Welcome to Groupon, Charleston! For our inaugural deal, $5 gets you $10 worth of gourmet cuisine at Five Loaves Cafe, located at 43 Cannon Street in Charleston and at 1055 Johnnie Dodds Boulevard in Mt. Pleasant. Since this is everyone's first Groupon, allow us to briefly explain how it works.

How Groupon Works

Groupon is a combination of the words group and coupon. Each day, we offer an unbeatable deal on the best of Charleston: restaurants, spas, sporting events, theater, and more. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, we get discounts you won't find anywhere else. We call it "collective buying power."

If you want to get the deal, just click BUY before the offer ends at midnight. If the minimum number of people (20 for today's deal) sign up by the end of the day, you'll be emailed a gift certificate the next morning. You can print your Groupons, or redeem them with our iPhone app. Use them whenever you want until the deal expires—today's expires in one year. If not enough people join, no one gets the deal (and you won't be charged), so invite your friends to make sure you get the discount!

Today's Deal

Unlike speedy in-and-out coffee shops, cafés indulge fantasies of sneaking off through misty European streets paved with pain au chocolat and lined with biscotti parking meters. Indulge in savory streetside fare with today’s Groupon: for $5, you get $10 worth of gourmet cafe cuisine at Five Loaves Cafe, a gourmet café with two made-from-scratch incarnations — one on Cannon Street in Charleston and one in Mount Pleasant.

Five Loaves' menu is replete with house-made goodness, from its daily tureens of made-from-scratch soup (a large daily selection available, $4 cup, $5.50 bowl) and fresh loaves of meats roasted in-house to the amazingly fresh house-made mozzarella. Lunchersize with a tomato and mozzarella salad, with roasted sweet peppers and asparagus over mixed greens ($4 for a small, $7.25 for a large), to experience the majesty of newly-minted cheese money and to avail your mouth of their house-made dressings, such as white balsamic vinaigrette or sweet basil and honey. Or, order up a stunningly porklicious hot ham and brie (with green tomato jam, mustard, and vinegar slaw, half $4, whole $7.25). Vegetarians can frolic and gambol through the menu with the enthusiasm of freshly-sheared lambs, setting upon options such as the sweet chili-glazed eggplant wrap (with cucumbers, sprouts, carrots, peppers, and Thai peanut sauce, half $4, whole $7.25) or tri-color tortellini with sun-dried tomato, portobello mushroom, and fresh spinach fillings in a cracked-pepper parmesan cream sauce ($10.50).

Both locations of Five Loaves are as committed to fresh, delicious fare as James Bond is to protecting the crown from scantily clad assassins, so slink through the doors confidently and flash them your license to kill your appetite.

This Groupon is not valid for catering or for half-price bottle nights.

Reviews

The Cannon Street location of Five Loaves Cafe gets a 12/20 from Gayot and was featured in the Charleston City Paper. Five Loaves Cafe on Cannon Street gets an average of 4.5 owl-eyes from TripAdvisors and an average of four stars from seven Yelpers, while 91% of Urbanspooners like it. The Mount Pleasant location gets four stars from eight Yelpers and a 94% of Urbanspooners like it:

• Come dinnertime, the menu doubles, and Five Loaves serves flavorful appetizers, homemade pastas, and fresh entrées at prices we can all appreciate. – Stephanie Barna, Charleston City Paper
• Love the soups/salads/sandwich combos. Entrees are really tasty too. – Howie is Hungry on the Cannon Street location, Urbanspoon
• I had the best BLT of my life along w/ an amazing tomato soup. The food was great!! – Michele A. on the Mount Pleasant location, Yelp