It’s no secret that the face-to-face dating scene has taken a bit of a hit due to current, pandemic-y circumstances. Online dating apps like Bumble and Tinder were already wildly popular pre-Covid but were more of an auxiliary source for acquiring dates and meeting people. With in-person meet-ups down to an absolute minimum, dating apps became the main place to interact with potential paramours.

Now, with parts of the world beginning to open up again thanks to vaccine rollouts, Bumble is hoping to inspire people into venturing out into the world to meet one another once again, and is opening a restaurant in New York.

Bumble’s been a busy bee

“Good people are all around you. Get to know them over delicious food and wine,” reads the opener on the website for the new restaurant venture, called ‘Bumble Brew’. It’s described as an “all-day cafe and wine bar” and, “a space where [Bumble] can bring purpose and community to daily life.”

The café, based in New York, is kitted out in the app’s familiarly comforting yellow accents and is an extension of Bumble’s Hive experiences, events that have popped up in cities around the world. Hive pop-ups offer food, drinks, and entertainment for users, hoping to, in turn, “foster connections,” between them. Bumble Brew is opening in response to the success of these Hive events.

The dating app has teamed up with Delicious Hospitality Group (DHG), catering and hospitality experts who have worked on a variety of different hospitality projects, such as Ada’s Place, Pasquale Jones, Legacy records, and several other successful restaurants.

The café is slated to open later this year. It’s a fun idea, hopefully, one that we see crop up locally. Personally, we’d love to see this become a trend, especially if it means we’ll get to see something along the lines of Turn ‘n Tinder or an OkCupid cocktail bar.