Foodie calls? Some singles are exploiting dating apps for meals, survey finds

Maybe you’ve been a victim of it — or maybe you’ve done it. Either way, you’re not alone.

“Foodie calls,” or instances where one half of a date is effectively exploiting the encounter to score a free meal, have become prevalent, according to a new survey.

Clarity Check, an online security service, found that just over a third of dating app users had experienced at least one “foodie call” incident within the past year.

Of those financially abused daters, more than half “noted the incident occurred even after discussing plans to split costs,” Lauren Fellows, a representative for Clarity Check, wrote in an email about the group’s findings, “suggesting intent was misrepresented.”

To come up with its report, Clarity Check surveyed more than 1,000 active dating app users. The group also came up with additional conclusions, including that 63% of respondents felt safer “when financial transparency was part of early interactions.”

Meanwhile, 71% said they would be more likely to pursue a relationship “after confirming basic background info.”

The findings — including the “foodie calls” data — may not be entirely surprising, but they add new statistics to a complicated industry story with major implications for North Texas.

Last month, The Dallas Morning News published an in-depth account of the myriad challenges facing Dallas-based Match Group, the global dating app industry’s dominant player, and Austin, Texas-based Bumble, its main competitor.

After swelling to new heights of popularity — and corporate valuations — during the pandemic, the app industry has been struggling to retain users and turn profits as many daters complain of “app fatigue” and myriad associated issues, like spam accounts and bad user behavior.

At the same time, in-person meetups, like one local event series inspired by the Katy Trail, have been booming, while Match Group and Bumble have both been attempting to remake their products in part through integrating new AI features.

The “foodie calls” phenomenon is also consistent with expert research.

In a study completed earlier this year, Justin Lehmiller, a sex and dating expert and research fellow at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, found that only 22% of adult GenZers — people who are 28 and younger — use dating apps as their primary approach to dating.

That’s a huge drop from how young people used the apps several years ago, when other research showed dating apps had outpaced connections with friends or other social groups as the most common way new couples were meeting. Finances, Lehmiller told The News earlier this year, are a large part of the problem.

“People are feeling like the economy is putting a lot of stress on their dating life,” he said. “And so people are pulling back and not just spending less on dating apps, but they’re also pursuing cheaper dates.”

And in quite a few cases, apparently, that includes scoring free food off their companions.