How Vancouver’s $50 Dinner Club Is Cooking Up Connections

Like all good ideas, sometimes if you want it done, you’ve got to do it yourself. “I’ve been inspired by supper clubs on Instagram,” says Good Finds Club founder Alice Francis, “and I’ve always wanted to do it.” So, after moving from the U.K. to Vancouver, she did.

“It began as something personal,” Francis admits. “I wanted to meet people.” She hosted the first dinner, which eventually grew into the $50 Dinner Club. The concept is simple yet brilliant: the host provides the space and cooks, while Francis handles the rest (decorations, groceries, printing out menus, marketing, any rentals needed—she’ll even assign the seating so strangers sit next to each other). Tickets are $50, covering a welcome cocktail and a homecooked meal; the BYOB policy has no corkage fees (cheers to that!). The community host lovingly plans the theme and menu: one meal might be a love letter to British fare with tea and crumpets and fish and chips, and another might take inspiration from that host’s time living in China. You can expect to meet new people and try something new—two things we could all do more of in our overly routinized lives.

There’s also Girl Dinner, a pre-loved-clothing-meets-dining event and cocktail hour that Francis runs with her friend Scarlet Hunter in a bigger, rented studio space (most recently, Mount Pleasant’s Kou Studios) to accommodate the pre-dinner perusing of curated racks of vintage and local brands from cool local vendors like Naura Thrift and Nillionaire, all while soaking up the cocktails and validation from women fuelled by said cocktails. (And enjoying food from caterer Thumn’s Dinner Club.) “It’s more of an opportunity to dress up,” Francis says.

The appetite for the $50 Dinner Club is real (no surprise, with the cost of food these days). Dinners sell out fast—sometimes within hours of posting. “Strangers reach out on Instagram asking to host,” Francis says. “You can try something in Vancouver, and people will show up.” Turns out, in a city with a reputation for being a hard place to meet people, all you need is a table and a few open seats.  

The Deets

Follow @good_finds_club to be the first to know about the next $50 Dinner Club or Girl Dinner