The Coffee Club and RSVP attempt to smash world record speed dating night
The Coffee Club recently held a mega speed dating night in conduction with RSVP. Find why they did it, what challenges were involved and if they will be holding more of these in this exclusive interview with their Director, John Lazarou.
QSR Media: The Speed Dating initiative, how did you come up with the concept?
John: With RSVP research showing that 41% of Australian adults are single, The Coffee Club was determined to find a time and a place for those Aussie singles to mingle, meet that special someone and break a new world record all at the same time. Another factor which prompted us to go ahead with this event was that the majority of new dates are held at coffee shops like ours where it’s a neutral surrounding and if the first impressions are good they can stay on for dinner and drinks.
QSR Media: What did you want to achieve out of the night?
John: We wanted to BREAK the World Record of course! The Guinness World Record Adjudicator is still currently collating all the documents, I can’t believe it’s taking them so long to get back to us!!!. He says this record has been the most tedious and challenging records to assess to date, and he’s been around a long time! There are witness statements from each of our locations that participated and he needs to check through and ensure they correspond with store numbers and speed dating participants at every store; host statements, log books to read from every participant on the night – it’s been a very long process.
QSR Media: Are there more of these to come?
John: It’s been lots of fun, we’ve learnt a lot and the entire network was very enthusiastic to get involved, we know how to do it better and more efficiently if we do it again, so, I wouldn’t say no ...
QSR Media: What were some of the challenges involved in executing the concept?
John: Because the record for ‘World’s Largest Speed Dating Across Multiple Locations’ had been set before – we had to follow what had been done with that particular record. One of the requirements, for example, was that all speed dating participants had to have at least 20 x speed dates on the night. And although we know we’ve beaten the previous record in terms of overall numbers (the previous record was 1240 and we had close to 2000 speed dating participants attend The Coffee Club stores), unfortunately some of our stores didn’t qualify towards the overall tally, eg in some stores they had 40 speed dates and in others only 18, so to determine if we have broken the record, I guess we will have to wait to hear back from The Guinness World Record Official.
