Chicago, meet Grouper, a website that connects three single girl friends with three single guy friends to go on a date in their designated city. Loving the concept of group dating, my coworker, Laurel, and I decided to sign up to go on a Grouper. We filled out a few questions and we were all set—we had our Grouper date on the books.

Grouper has a policy where they don’t tell you where you’re meeting your dates until the day before, so we were anxiously watching our inbox the day before, hoping they picked a great spot for us. Much to our disappointment, we did get an email, and it said that they couldn’t find a match for us! They agreed to comp our next Grouper date (there is a $20 fee to go on the date) so we signed up again and the “day before” was here before we knew it. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we got another email that they couldn’t find a match for us! Grouper sang the same old tune the THIRD “day before” and that is when I had had enough.

I called Grouper to complain and ended up talking to someone for 20 minutes. I asked “Do you not have a lot of guys that sign up? What’s the deal?” Because I’m in social media, I suggested they start using Twitter to get some eligible guys to sign up for the site. She welcomed my ideas and even told me to send her an email if I had any more ideas on how to reach the Chicago market. No thanks, not for free!

They called me back about one hour later saying they actually did have a great match for us and that was that—we finally had a GROUPER DATE! I asked her, “Are these guys legit?” and she responded “YES!” and sent me all the information.

There’s not much to say after this. Our Grouper was at Diversey Bowl and when we checked in with the bowling lane manager we asked if three guys were there for a Grouper. They were at the bar and as we quickly glanced over, we knew Grouper got it wrong. They were definitely not ANY of our types. Actually, nothing like we requested.

I texted my Grouper contact that we were out of there, and we were gone in 60 seconds.

My closing thoughts: Grouper, while you seem like a great concept, you need better execution and strategy in Chicago. And maybe a little help in the social media department. 😉