Coffee meets Bagel is a new free dating service that you can use with Facebook. This dating website just launched in Chicago in March, so it’s still relatively new but the concept is interesting. You simply log in with Facebook to get started, fill out a standard dating profile and your Facebook photos from your page automatically transfer over.
Then Coffee Meets Bagel delivers users one prospective match (or “bagel”) every day at noon. You can then opt to “like” that user or pass and wait until a more suitable (better looking) match comes along a day later, as matches expire after 24 hours. If the “like” is mutual, you’ll be placed in a secure SMS (text message) chat with that person and you can start sexting your little brains out right away.
Coffee meets Bagel doesn’t charge a subscription fee (hence the “free”) but has instead incorporated a virtual currency they call “Coffee Beans,” available for $0.99 within the site. Users can exchange those Coffee Beans to unlock features such as seeing a user who passed on you (hopefully it’s not your girlfriend) or which friends you have in common with your bagel.
It’s a new take on online dating, and an approach that appears to be attracting a younger, more digitally savvy, urban market. The average Coffee meets Bagel user is under 40 years old, with more than 90 percent of them under the age of 35. What’s more, the company reports that 70 percent of users check their bagel on a daily basis.
After launching in its current markets of New York, San Francisco, and Boston, the site is growing its user base rapidly and expanding its matchmaking service to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. It just may be coming to a coffee shop near you.
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