Coffee Meets Bagel is a free dating app that focuses on providing users with a nice balance of selection and exclusivity. It has a combination of features we’ve seen on other top dating apps, but also has many of its own unique features.
The app started in 2012 in New York, Boston, and San Francisco, and has since expanded around the US and overseas. Coffee Meets Bagel is specifically designed for urban professionals who may not have much extra time to date, and large cities remain the biggest markets for this app.
It was founded by three sisters who themselves found that it was hard to balance dating and their busy schedules. They have even appeared on Shark Tank during the initial development process of Coffee Meets Bagel.
Coffee Meets Bagel is part of a wave of apps that were put out within the last few years with the goal of making online dating much more accessible to young people. The app’s system of earning ‘beans’ encourages users to keep coming back frequently, while there’s also a limited chat time frame to encourage users to keep coming back.
The app has a hip, fresh design that attracts younger users as well. Read on to find out more about Coffee Meets Bagel and decide whether it’s the right dating app for you.
There’s a 60:40 ratio of women to men on the app.
– There are 100,000 active weekly members.
– Most of the site’s users are between the ages of 18 and 35.
– While the site doesn’t put out much information about their user base, they are estimated to have around 300,000 to 400,000 total users from the UK. Other countries and cities are undetermined.
– Free membership, with options to purchase additional beans for 1 pence per credit in bulk, and six-month premium membership for 18.50 per month.
Coffee Meets Bagel has a range of unique features that help it stand out from other dating apps, particularly for those who are concerned about quality over quantity. Everything is done entirely via the app – there’s no website version.
New Matches
Every day, you’ll visit your Bagels section to find new matches. If you’re a man, you will receive 21 potential new matches at noon each day. The app tries to find you matches that have a mutual Facebook friend whenever possible. They can either ‘like’ or ‘pass on the match. When women visit the Bagels section, they will see a list of matches which have already liked them. They also can select criteria that their Bagels must meet, like age, height, ethnicity, distance, and more.
Chat option
There’s then a chat option where you can talk to your matches. You have a total of 24 hours to like or pass on your matches before they disappear. When both parties have hit the like button, you can start talking to each other on the chat feature. The chat feature is available for eight days before it disappears. This encourages members to swap real-life communication info and even meet for a date in person.
Discover tab
You can also find new matches via the Discover tab. Here, the app shows you profiles of people who meet your selected criteria. You can see whether or not they have already liked you, and you can choose whether or not to like them. When you like, or ‘take’ a Bagel from the Discover tab, you spend beans.
Beans currency system
Beans are Coffee Meets Bagel’s internal currency system. There are many free ways to earn beans in the app. For example, you can earn beans by filling out certain parts of your profile, sharing the app with friends or on social media, or providing helpful feedback. You even earn beans just for coming back to the app on a regular basis. You can also purchase beans in various increments to get the best use out of the app.
There are many different uses for beans throughout the app. As previously mentioned, you will spend beans every time you take a Bagel from the discover section. You can also use beans to keep your chat conversations open for longer than eight days. If you really want to keep talking to a match without trading phone numbers, you can use beans to open up the conversation for up to 30 days.
Woo feature
Another feature that uses beans is the Woo feature. When you send someone a Woo, you are essentially showing that you are very interested in them and want to stand out from the crowd. It’s similar to a Super Like on Tinder.
Profiles
Coffee Meets Bagel uses short, quippy profiles that are easy to browse through. When putting together your profile, the app will pull basic information like gender and age from Facebook, and ask you to fill out any fields you don’t have posted on Facebook. You’ll fill out a quick bio by completing the sentences ‘I am…’, ‘I like…’, and ‘I appreciate it when my date…’, to give potential matches an idea of what you’re all about. It will also let you select some of your favorite Facebook photos to use in your profile.
Photo Lab
You can use the app’s fun Photo Lab feature. This allows you to post two pictures that you are considering to the general CMB community, and they’ll vote on which one is more attractive. To participate in this feature, you’re required to vote on other people’s photos. This ensures that everyone gets the unbiased feedback they are looking for.
Give feature
This app also offers a variety of other fun features you can play with if you want to up your dating game. The Give feature allows you to give your matches to friends, so if you see someone that’s a perfect fit for someone you know, you can pass them along. If your friend decides to look at the match, you earn beans.
Question of the day
Another fun feature is the Question of the Day feature, where users record short videos of themselves answering a daily question, and other people can look through them. It’s a fun way to interact with others in the community and maybe spark someone’s interest.
Open Sesame
If you want to know more about your matches, you can use the Open Sesame feature, which reveals the mutual Facebook friends between you and your match, as well as the Mirror Mirror feature, which shows how your profile is stacking up on the entire Coffee Meets Bagel community.
Icebreaker
To get the conversation started, CMB has an icebreaker feature. When you match with someone, you have the option to send them three icebreaker questions that they can answer. These icebreakers can be about anything, but the most successful ones are open-ended questions that get the other person thinking.
Rematch
If you don’t get a conversation started with your match in the 24 hours, you can use the Rematch feature to try again.
Express delivery
Finally, you can try the express delivery feature to send a message to someone you like before the match is confirmed. This will cost 50 beans, but the match will see your message right away and even get an email notification about it.
Premium version
There is a Premium version of Coffee Meets Bagel that you can purchase in one-month subscriptions or six-month subscriptions. This gives you added insight into your matches to help you better narrow down the right person for you. With the Premium version of Coffee Meets Bagel, you can see which Bagels have read the messages you’ve sent them. You can also see an activity report for every person you match with, which can give you better insight into their behavior and help you determine whether or not they are worth your time and effort.
Despite Coffee Meets Bagel’s wide range of features, the app is actually relatively simple to use. Everything is done on your phone, and the app is very intuitive, with a simple but appealing interface.
You do need to have a Facebook account to use Coffee Meets Bagel, and you will need to connect the two accounts at the beginning of the sign-up process. However, everything is kept very private.
Since so much of the matching is done for you on CMB, there’s not much work that goes into it. All you have to determine is whether or not you are interested in your potential matches and want to continue to pursue them.
One of Coffee Meets Bagel’s guiding principles is that dating should be private and discreet unless you want it to be. They also want you to be safe and comfortable while dating online. As previously mentioned, you need to have a Facebook account to use the service, but they will never post to your Facebook account for you. The only reason the app uses the Facebook connection is to help you find better matches.
Connecting with Facebook also helps prevent users from developing fake accounts, which minimized harassment on the site. The focus of this site for most people is finding a serious relationship, and CMB takes this very seriously. They reward continued activity on the site to prevent ghosting and encourage fun and honest communication.
Coffee Meets Bagel is very concerned about their customer experience and goes out of their way to ensure that their users are enjoying the site and that they feel safe and comfortable. You can email them at contact@coffeemeetsbagel.com for help with any technical difficulties or send in suggestions you have about the site. If you are having a problem with any of your matches, you can easily remove them to end the match.
Positives
Coffee Meets Bagel has many positive aspects, particularly for busy young professionals who want a relationship, but don’t have time for more in-depth dating sites like Match.com or OkCupid. Coffee Meets Bagel does a lot of the leg work for you, so you only have to invest a small amount of time each day to make connections. The app is easy to use and has an intuitive and appealing design. It’s also very private and encourages serious relationships, which is a breath of fresh air when compared to other dating apps that focus on hookups. The features are designed to facilitate actual conversation and get the ball rolling with dates.
Negatives
However, there are also some negatives to Coffee Meets Bagel. It doesn’t have as many users as other dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, so the dating pool is somewhat limited. The users of CMB also tend to be concentrated in large cities so it may not be useful if you are living in the suburbs. While the Facebook connections do prevent fake profiles and encourage users to make positive social connections, it also increases the chances of you matching with an ex, coworker, or another acquaintance that you may not have wanted to see on a dating site. The limited number of matches each day also means that it may take time before you find anyone that you click with. This app is best used either in conjunction with other dating sites to increase your chances, or if you don’t mind waiting a little while to find the perfect fit.
Many dating apps are trying to appeal to young professionals right now. The most prominent Coffee Meets Bagel competitors right now are Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, but new dating apps are being released all the time that aim to appeal to this niche.
While Coffee Meets Bagel isn’t a revolutionary new concept, it is a dating app worth trying if you aren’t interested in hookups and are trying to find someone you really click with. Coffee Meets Bagel combines a lot of features from other popular dating apps to create an experience that is very streamlined and doesn’t require too much investment to use. It’s a good dating app to use if you’re new to the world of online dating and just want to see what it’s like. However, if you’re really committed to the goal of finding a new partner or a hookup right away, this probably isn’t the best app for you.
