"The death of the dinner date"

In recent years, somewhere between endless Tinder swipes and countless OkCupid matches, the dinner date has fallen by the wayside.

As online dating surges in popularity, few millennials have the time, money, or desire to sit with a stranger over a long meal. Only 7 in 10,000 messages in a recent OkCupid IAC survey suggested “grabbing some dinner” and a somewhat less scientific survey this reporter conducted of several dozen actively dating 20-somethings found that dinner has become a highly taboo first date. Last month, Moody’s Investors Service slashed its operating-profit growth forecast for the restaurant sector. (This appears to complement another trend noted by market researcher NPD Group that suggests 57% of meals In the U.S. are eaten alone.)

There’s good reason why people don’t want to sit through a meal with a stranger for an hour or, often times, longer. One singleton this reporter spoke to called it her “worst nightmare” and another said the idea of sitting through an unspecified number of hours of food, drinks or dessert makes her anxious. A recent article in Cosmopolitan detailed, “Why First-Date Dinners Suck,” listing similar reasons: the date category is antiquated, the time frame of the event is too long if there is no chemistry, and eating is too “intimate.”

Dating online can be more miss than hit, even when you see the photo beforehand, so there is a risk that the dinner will feel even longer. “In theory, I like the dinner date, but nearly every time I’ve gone on one as a first date I feel like I’m trapped with somebody who got stale after the first 15 minutes,” said Christine Victoria Waller, a 35-year-old childhood educator who lives outside of New York City. “For beginning dates, I prefer a cocktail someplace nice, with the option of it turning into dinner if we are feeling it.”

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