We’re Not Meeting Over Drinks: The Highs and Lows of Dating in the Hospitality Industry
After years of protesting, I joined a dating app for one simple reason: I wasn’t meeting anyone outside of the hospitality industry. I love the bar world, don’t get me wrong, but dating within it… well, let’s just say after being in the business for nearly 20 years, our fish bowl has me feeling like I should probably be searching for fish in the actual sea.
One of my friends who is also in the booze biz told me she was having luck meeting non-industry humans online and the next thing I knew I was downloading an app “just to take a peak.” After all the hubbub about dudes proudly displaying physical (as opposed to metaphorical) fish, I kind of assumed I’d wind up scrolling through old bar regulars or teachers or engineers — folks for whom cocktails are things they order, not things that made them famous. Instead, the first eligible bachelor the app deigned to show me was not only in my industry, he is pretty much synonymous with it. Even if you don’t know his name, chances are you know and love his recipes.
So how exactly is a hospitality industry gal supposed to date these days when even the dating apps seem to be saying “stay in your lane”?
Survival of the Social
“Dating is not for the weak in NYC,” says brand cultural consultant Chris Cabrerra. “And dating outside our industry is hard: We’re going to be traveling, and be social, we keep odd hours — [our partners] have to have a level of understanding.”
Bars exist as spaces in which to socialize, and yet it proves so hard to connect. As a part-time brand ambassador, I visited no less than six bars on a slow week, yet no one even approached me to start a conversation.
“We have a really big connection and communication issue,” says beverage consultant Pam Wiznitzer. “Meeting on apps has become the norm.”
Over 300 million individuals worldwide used dating apps in 2023, with three out of 10 U.S. adults having used at least one in that time frame. There are apps for every kind of romance, meetup, hookup, sexual orientation, kink, and all the other adult relationship variations one can dream up. According to a recent Forbes poll, 45 percent of respondents felt apps are the best place to meet a date.
“We have lost the art of picking up someone or talking to a stranger in a bar,” Wiznitzer says. “I miss that part of what bars were about — the interaction with strangers.”
In an effort to go against the apps and interact with strangers IRL, I attended a single’s mixer in Industry City last year that required attendees to check their phones upon arrival, grab a list of icebreakers, and mingle without the distraction of technology. I then spent the majority of the evening chatting with the staff and the drag and burlesque performers hosting the evening — so maybe it’s me. I am comfortable in my lane because at least bar folk are skilled socializers, as are drag queens. Then again, the only bachelor I had an extended chat with was toting a two-foot bong in his backpack. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for legal weed. But that just seems a tad inconvenient for a public toke, even if he did bring two hookah hoses in a fanny pack “in case he met someone.”
The Alchemy of the Algorithm
For better or worse, bars come with (and create) regulars. “I tend to be a creature of habit when going out, so trying to meet new people was challenging,” says Brian Yurko, executive pastry chef at Peak in Manhattan. “Apps seemed to be a good way to meet a more diverse group of people.”
Like Yurko, I jumped online in the hopes of meeting people who weren’t already regulars in the bars and industry I exist in. The algorithm had other ideas: Every third person on my feed worked in some sector of the hospitality, beer, or spirits industry. I’m not exaggerating when I say the first industry dude the app initially recommended popped up seven times on my feed, akin to a bar shift I was working years ago at Dear Irving during which I made four of his recipes in a row for a bar guest, left the bar for a break, and returned to find him in that very seat. Say OkCupid three times.
“If I see someone on a dating app that I’m friends with I always swipe right and say ‘hi,’” Wiznitzer says. “It’s always funny and we have a cute chat.” That being said, she adds, “the algorithm sucks.”
Except when it doesn’t.
“I met my husband on Hinge!” says Empirical Spirits NY Market Manager and Yurko’s wife Jessica Manchenton. “Brian came up on the app and I saw that he was a pastry chef, which is what I had gone to culinary school for, so he piqued my interest. I showed his picture to my boss, Luis Hernandez, and asked if I should go on a date with him, and he said ‘Yes! I actually know him and you all will get along so well.’” The pair not only had their first date at “Sunday Brian’s” regular bar, Pouring Ribbons, they got engaged there.
The algorithm is designed to find similar patterns and interests in profiles and match folks accordingly. There are supposedly ways to “train the algorithm” to learn what you are seeking, but the thought of bringing spreadsheets, math, and ratios into a dating search feels an awful lot like inventory and cocktail prep. Through intake questionnaires and data, algorithm-based apps create your dating pool of potential kindred matches, bucking the old adage “opposites attract” — and with good reason: Research supports that people connect with others who share their views.
“There is something super cool about walking into a space and realizing we know so many friends. I’m team-dating in the industry! It’s a beautiful thing.”
Chemistry, however, is something that the algorithm can’t account for. No stranger to using dating apps, Cabrerra told me that he’s convinced he would not have matched with his now wife, freelancer Ash Hauserman, on any of them. Instead, they met at an industry party at the sadly shuttered New York location of Ghost Donkey. “It was crazy busy, I walked into the bar to grab a drink, saw Chris, and my heart stopped,” Hauserman says.
The two swapped business cards, not phone numbers, over a few cans of Perrier. So I guess maybe some of us are meeting over drinks.
“Date the Person, Not the Profession”
Maybe it’s the way the rest of the populace flirts, but the sheer number of messages on the app I’ve received asking me for cocktail advice or suggesting I make them a drink has been off-putting to say the least. I’m not out here messaging a heart surgeon for tips or trying to get free editing advice from potential matches.
Given that I no longer work behind a bar, making someone a cocktail also implies inviting them over to my place — a bold assumption for a first meeting. The last gentleman to request I make him a drink as our date didn’t seem to find the humor when I suggested that if I was going to do my job recreationally, he should also do his and then we could just write the whole thing off for tax purposes. I mean, sure, he was a firefighter but folks love flaming drinks!
There are intricacies and idiosyncrasies that industry folks just get. For example, there doesn’t need to be a discussion over why I can’t sit facing a ticket printer or an open kitchen and carry on a conversation at the same time.
Then there’s the issue of where to go on a date where you don’t already know the whole room. It takes a special human to be OK with watching their date talk to every person in the bar. “I do not roll into familiar bars for the first three dates,” Wiznitzer says, unless it’s immediately apparent that there’s no romantic future, in which case she suggests introducing them to a friend’s bar to help create a new patron.
While maybe not the norm in other fields, those special socially comfortable folks abound in the hospitality industry. “There is something super cool about walking into a space and realizing we know so many friends,” Hauserman says, “I’m team dating in the industry! It’s a beautiful thing.”
OK, Computer
With all this beautiful industry love, I find myself wondering if maybe the algorithm is right to pigeonhole me. There are intricacies and idiosyncrasies that industry folks just get. For example, there doesn’t need to be a discussion over why I can’t sit facing a ticket printer or an open kitchen and carry on a conversation at the same time. As much as I tell myself I’d like to date outside my field, to find what Wiznitzer describes as “balance and a need to exist apart from the industry,” the fact remains: It is hard to explain to a non-industry partner that booze and bars are facets of our profession, not an indicator that our life is a constant party. Admittedly, it’s a distinction that’s difficult to grasp when there are widely photographed industry parties not just during cocktail conferences in destinations known for partying but also on random Monday nights.
Call me a snob, but I also doubt I could form a romantic connection with a human who is under the impression that James Bond invented the Martini and doesn’t already keep their vermouth in the fridge. If the point of dating apps is to make dating easier, then it stands to reason I’m being shown romantic candidates who would also make dating, well, easier.
Will dating apps ultimately lead me to one of the good guys? Two months in is perhaps a little too soon to tell, but I am a Gibson half full kinda gal.
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