Diners can get 25% off at Carluccio’s next week just by speaking Italian

Diners across the UK can get 25% off their meal at Carluccio’s next week, simply by asking for the bill in Italian.

From 3rd–9th November 2025, guests who ask for the bill in Italian by saying “il conto, per favore” (“the bill, please”) will receive the 25% discount off their total table bill. The offer is available at Carluccio’s restaurants nationwide (exclusions apply).

The offer is part of a collaboration between language learning app Preply and Italian restaurant chain Carluccio’s, created to help people feel more confident speaking a foreign language out loud by turning a small act of bravery into a reward.

Turning language anxiety into a confidence boost

The initiative comes as a Preply survey of 1,200 Brits found that:

Almost half (49%) of UK adults have felt embarrassed because they couldn’t speak another language.
1 in 5 lack confidence when trying to pronounce foreign words.
1 in 6 worry about being judged if they make a mistake.

According to Preply, confidence is the biggest barrier to language progress, with 63% of its current learners saying it’s the skill they most want to improve.

The rise of “menu anxiety”

Restaurants are one of the most common places where our confidence in trying new words disappears. Searches for “menu anxiety”, the hesitation to order aloud, have risen by 105% in the past year and 327% in the last quarter, showing just how common this feeling has become.

Over half of Brits admit to pointing at the menu instead of pronouncing foreign words out loud 1, while pronunciation searches have surged, with over half a million “how to pronounce” searches made each month in the UK and “food pronounce” searches rising by 49% in the past year.

Anna Pyshna, spokesperson at Preply, says: “People may know how to say gnocchi in theory, but when the waiter’s standing there, confidence can vanish. We want to show that getting things wrong is part of learning and sometimes, even worth a discount.

“By turning a simple phrase into a real-world reward, we’re helping people take that first, brave step to speak up. It’s a reminder that the language learning process doesn’t start with perfection, it starts with the willingness to try.”

Why Italian?

The partnership comes after Preply uncovered that Italian restaurants are the second most common in the UK, just behind traditional British fare, showing Brits’ love for all-things pizza and pasta.

But despite the popularity of Italian food in the UK, Preply’s latest data revealed that Brits’ pronunciation for Italian food and drink words see the most difficulties.

With around 147,600 Brits searching for how to pronounce the foods ’nduja, spaghetti, focaccia, gnocchi, and ciabatta’ in the past year, it’s clear that Italian is a language Brits are keen to master. These Italian terms make up 28% of the UK’s top food pronunciation searches, far ahead of French (15%) or Mexican/Latin American (10%).