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It’s a Tuesday night at The Tea Set, a French bistro in the West Village, and the table in the corner is getting rowdy, as bottles of wine are opened and wild tales are swapped.
“So there I am, drinking Champagne, and this girl’s pet wolf is drinking Champagne,” says Josh Pelz, 27, digital director for the Gansevoort Hotel Group.
“And the guy from Arcade Fire shows up, and he’s like, ‘Hey, that’s a wolf!’ ” The two pretty women sitting next to him erupt in laughter as he provides a picture of said pet wolf as proof.
At the other end of the table, 26-year-old Ines Peschiera, who owns her own interactive marketing company, is describing a near-death experience she had in Peru, when her bus was hijacked by highway robbers. Her fellow diners recoil in shock.
From all appearances, this dinner is a gathering of 12 close friends, reuniting over a nice meal. Instead, it’s a group of strangers. They each bought a seat at this dinner online, at a site called GrubWithUs (Grubwith.us), which allows folks to sign up for meals online and then dine with an intimate group of people they’ve never met. Sound scary? A few of them brought along a friend as backup.
The service, founded in Chicago in August 2010 by partners Daishin Sugano, 30, and Eddy Lu, 29, was started for a simple enough reason: Having moved to the Windy City from California, they were finding it hard making friends in a new town. “They were like, how do you meet new people in a big city?” says Sen Sugano, 24, Daishin’s brother and the company’s development director. “The bar thing doesn’t work, but food in every culture brings people together in a non-awkward situation.”
GrubWithUs, which launched in New York on March 16, has quickly become popular with the 20-something set — and anyone else looking to network or expand their social circles. Grubbers, as they are called, can prepay for their meals online at a slightly discounted price.
On this particular night at The Tea Set, it takes 10 minutes and one round of drinks for the conversation to shift from “So what do you do?” to trending topics.Is print journalism dead? (No.) Who are the Shinobi Ninjas? (A Brooklyn band that releases video games with its albums.) What’s up with the viral video of the miniature giraffe? (Fake.)
Although the founders say it’s not a dating site, much attention is paid to the women at the table.
More than one male Grubber suggests that everyone switch seats halfway through the meal, making the dinner resemble a speed-dating event. The women do not move seats; the men come to them.
One such woman is Kendra Beitzel, 22, who has come with her friend, Erika Schuster, also 22. Both women are fashion designers who recently graduated from the
Fashion Institute of Technology.
“We like going out to eat, and this seemed like a fun way to do it,” says Beitzel. “It’s nice to branch out from people you see every day. Here there’s no pressure; you just eat dinner.”
Chas Wagner, 26, CEO of soon-to-launch mobile sports startup Fanattix, said he liked the idea of “taking an online network offline.” (For non-tech-heads, this is known as “meeting people” in “real life.”)
“You start out online, and then you get out in the real world. Too many applications keep you plugged into your phone. This way we’re out in the world, meeting people,” says Wagner.
With the last bottle of wine drained and the plates cleared away, a slap-happy crew stand around on West 12th Street, where they exchange contact information, say goodbyes and figure out who they will accompany on their commutes home.
“It’s the right combination of people who are looking to meet young people in the city and who have interesting things to talk about,” says 23-year-old Melissa Hanna. “You don’t end up with people who don’t think they’re interesting. They wouldn’t come to this kind of event otherwise.”