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Ready, set, date! Let's Mingle comes to Vineland
Men have a handful of decent pickup lines at their disposal, but women have about 1,000 ways of dismissing them.
It's tough to be single and find a date.
Frank DeVita is an icebreaker -- for both sexes.
About a year ago, he and Rick Noblett canvassed South Jersey taverns, malls, restaurants, tanning salons and gyms to speak with men and women about what they want -- and fear -- when it comes to dating.
They took the feedback and formed Let's Mingle Speed Dating, a Vineland company devoted to making love connections in less time than it takes to bake a frozen pizza.
At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Let's Mingle Speed Dating will try to match 25 single men and women at East Side Café in Vineland.
"I'm doing it because this town needs to be livened up and for the people who place personal ads and don't know what they're getting into," said DeVita, 34.
The event is targeted at singles 25 to 35 years old.
For those who don't know what speed dating is, it works like this: Men and women, identified by nametags or numbers, mingle with each other for seven minutes. A buzzer forces each person to mingle with the next. After each mini-date, the men and women mark scorecards noting whether each person they meet is a match or not. At the end of the night, people who match are free to exchange phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
For those who don't match, personal information is not exchanged and they are invited to speed date again for free until they find a match, DeVita said.
"Once a match happens, it's in their court about what they want to do," he said. "We are the icebreaker and put all that stuff that usually happens before a date aside."
DeVita and his partner, and speed-dating host Stephanie Esposito, gleaned a lot from their research.
After watching the speed dating trend make its way across the country, DeVita said they learned most South Jersey women were interested in the format.
But they had to set a time limit.
So the trio took stopwatches with them and nailed down how long it took to pull out basic things from single people, like what they did for a living and what they liked. They often spent 45 minutes with singles and determined seven minutes was all it took to know a little bit about someone and whether they might be dating material.
"In seven minutes, a person can tell you everything and make a first impression that's a lasting one," said DeVita, who works as a corrections officer and also is dating. "The rest of the 45 minutes is just jibber-jabber."
What else did they learn about singles?
"Rick and I realized the thing most fear is rejection," DeVita said.
And it's obvious what they want.
"Both genders go into this knowing that they're there for the same reason," he said. "There's no wondering if he or she is married or not, or if he or she likes her or him."
DeVita plans to offer speed dating nights in the future for singles 35 to 45 and 45 to 55 years old.
"We want to be fair and target every age group," he said, "because everyone deserves a date."
Full credit for story goes to:
Thedailyjournal.com
