Do you ever find yourself eating alone because all your friends have plans?
Tired of swiping left on those other apps?
Well, there is something completely new out there for everyone. Dining with Strangers is a new app recently offered to UCF students. Dining with Strangers offers a safe, organized meeting arrangement so people can meet online and connect offline. There is a huge de-emphasis on pictures and meeting people based on looks. Is love truly blind? This site says yes, and by finding people with all the same interest you do, there is a chance for a genuine connection.
The idea first stemmed from a small college in Maine called Bowdoin College where the Housing and Residence Life set up a dinner with 6 strangers as an opportunity for people to get to know one another. CEO Romeo Ibanez took the idea and expanded it to the whole community, first with Bowdoin College where about 25% of campus uses the app.
Another key component is safety. The real catalyst for this was after an unfortunate event where Ibanez’s friend was assaulted. He knew that safety and having a safe environment to meet people would be high in priority when creating this app.
How does this app compare to those like other dating apps? Instead of just showing a picture of someone without any organization to it, Dining with Strangers offers many different options. Finding people by your interest. What you would see it a list of events or dates by people who created them. It’s designed to help people meet in a safe public place. There are three types of possible events with Dining with Strangers;
There are “dining dates” which are platonic dates just to get to know someone with similar interest.
There are “romantic dates” where you select what kind of person you are looking for and finds dates based on interest and preference.
Then there are “events” which is getting a group together of 3 or more and doing different activities based on interest.
Dining with Strangers has even partnered with Party Tutor and Drink Drivers so students can take advantage of their deals and services. Dining with Strangers looks forward to partnering with small businesses and eateries in the future as well. Ibanez hopes to see this evolve to a real platform for people to use to manage relationships, find people, and to get people to meet-up offline.
How do you get started? It’s easy! First, go to www.diningwithstrangers.co, it can be accessed from anything with an Internet connection. Click the sign up button; enter your name, UCF email and a password, and two interests you have. Confirm your UCF email and get started on the site. What you will see a list of potential dates to go on, unless you change to view events, you also have the option to create a date or event for others to join. There also is a private message feature to communicate with people before going on the date with privacy settings already set up so if you disconnect from the message there will be no way for them to find you.
If there’s one message CEO Ibanez could leave it was you are not alone and it’s okay to do something about it. So get out there and meet awesome people and do awesome things. Whatever your definition of awesome is.
For more information, contact romeo@diningwithstrangers.com.
Would you use Dining With Strangers? Let us know!