Croydon Dinner Club a mouth-watering success

It's been a long time since my last post, which is not through a lack of trying or will, I assure you. My last post was effectively on a sky pie - this crazy idea that people will just leave their houses and give up their evenings to come and eat somewhere with a load of people they don't know..

Yes, that's the glass half full version I realise and what better way to fill up that glass than by reporting what's going on?! It's really very exciting.


The first thing I had to do was take all that I'd learned from my previous networking events, take the best of those and leave the worst - so I had to create a twitter account. Knowing the guy who organises events is great if you get stuck or lost because you can just tweet or text them. But if you don't know them; maybe don't even know who they are if you've heard about the event through a 3rd party, it can be very difficult to find the information you need about the networking event. 


So to Twitter - providing a central point for news and updates which people can follow and interact with.

Croydon Dinner Club's first tweet

After my blog post it all got very busy. Lots of hits and a ground swelling of interest from some of my closer twitter friends (people I'd met through twitter at various times). The reaction was positive and exciting to say the least. 

Profiteroles made by the Gods - sampled at
Croydon Dinner Club.

A few re-tweets later and a follow count in the 20's and we had a very healthy total of 13 people turn up to the first night at an Indian restaurant. 


The month trickled on and I started seeking out people mentioning Croydon in their tweets and adding them or just chatting to them. The follow count gradually grew.

We then had the 2nd club which attracted 18 people and the 3rd which attracted the same number. People who'd only joined in the 2nd stayed on and came back to the 3rd.

Next week sees the 4th Croydon Dinner Club. Now with 170 followers and counting, made up of real Croydon local's and a few food based local businesses, the "club" is really heading somewhere. We will be heading to Galicia's Tapas bar in South Croydon. The gradual increase in interest is really great and a very encouraging sign for Croydon. People see others talking about Croydon Dinner Club, click on the profile and join up. The more people love it, the more people talk about it, the more people hear about it.

I'm looking forward to talking to the local press about the club in the next week so hopefully that will double the number of Croydon people aware of the dinners. With the introduction of the new Croydon Radio I'll be looking to get on there as well to speak about Croydons restaurants and the fabulous range of food we have on offer in Croydon.

Here's to the future!

Croydon Dinner Club blog
Croydon Dinner Club twitter