Press & Media
Dinners With Friends is a credit-based social dining platform in Devon. We host community dinners at the county's best independent restaurants, where every guest has booked specifically to meet new people — a practical, local response to the UK's loneliness epidemic.
Dinners With Friends was founded in Exeter by Pamela Silkstone, who built the platform around a conviction the research keeps confirming: shared meals are the oldest and most reliable way humans turn strangers into friends. She is available for comment on loneliness and social connection in the South West, the science of communal eating, and Devon's independent food scene.
ONS data finds around one in fourteen UK adults feels lonely often or always — and 16–29s report chronic loneliness at twice the rate of over-70s. Dinners With Friends is Exeter's structural answer: repeated, hosted, low-pressure shared tables.
The best way to understand the format is to sit at a table. We regularly host journalists — email us and we'll save you a seat at the next dinner.
Oxford research led by Robin Dunbar shows people who eat socially more often are happier, trust more, and have wider support networks. Our founder can speak to how that research translates into a real-world format.
Our dinners bring reliable mid-week covers to Devon's independent restaurants — a food-economy story as much as a social one.
Background reading: our evidence page on loneliness in Devon and the science of eating together.
We work with — and want to hear from — organisations tackling loneliness and social isolation: charities such as Marmalade Trust and the Campaign to End Loneliness, NHS social-prescribing link workers, and Devon community groups. We can offer hosted tables as a referral destination, co-created events, and honest data about what works.
Every dinner is hosted, venues are public and accessible, and guests can reach us before, during and after an event — we take the duty of care around vulnerable and isolated guests seriously. Partnership enquiries: [email protected].
[email protected] — we respond quickly, and yes, you can come to dinner.
