Our Story

Dining at a Distance™ was developed in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc on the hospitality community.

About

Our goal was to help to keep people fed and employed by aggregating restaurants and farms that were operational during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Originally launched in Chicago in March 2020, the site expanded internationally at lightning fast speed, thanks to the help of friends, colleagues and concerned consumers around the globe. It was started by Sean Lynch and Jenn Galdes who connected through social media on the day restaurants closed for indoor dining in Chicago. The next day they joined forces to launch Dining at a Distance™. 

Within 4 weeks of launching in Chicago, the platform expanded to 83 cities across Australia, Europe, North America, and South America with over 15,000 restaurants being listed on the site. 145 volunteers, including local city organizers, designers, and data managers, raised their hand to help manage the initiative. The team subsequently launched a sister site focused on supporting farmers and those in the restaurant supply chain. As the pandemic continued, the site rapidly evolved, introducing an interactive restaurant finder and map view to increase usability of platform and visibility into restaurants that fit a user’s interests or locations.

Over the course of spring and summer 2020, over 450,000 users worldwide leveraged the Dining at a Distance platform to support their local communities by finding restaurants that were serving food for takeout or delivery.

Thank You

In addition to our city curators, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the following and to our families for the assistance and support they have given us. This is a passion project for us, and we couldn’t manage this and our “day jobs” without their help and support.

Elliott Bambrough - who started a Twitter thread, connected us, and was instrumental in bringing this to life.

Mick Champayne

Allan Holmes and the team at liist

James Jensvold

Ally Meyer

Justin Sims

Huge

We Are Still Open - We Are Still Open is a non-profit initiative created by Tom van Oorschot (Netherlands) and Wendy Lyn (Paris) to help a global restaurant community in crisis. WASO lists quality restaurants, wine bars, grocers, farmers, bakeries, et al across Europe that are providing alternative business-models and take-out/or delivery during the forced-closings during this COVID-19 crisis. Dining at a Distance™ is excited to partner with WASO to support the hospitality industry worldwide.