Please add these features, Grubwithus

For those unfamiliar, Grubwithus is a genius mix of Meetup, Match.com, and Opentable.  Each week a new set of restaurants are chosen to host a meal with 8-12 strangers.  I’ve gone to two different Grubwithus meetups with another reserved for late April.  Both experiences have been surprisingly awesome.

Grubwithus is killing it but there are a few features I would like to see them introduce to their site.

Conversation Feed

There’s no way to continue the conversation as a group after a grub.  It would be great to a have a simple Facebook-like feed to continue the discussion and connect with fellow grubbers.  This would also serve as an excellent re-engagement mechanism (see Eric Ries’ organic notifications definition).

Post-Grub User Connections

Grubwithus is designed to meet new people but it does a poor job of helping grubbers develop a relationship beyond the 2-hour grub.  Lets say you meet a cool girl that you’d like to get to know more.  You can send her a private message but then you risk awkward rejection.  You can follow her on Twitter or send a Facebook friend request but then you’re a stalker.  This also isn’t secluded to romantic relationships.  Maybe you’re new to the area, looking for friends to hang with.  Trying to create a relationship with grubbers of the same sex can be even more awkward.

Grubwithus can learn from sites like OKcupid which prompt users to rate others in private.  If two people rate each other highly, each person will be notified.  This eliminates the fear of rejection and encourages users to rate others to find out who likes them (narcissism and curiosity at its finest).

Groups

Groups are sort of already available (see the Hacker News group) but there’s no way to create your own or easily browse for groups.  I would love to create my own “Mobile Gaming” group to connect with passionate grubbers in that space and members of the group will likely be more motivated to attend group-specific grubs with likeminded strangers.

I’m excited to see Grubwithus evolve.  They recently expanded to DC with undoubtably many more cities underway.  Happy grubbing!