How to Meet People in Los Angeles
LA isn't unfriendly. It's just 500 square miles with a car between every two people. Here's what actually works.
Los Angeles
Meet people in Los Angeles
Not a dating app. Not a networking event. A place, a time, and a few people who said yes to the same night.
1:1 or groups of six or less.
The honest version
LA isn’t unfriendly. It’s 500 square miles with a car between every two people.
Everyone who moves to Los Angeles is told the same thing: it’s hard to make friends here. It is true, and it is almost never true for the reason people give. Angelenos aren’t colder than anyone else. The city is simply built so that two people almost never bump into each other twice, and bumping into people twice is the whole mechanism by which friendship happens.
So a plan in Silver Lake, viewed from Santa Monica at 6:15 on a Thursday, isn’t a plan. It’s a commitment. The invitations quietly stop, not out of unfriendliness but out of arithmetic, and a city where nobody proposes anything feels identical, from the inside, to a city where nobody likes you.
Fix the geography and most of the friendliness problem dissolves. Three things do it: stay inside a twenty-minute radius, choose things that happen again, and stop being the person who has to organise everything. The long version is here.
What Buffet is
The organising, done for you.
Buffet is an app for meeting people in real life. Pick a spot, invite someone, or get a plate at a table — one-to-one or in groups of six or less.
01
A short list, every week
Around six things happening in LA from Thursday to Sunday, chosen by hand. Not a feed. A list you can read in a minute.
02
Claim a plate
Pick one. When the third person claims a seat the table is real and the chat opens. Nobody has to chase anybody.
03
Show up
Six or less, all of whom chose the same thing on the same night. Go alone. Stay a bit longer than you meant to.
This weekend
On the list right now
Fri Oct 23 – Sun Oct 25. Three of this week’s picks; the full list is here.
Where
Neighbourhoods on the calendar
Where the next few weeks of picks are, so you can see whether your twenty-minute radius is covered.
West HollywoodBeverly HillsManhattan BeachSanta MonicaVeniceBrentwoodWestwoodArts DistrictBurbankChinatownDowntownDowntown LAGriffith ParkHollywood
Questions
Things people ask
Is Buffet a dating app?
No. Buffet is for meeting people in real life, in small groups, around something worth doing. Some people on it are single and some are not; the table is about the plan, not the pairing. If two people hit it off, that is theirs.
Where in Los Angeles does Buffet work?
Across the city. Recent lineups have included West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica, Venice, Brentwood and more, with roughly two picks a night from Thursday to Sunday. Los Angeles is the launch city and, for now, the only one.
How big are the groups?
One to one, or groups of six or less. A table forms once three people have claimed a plate, which is when the group chat opens, and it never grows past six. Small enough that everyone talks to everyone.
What does it cost?
Buffet is free to download and free to use. You pay the venue or event directly for whatever you do there; the price on each pick, from Free to $$$, is theirs, not ours.
I just moved here. Where do I start?
Pick a neighbourhood you would actually drive to on a tired Tuesday and put most of your social life inside it. Choose things that happen again next week over spectacular one-offs. Go alone, and stay twenty minutes longer than you meant to. Then let Buffet handle the where and the when.
Who makes Buffet?
Buffet Co, Inc., a Los Angeles company founded by Rich Hacking. The app launched in LA in March 2024, was covered by TechCrunch that April, and relaunched as Buffet 2.0 in September 2026.
Read
On meeting people in Los Angeles
What we’ve written, in the order we’d read it.
Socialization
Socialization
You Just Moved to LA. Here's the First 90 Days.
The boxes are unpacked and your phone is quiet. A week-by-week plan for building a life here before the loneliness sets in.
Events
Third Places in Los Angeles
Not home, not work. The lawns, markets, beer gardens and run clubs where strangers in LA still end up talking to each other.
Socialization
Apps to Meet People in LA That Aren't Dating Apps
Timeleft, 222, Bumble BFF, Meetup, Pie, Washed Up and Buffet, compared honestly: what each one actually does, what it costs, and who it's for.
Socialization
Making Friends After 25
Nobody warns you that friendship stops being automatic. Here's what changed, and what to do about it.
Science
How Long It Actually Takes to Make a Friend
A researcher put a number on it — roughly 50 hours to a casual friend, more than 200 to a close one. The number isn't the discouraging part.
All you can meet.
Free on the App Store. Built in Los Angeles, for Los Angeles.