Something We Have Been Building Towards
From the very beginning, Dinners With Friends has been about one thing: getting people around a table together. Good food, real conversation, no phones, no pretence. Just the simple, underrated act of sitting down with other human beings and sharing a meal.
We started small — a handful of dinners in Devon, a belief that sharing a meal could genuinely change someone's social life, and a lot of faith that other people felt the same way we did about the state of human connection in this country. They did. They really did.
But we have always known that to build something that truly matters, we could not do it alone. The magic of a great dinner is not the venue or the menu — it is the person at the table who makes everyone feel welcome. The one who asks the right question. The one who notices when someone is quiet and gently draws them in. The one who turns a table of strangers into something that, by dessert, feels like a group of friends.
That person is a host. And today, we are launching a programme to find more of them.
Two Ways to Host With Us
We have built two distinct paths for people who want to be part of this, because we know that "hosting" means different things to different people.
Community Hosts
This is for the social connectors. The people who walk into a room and make it warmer. You do not need a venue, a business, or any experience running events. You just need to genuinely enjoy bringing people together.
As a Community Host, you facilitate at our existing Dinners With Friends events. You arrive early, welcome guests as they come in, get conversations started, and make sure nobody spends the evening feeling like a spare part. You are the social heartbeat of the table.
In return, you eat for free — a complimentary ticket to every dinner you host, plus £20 towards your meal. There is no minimum commitment: some hosts take a table most weeks, others once a month, and we work around your diary. That is it.
We have written a full guide to what being a Community Host involves, including what a typical evening looks like and how to apply.
Host Partners
This is for people who are already running experiences — supper clubs, cooking workshops, wine tastings, pottery evenings, sushi-making classes, whatever it is — and want a platform to reach more people.
As a Host Partner, you list your events on Dinners With Friends, and we handle the ticketing, payment processing, and marketing. You keep 80% of every ticket sold, paid directly into your account via Stripe. You set your own prices, your own schedule, and your own capacity. You have full creative control.
The requirements are straightforward: you need to already be running events (we are not a launchpad for untested ideas — we are an accelerant for things that already work), and you need business insurance. Beyond that, we work closely with every new partner to make sure the experience meets the standard our community expects.
We have a detailed guide for Host Partners that covers the full process, what you get, and how to get started.
Why We Are Doing This Now
The honest answer is that we have been thinking about this since day one. The friendship recession is not a Devon problem — it is a UK-wide crisis. People everywhere are struggling to make and maintain meaningful connections. The death of the third place, the rise of remote work, the cost of living making regular socialising feel like a luxury — all of these things are real, and all of them are getting worse.
We cannot solve that by running a handful of dinners in one corner of the country. But we can build a network of people who care about connection as much as we do and give them the tools to create it in their own communities.
That is what DWF Hosts is. It is not a franchise. It is not a corporate programme. It is a community of people who believe that the best thing you can do for the people around you is invite them to sit down, eat something good, and talk to each other.
What This Means for the UK
We are opening this up UK-wide. Wherever you are in the country — Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, London, Leeds, Brighton — you can apply today. Two honest caveats. Host Partners can run their own events anywhere, because the events are yours. Community Hosts facilitate at our dinners, and our dinner calendar is still concentrated in Devon, so a place outside the South West may mean waiting until we are running tables near you. Tell us where you are and we will be straight with you about the timeline.
For Community Hosts, it starts with a conversation. We will have a friendly chat, walk you through how a dinner actually runs, and get you a table when you are ready. We stay close for your first few evenings before you are fully up and running.
For Host Partners, the onboarding is slightly more involved — we review your existing events, check your insurance, and walk you through the platform. But the goal is the same: to get you set up as quickly as possible so you can start doing what you already do, just with a bigger audience behind you.
Interested? Head to dinnerswithfriends.co.uk/host to learn more and start your application. Whether you want to host at our dinners or run your own events, there is a place for you here.
The Bigger Picture
We have always believed that the antidote to loneliness is not an app or a programme — it is a table. A real one, with real food, in a real room, with real people. Everything we have built has been in service of that idea.
DWF Hosts is the next step. It is how we go from a company that runs dinners to a community that creates connection — everywhere, for everyone, led by people who care.
If that sounds like something you want to be part of, we would love to hear from you.