Free burritos for life!

What would you sacrifice in exchange for a free meal a day for life at the neighborhood Mexican restaurant? How about 4 square inches of real estate on your biceps, calf, chest or … whatever?

San Francisco landmark Casa Sanchez has revived an offer that got lots of publicity back in 1999 -- free lunch every day if you get the restaurant logo tattooed somewhere  -- visible to the general public or not, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Free burritos and tacos for life? That’s a heckuva deal, even better than Jennifer Hudson’s guarantee of free food for life at Burger King. (Flipping burgers for the king was Hudson’s first job.) The tattoo of Jimmy the Cornman riding on an ear of corn costs about a hundred bucks -- and you pick up the tab. After that, lunch is on them.

We’ve read about other offers of free food that didn’t involve permanent alteration of body parts -- unless you bust a gut -- like a free pizza a month for a year from Bang Bang Pizza in Norwalk, Conn., if you consume a 22-inch pie in a half hour.

Actually, free food is available at lots of restaurants if you know where to look, via printout coupons, birthday clubs and the like.

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The first time around, Casa Sanchez limited the deal to 50 participants, and after all those years about a dozen still show up, some of them out of economic necessity. One of the regulars is a 37-year-old jobless construction worker named Makena Echeverria. Another is Duncan Davidson, 38, who recently lost his job.

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"It's like an insurance policy," he told the WSJ. "When you literally have $2 to your name … it's nice to be able to eat."

The WSJ said three people have sprung for tattoos in the new go-round, appropriately called the “Stimulus Special.”

Related reading:

• Free food -- if you can eat it all
• Are birthday bargains worth celebrating?
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• 30 fabulous freebies