An Evening in Bentonville - With Strangers
Hi there, Community Engagement Manager Jacob here. So, I tried out something that some might find either cool or downright crazy. It was the NWA Daily Dinner Club, where you sign up to dine with five complete strangers. The idea is simple: you pay $15, take a personality quiz, and get matched based on factors such as interests, age, and what you’re looking for (dating, friends, business). I try to be open-minded, and more connections wouldn’t hurt, so I signed up. The results were mixed.
Let’s start from the beginning. I saw an ad for the event in one of the NWA Daily newsletters and decided to give it a shot. I plugged in my age, what I like to talk about, and dietary preferences. The rest was done for me. I was told it would be a top-rated, non-expensive restaurant in Bentonville that I wouldn’t know until the day of. Kind of exciting, right?
So, the day finally arrives—Wednesday, November 12—and I get a text around 8 a.m. naming the restaurant location, which is right in the heart of Downtown Bentonville. Heart rate increases. The usual doubts start to set in. “What if they’re all just weirdos?” “Do I even want to go? I’ll probably be pretty tired.” “This is a terrible idea.” My friends thought I was nuts. I was intrigued.
The day goes on, and my colleagues and I debate how the evening will go and how I should approach it. Do I create a completely fake identity and have fun pretending? Spoiler: I opted to just be myself. My boss helped me come up with some common icebreakers: “Where are you from?” “What’s your favorite vacation?” and—an important question—“Do you like movies?” I’m a major film lover, so it would only make sense that my potential new friends love them too.
The workday ends, the evening begins. I have about 30 minutes left before I need to leave my apartment. “Ahhh, I don’t know,” I say to my girlfriend. She kindly says back, “I mean, it sounds horrifying, but you should go.” That was all the confidence I needed.
So, I get in my car and head there. Upon arriving, I check in under the reservation “Plum Plate” and am told where the table is instead of being escorted there—indicating people have already arrived. I make my way into the main room of the restaurant and actually need to use the restroom, giving me a chance to scope out my table without introducing myself. Perfect.
I round the corner and see my booth. In it, just one person—a middle-aged woman. I panic and bee-line to the bathroom. I’m texting my girlfriend with all of the presumptuous doubts racing through my mind. “This is a disaster.” “What am I going to have in common with her?” “What if she’s the only one who shows up?” “Should I bail?”
Nonetheless, I collected myself and returned to the table to introduce myself. For anonymity, I’ll name the woman Jessica. “Hi! Nice to meet you.” We exchange simple pleasantries. We discuss the event itself, and we both admit we’ve never done anything like it. Jessica made a good point that it gets you out of your comfort zone, which is always a good thing. We also learn that it’s the first one, so we really are the guinea pigs of this social experiment.
More begin to arrive—first Danielle, then Hannah, and finally Leslie. Yes, if you’re connecting the dots, I was the only man. My horrors have been realized. But remember: open mind. So we begin chatting and learning about each other—what we all do, where we live, you know how it goes. This kind of leads me to my first suspicion that I wasn’t going to get quite what I was looking for—friendships that last.
We were left to keep the conversation going, and in today’s world that can be challenging. There were definitely more quiet spells than one would hope. And believe me, I want this blog to be juicy, with something crazy having happened—but it simply didn’t. We had a perfectly nice time. No weird stories, no awkward moments, no mishaps. Although, it felt like something was missing.
Also, if you wanted, there was an optional “afterparty,” which we found out about during dinner—a cocktail bar. This aspect of the event was neat, as it invited other people participating (but not in your group or even at your restaurant) to meet up at the same place. The max number of participants was 70. It really made us wonder how many participants there were. Could there be that many? Sure, there could’ve been your next great friend in the pool of participants outside of your group—but I wouldn’t know. I didn’t attend.
Yes, yes, I know—you may be wondering, why not? But I just wasn’t interested in taking that next step in the evening and was ready to get back home. Plus, I had kind of come to my own conclusion about the experience by that point. I’ll share that I think something like this is best suited for dating.
With friendships—at least for me—they come naturally and in an informal setting. The dinner club felt a little too forced, to where it was hard to connect. When you’re on a date, your intention is to keep it going, and the interest is there because you want a relationship out of it. You don’t want to be boring. When making friends, it’s slightly different—at least for me. It’s nice to converse and see if you have similar interests, and that might lead to hanging out and bonding over something you all enjoy. But when that is lacking in a small group setting, especially due to factors like an age gap, the possibility for lasting connection just kind of fizzles.
And so, my NWA Dinner Club evening ended, and I headed home without a regret or a minute wasted. Everyone involved was perfectly nice and had an open mind. Maybe the reminder that those people exist—and that you can enjoy an evening of dinner together with strangers—is a better takeaway than making new friends, because there are plenty more opportunities for those.