Grubwithus is a fine seed of an idea, but fact of the matter is simply that people don't really enjoy eating with strangers. Also have a non-strangers use-case, as that's the most common way people eat together. Also, facebook login gave some error.
On an unrelated note, why does posterous not do something about the view count display issue? It has been irritating me for some weeks now. The viewcount is constantly showing as "Viewed 154times" lacking a gap between the digit and the text. Are they too busy to notice this? Perhaps they are getting acquired and stuck doing a lot of business stuff/travelling around and have little time for technical stuff?
Max, give it a try and you'll see that it's actually a ton of fun =) The people that go to the meals are inherently social, and always have interesting things to say. In Chicago, a bunch of people come that just moved to the city, are traveling for business, are tired of meeting people at bars, or just are older now and their social circle has decreased.
Well, I guess it needs the right kind of person to appreciate this. I've never been that kind of person to eat with random people, so I guess it would be pretty difficult for me to really get it.
I like the idea, I love random people. Definitely agree that people more aligned with my tastes feels more productive. But spending time with strangers and just asking things like how do they view things and do they do can lead to many opportunities and improvements in your ideas.
Additionally randomly hanging out with people is sort of like Social Bread-first search versus Depth-first search. If you think about it it actually increases the opportunities you have by knowing by definition a larger 'breadth' of people.
Rather than "cold schmoozing" at conferences, I think it is great to go for a cool diner at a table where people are interested to talk to each other around a general interest. The YC interview tables this week are a great example. Good luck to Grubwithus team.
On an unrelated note, why does posterous not do something about the view count display issue? It has been irritating me for some weeks now. The viewcount is constantly showing as "Viewed 154times" lacking a gap between the digit and the text. Are they too busy to notice this? Perhaps they are getting acquired and stuck doing a lot of business stuff/travelling around and have little time for technical stuff?