Be human. Be social.

Half of American adults say they are lonely, and the number was that high before the pandemic. The cure is not complicated. It is other people, in a room, more than once. What has gone missing is not the wish to see people but the machinery that used to put them in front of you: the dorm, the team, the bar you walked past every day, the neighbour you couldn’t avoid.

Buffet is that machinery, rebuilt on purpose. Every plan that happens has three parts, a person, a place and a time, and every plan that doesn’t happen died on one of them. So we settle all three up front. A short list of things worth doing, every week. A seat you claim. A table that becomes real the moment three people are in it, and never grows past six, because six is the largest number of people who can all talk to each other.

We are not a dating app, though people have met partners here. We are not a ticketing app, though the list is full of things with tickets. We are the part in between: the bit where someone has to say “this, here, Thursday at seven” and everyone else gets to just say yes.