Student-created app matches strangers for meals on the Hill

Students who find themselves eating alone on the Hill have a new way to find a dining partner.

With the Bruin Dine app, which was launched by three UCLA students, students are matched with a stranger for a meal. Since its creation last week, 97 students have searched for matches.

The students created the app after they realized their busy schedules often meant they were unable to eat together, said Dustin Wong, one of the app’s founders and a fourth-year biology student.

The app allows students to input their preferences for meeting time, dining hall and their partner’s gender.

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Ram Sivasundaram, one of the app’s founders and a fourth-year economics student, said the team included gender preference to make students feel more comfortable.

Once a student submits their three preferences, the app matches them with another student and sends a link to their partner’s Facebook page. Students can then coordinate a place to meet before going to the dining hall.

“A big part of this was to cater towards freshman and transfer students,” Wong said. “Since they’re new to the school they might not have friends to eat with, so this might be an icebreaker.”

Sivasundaram said he thinks it is often considered taboo for students eating alone to talk to one another.

“The app gives them kind of that initial push so it’s not as weird to just eat with someone random or someone new,” Sivasundaram said.

Last spring, the founders pitched the idea for Bruin Dine to Brian MacDonald, the director of Residential Education, as a way to make connections on campus. They hoped Residential Life would help the app gain publicity.

Because of the high volume of student apps, Residential Life was unable to make Bruin Dine an official UCLA app, but MacDonald said the founders can promote Bruin Dine through their social media channels.

MacDonald said he was impressed with the students’ desire to create an app that would create an impact on campus, rather than one that would just look good on their resumes.

“I think people are always looking for permission to make new friends,” MacDonald said. “People are just super conscious of not overstepping their bounds or facing rejection.”

He added he thinks it is crucial for college students to have a support system to help them through bad times and good times, so programs like Bruin Dine are a good way to build connections.

“There are going to be times you get an A and you want to celebrate, times you get an F and you want to cry,” MacDonald said. “If you have people to do that with, that’s kind of the predictor of whether or not you’re going to be successful.”

Sivasundaram, Wong and their friend Victor Wu, a fourth-year economics student, began work on the app spring quarter and continued over the summer.

Joe Kahn, a fourth-year political science student, said he has not yet used the app, but plans to in the next few weeks.

“I’ve been in the situation where you reach out to your friend group and no one can make it to dinner and you don’t want to eat alone,” Kahn said. “Bruin Dine would fill that void.”

Despite some similarities to Tinder, a dating app that also matches people with strangers, Sivasundaram said they did not create the app with the intention of matching romantic partners. He said the app is meant to help student find platonic friendships.

[Related: Bruins bridge barriers, build bonds between students on Valentine’s Day]

“I could absolutely see a long-term friendship being the result of a meal,” Kahn said.

After creating the app and releasing it to the Apple store, the founders said their biggest challenge has been promotion.

“It relies on a lot of people using it,” Sivasundaram said. “People will stop using it if they realize not a lot of other people are, so it’s kind of like a snowball effect.”

The founders initially hoped to collaborate with UCLA Dining Services to incentivize students with free meals at dining halls.

But Wong said this would be unlikely, because they want to avoid overwhelming Dining Services with requests for free meals.

Charles Wilcots, the associate director of UCLA Dining Services, said he does not think they will be able to give free meals or other incentives, because there would be too many students and it would be difficult to manage.

Sivasundaram said he hopes to add a new feature later this year that would allow students with more mutual friends on Facebook to become more likely to match.

“That way you kind of have something to talk about initially, so it’s not completely like you don’t know them,” Sivasundaram said.

The founders also said the app can continue running with no input from them, so they hope it will continue to be useful even after they graduate.