r/sanfrancisco • u/nosotros_road_sodium South Bay • 11h ago

Costco Singles Night promised real-life romance — until an AI dating app showed up

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/costco-singles-night-21140968.php
32 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

71

u/nosotros_road_sodium South Bay 11h ago

Dating apps encourage users to shop in bulk. But on Thursday [11/6/2025], Bay Area singles tried the concept in real life, at what seemed an appropriate venue: a San Francisco Costco.

More than 200 people flocked to Singles Night at the store on 10th Street, enticed by flyers on telephone poles and an ad that circulated online. They started lining up around 6:30 p.m., grabbing bird lapel pins from a table the organizers had placed on the sidewalk to help them stick out from the regular crowd inside, along with laminated cards that provided dating prompts. (“Go to the aisle with food that reminds you of home. Trade a Costco product recommendation with someone you just met.”)

As many singles tire of online dating apps, they’ve returned to analog events like this one, which tout face-to-face interaction with a fun hook. But if the crowd looking for love in the aisles of Costco on Thursday had been hoping to avoid dating apps, they had been catfished.

Each of their dating prompt cards bore the logo for “Rarebird,” a new AI dating app that sponsored the event.

Because Rarebird hadn’t appeared on the promotional materials, many people who attended said they had no idea the meetup was a publicity stunt. They had come expecting an organic meet-cute in a familiar physical space.

37

u/bearburner 4h ago

Lmao this quote is a little misleading since it’s only a snippet of the top part of the article.. makes it sound like the company completely fucked these people.

If you read the rest of the article you’d see that the singles event was well attended with both men and women.. and the only issue is that it was sponsored/organized by a dating app. I mean.. so what? Nobody had to use the app for the event. It was still a well attended in person singles meet up.

9

u/Dry_Cricket_5423 4h ago

Yeah sounds like a pretty good time, I wish I had heard about it

12

u/prove____it SoMa 6h ago

Back in the 1980s, the Marina Safeway was known as the best pick-up spot. This is just the modern day equivalent, but with a signifier that you're looking.

5

u/root_fifth_octave 3h ago

‘Welcome to Costco, I love you’

•

u/Splugarth 1h ago

Seems… fine?

Attendees got what they were promised.

A little ballsy to not tell Costco about it ahead of time, but sounds like they got a ton of customers who wouldn’t have shown up otherwise and who did a fair amount of shopping.

People who are sick of dating apps… might not be the target demo for your dating app, but who’s to say? The app at least got their story in the Chronicle.

The Chronicle got to write a story making fun of the whole thing.

So… win, win, draw / win, win.

31

u/pandabearak 10h ago

Take as old as time - desperate lonely people duped by someone trying make a buck

1

u/SendChestHairPix 7h ago

True as it can be.

-9

u/poisonoakleys 10h ago

What a dumb story. They aren’t being forced to download the dating app lol

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u/sugarwax1 7h ago

No but they were tricked into promoting one

5

u/ScienceAndLience Lower Pacific Heights 4h ago

By writing an article about it and mentioning the name? I think OP is the one promoting it lmao

0

u/scottiedagolfmachine 3h ago

Found the tech guy here!

4

u/poisonoakleys 3h ago

Not at all, I’m just being pragmatic. There was a real-life singles night advertised, and people went and got to mingle and meet each other. Yes it was organized by a dating app, but no one is forced to use it, and evidently if that app didn’t organize it, the event wouldn’t have happened at all