
The catch is the membership. Kids Pass advertises £1 for a 30-day trial, but the price it renews at is not published anywhere before you sign up — the membership page redirects to a login. Treat it as a paid subscription with an undisclosed renewal price: take the trial if the maths works for one holiday, and set a reminder to cancel.
Two Zizzi exclusions apply whichever route you use. The offer “cannot be used in Greenwich, Portsmouth, Port Solent, St Katharine Docks and Whitstable”, and it is off at The O2 and Wembley on event days. The Bambini menu costs £3.50 for two courses when you pay for it, which is what the free version is actually worth. Zizzi also accepts Tastecard, UNiDAYS and Student Beans — see our restaurant discount cards guide.
Kids eat free at breakfast
This is the section that matters if you are staying overnight, and it is the best-value part of the whole page.
| Hotel or pub | Offer | Age | Adult price | Serving times |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier Inn | 2 children free per paying adult | Under 16 | From £10.99, up to £13.99 | Varies by hotel |
| Beefeater | 2 children free per adult breakfast | Under 16 | £11.99 unlimited | 6.30–10.30am, 7–11am weekends |
| Brewers Fayre | 2 children free per adult breakfast | Under 16 | £11.99 unlimited | To 10.30am, 11am weekends |
| Table Table | 2 children free per adult breakfast | Under 16 | £11.99 unlimited | To 10.30am, 11am weekends |
| Travelodge | 2 children at £1 each per paying adult | Under 15 | Unlimited breakfast, Bar Café hotels | Varies by hotel |
Premier Inn is the one to know, because it has more London hotels than every other brand on this page has London branches combined. Children under 16 eat free, up to two per adult buying a full Premier Inn Breakfast. The price is the thing to watch: the full breakfast starts at £10.99, but Premier Inn’s own footnote says it is £11.99 and £13.99 at some restaurants, with airport and city-centre prices varying — and London is city centre. The offer covers a restaurant breakfast, not the breakfast box.
Travelodge charges £1 rather than nothing, for up to two children under 15 per full-paying adult, and only at its Bar Café hotels. Breakfast To Go is excluded.
⚠️ Whitbread has withdrawn its London pub-restaurants from public use. Brewers Fayre Winsor House in Beckton closed to walk-in customers on 7 September 2026, with the Beefeaters at Woolwich and Harrow following on 10 September. Whitbread’s notice says Premier Inn guests continue to get breakfast, evening meals and drinks — so in London the £11.99 kids-eat-free breakfast is now an overnight-guest benefit rather than something you can walk in for.
By area: what is actually near you
Strip out the school-holiday campaigns and central London gets thin very quickly. This is what is there the rest of the year.
| If you are near… | What is there |
|---|---|
| South Kensington and the museums | Nothing unconditional. Bella Italia South Kensington is excluded by name; Zizzi through Kids Pass is the only route |
| South Bank and Waterloo | Zizzi Bankside, Kids Pass only. Otherwise the £3.80 M&S Café menu |
| Covent Garden and Leicester Square | Zizzi Bow Street, The Strand and Central St Giles, Kids Pass only. All six Bella Italias here are excluded |
| King’s Cross | Nothing within walking distance at all |
| Stratford and Westfield | Morrisons Stratford has no café. Prezzo Kids Club if you hold it |
| Greenwich and The O2 | IKEA Greenwich does 95p kids’ meals with no adult purchase — the best deal in this table. Las Iguanas at The O2 switches off on event days |
| Shepherd’s Bush and Westfield | Zizzi Westfield White City, Kids Pass only |
| Paddington | Zizzi Paddington Central, Kids Pass only. Both Bella Italias here are excluded |
| Croydon | Bella Italia Valley Leisure Park — the one London branch that runs it, plus IKEA and Dunelm |
The pattern is hard to miss. Every pub brand with a proper kids-eat-free offer — Sizzling, Hungry Horse, Brewers Fayre — is a retail-park business, and the nearest branch to Zone 1 is usually 40 minutes out. In the centre, year-round, the offer is a paid membership or it is nothing.
When kids eat free is not the best deal
A free thing is only free if you were buying the other thing anyway. Run the arithmetic before you build an afternoon around it.
Zizzi’s Bambini menu costs £3.50 for two courses. That is what the free version is worth. To get it you buy an adult main at full price, which at Zizzi runs £13 to £17 — and, outside the school holidays, a Kids Pass membership on top. If you would otherwise have eaten at a £10 counter, the deal has cost you money twice over.
Morrisons is the better shape of the same trade: a £4.00 kids’ meal free against a £5 adult main. The condition is barely above the value of the prize, which is why it is the most usable offer here.
Two places charge so little that the free offers cannot beat them. IKEA’s kids’ meal is 95p with no adult purchase at all, and M&S Café’s Kids Munch Menu — a main, a snack and a drink — is £3.80, again with no condition. A £3.50 meal you get free for buying a £16 main is worse than a £3.80 meal you can just buy.
And if you have more than one child, buy the subscription. Prezzo’s £1.99 a month feeds three children free on one adult main, any day. Every other offer here is one child per adult main, or two at best — and Bella Italia is explicit that one adult main must be bought per child, so a family of two adults and three children gets two free meals and pays for the third.
The last comparison is the one nobody runs, and it is about breakfast. At Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Table Table the children genuinely eat free — but the adult breakfast is £11.99, so two adults and two children pay £23.98. Travelodge charges £1 a child rather than nothing, and its Bar Café breakfast is cheaper, so the same family can come out ahead at the hotel that does not use the word “free”. Look at the total, not the word. More cheap family days out are in our London with children guide.
Continue planning your London trip
Paying less to eat out in London. A few different strategies, and they rarely combine — pick the one that fits how you eat:
- 🍽️ Set Lunch and Pre-Theatre Menus — the restaurant’s own fixed price, no membership, biggest single saving
- 💳 Restaurant Discount Cards — Tastecard and the rest, and why one costs £29.99 and its twin £79.99
- 📱 Off-Peak Restaurant Apps — First Table and EatClub — cheaper if you will eat early or walk in
- 🥂 Bottomless Brunch — 38 packages compared on price per minute, and what “bottomless” covers
- 💷 Cheap Eats in London — good food under £15 with no offer, code or membership at all
- 👨👩👧 London With Children: Free Farms, Zoos and Days Out — mostly free, and where the day actually goes
- 🧭 London on a Budget
Every offer, price, age limit, date and branch exclusion above was read off the operator’s own website on 3 September 2026. School holiday dates are the common London pattern published by Southwark and Hounslow — check your own borough. These offers are rewritten for every school holiday, and the branch exclusions change with them.
Common questions
Do I need to book to use a kids-eat-free offer?
Not usually, but you often need something else. Las Iguanas and Prezzo both require a free app or loyalty account, and Prezzo's Kids Club is a paid subscription you have to join first. Morrisons, Dunelm and IKEA need nothing beyond the qualifying spend. Bella Italia needs nothing at all — just tell the server when you order, and again when you ask for the bill.
Does kids eat free work at weekends in London?
Sometimes. Morrisons Café, Las Iguanas, Dunelm Pausa, IKEA and Prezzo's Kids Club all run seven days a week. Bella Italia stops at Thursday, and Hungry Horse and YO! Sushi are Monday to Friday only. Sizzling Pubs is Mondays alone. Read the day before you plan the trip, not after.
Can I use kids eat free with a Tastecard or Meerkat Meals?
No. Bella Italia excludes any other offer, set menu, voucher or discount, and Las Iguanas says the same. Zizzi names Tastecard, Blue Light Card, UNiDAYS, Student Beans and Tesco Clubcard codes in its exclusions. Discount cards and kids-eat-free are two separate strategies — our guide to [restaurant discount cards](/articles/restaurant-discount-cards-london/) explains why almost nothing stacks.
What if the branch refuses the offer?
Check the exclusion list before you argue, because the branch is often right. Bella Italia's terms name ten of its eleven London restaurants as excluded. Las Iguanas excludes both its London sites on event days, and Morrisons only runs it in stores that actually have a café. Mention the offer when you order rather than when the bill arrives — every one of these chains reserves the right to withdraw it without notice.
How old counts as a child for kids eat free?
It varies by more than a decade. Travelodge sets the bar at under 15, Premier Inn, Morrisons and the Whitbread pub breakfasts at under 16, Las Iguanas at under 12, YO! Sushi at 12 or under, and Prezzo at 2 to 12. Bella Italia, Dunelm, Sizzling Pubs and Hungry Horse publish no age limit at all, which in practice means the kids' menu.
