DINE TO MEET

Eileen Sweeney, Co-Founder of Dine To Meet

This innovative new business offers a dinner party service for single professionals.

Dine to Meet offers a unique opportunity to young single professionals nationwide. This emerging company organises dinner parties of up to eight people, four guys and four girls, to go out to a city centre restaurant where they can enjoy the food and each others conversation. It’s a relaxed, unpressurised way of making new friends and widening your social circle.

Circle of Friends

Eileen Sweeney, Managing Director of Dine to Meet, thought of the idea behind the website when she moved from Dublin to Galway and was looking to socialise and make a new group of friends who were interested in the same things she was. From this simple thought grew a lucrative popular business. In its first week the website received over 300 hits and according to the emerging entrepreneur it now receives “over 100 hits a day”.

Singles simply submit an online application to Dine to Meet, who match the individual to a table of people with similar interests and an email detailing a suitable date, time, and location is sent back to the applicant. A fee of €75 confirms your place at the table and when you arrive on the night a Dine to Meet representative will be waiting to show you to your table and introduce you to your guests. The guest can then mingle to their heart's content.

Social Networking

According to Sweeney, the response to the website has been fantastic. “At the moment we have about a 90% repeat rate which shows the people who do it really enjoy it. People say to us all the time it’s such a simple idea and there’s nothing else like it. Our fastest growing market is the 35 year olds and upwards. People love it because they get to have a really nice meal in nice surroundings and meet new people. The focus is on social networking rather than dating,” says Sweeney.

There has been a huge demand for the unique networking services Sweeney provides and at the moment there is a waiting list of people eager to avail of the opportunity to mingle in a new fashion that doesn’t have to involve going to the pub or club. “We’re running dinner parties every week. We started off in Galway exclusively and we thought we would be in Galway for about a year after we started up but after three months we realised our market in Dublin was there and ready so we moved there. We’ve plans to go to Cork also. After a certain age you want an alternative to the clubbing scene and that’s what we provide,” concluded Sweeney.

THE PERSONAL TOUCH

Those Two Girls PR is a dynamic, young company offering public relations and event management services that position and promote businesses. Those Two Girls was founded in summer 2004 and Olivia Collins became sole Managing Director in 2006. The emerging company has developed an ethos of hard work, professionalism, and creativity which it incorporates daily. Olivia Collins, founder of Those Two Girls PR According to Collins it is their personal approach with clients that has made their PR company unique and has seen it rise to become one of the leading companies in this profession. “We represent each client like as if it was our own business, we take a personal approach and we are genuinely interested in our client’s success. From the outset if we understand what our client’s business is and their objectives then in every PR activity we undertake we do it with the company’s objective in mind,” says Collins. TAKING A RISK Like most entrepreneurs, Collins was on a mission to start her own company and give it a go whether it failed or succeeded. She said she took a risk when she was 28 by starting her business and hasn’t looked back since. “I wanted to start the business before I was 30 so I was on a mission to do it and I thought sure if it goes wrong what’s the worst that could happen. It was no big deal if it didn’t work out and I had to try it,” explains the budding entrepreneur. Collins concludes by offering a gem of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, “it’s important for emerging entrepreneurs to network. Even when they’re in the pub they should be selling their ideas because every person you meet is potentially a client. You also need to take the risk and do it and see. If you’re passionate about something; do it.”