Let's face it, the usual lunch hour is spent buying your lunch outside and eating at your desk, or going to the gym. Occasionally, you'll spend it with a colleague or with a friend nearby. And after work, you would probably rush off to see your family or hang out with friends rather than spend the time attending networking events.
With GetLunched, you can find people near you with similar interests, personal or career-wise, and schedule to have lunch with them. That way, you are able to meet new people within the workday. It also makes for a more productive lunch hour whilst giving you a mandatory screen break.
You can choose to buy someone lunch in exchange for their time and expertise, split the bill by half, or accept someone's offer to buy you lunch in exchange for your time and expertise.
The founders of GetLunched came upon this idea because they used to buy each other lunch when they needed to pitch a new product or idea to each other. However, they found it a bit of a hefty process to meet new people over lunch, so they came up with GetLunched to solve this issue.
To date there have been 7000 active UK lunchers, over 1000 lunches booked and thousands of messages exchanged. The site has been used by a lot of entrepreneurs looking for advice, people looking to further their careers, people looking for creative meet-ups and quite a few just to meet new friends. The numbers on here look pretty good considering that the site is in beta.
However, the one thing that stands out is that GetLunched offers a 'dream team' competition, where the user may get to win a lunch with one of the top entrepreneurial and marketing talent in the industry. The more you use the service, the more entries you get in the competition.
Personally, I've signed up to the service, maybe if you find me on there we can have lunch someday?