Breeze, a dating app that encourages in-person connections by eliminating in-app messaging, has expanded into Southend and 12 additional UK cities. Following earlier success in London, Manchester, and several other urban hubs, the platform aims to reframe digital dating by moving interactions offline as quickly as possible.
This comes off the back of its launch into the U.S., which so far seems to have been successful enough for it to continue its overall expansion across the United KIngdom and other parts of Europe.
Co-founder Marco van der Woude said the expansion comes in response to growing demand from users outside initial launch areas. Breeze distinguishes itself by skipping the chat phase entirely and book dates only when they’re mutually interested, setting up meetings at partnered venues to essentially streamline the date-planning process. The model appears to resonate with a wide audience, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, due to it functioning as a middleman that sets up the date’s time and place directly.
Since its 2020 debut, Breeze has arranged over 400,000 dates across Europe and cities like New York and Paris, and is still actively expanding into new territories. While the model of the platform itself – punishing ghosting, forcing users to engage with matches in some way before they can move on, and mutually agreeing to app-planned dates – is a far cry from the normal dating experience, Breeze’s focus on forcing users to commit to dates clearly seems to be successful.
