ATX Supper Club

What does connection even look like anymore? That was the question that I was circling all of spring of 2023. I was 23, post-college, post-pandemic, and feeling more untethered than ever. I didn’t want to network anymore. I didn’t want to swipe. I wanted to sit across from someone and feel that spark of human connection again. So I roped my partner into building a 12-person table with me, and we invited our constellation of friends to the table for a test dinner. And what ensued was one of the most joyful, heartfelt, and frankly obvious ways to get our group of people together. And that sparked something in me that I knew I couldn’t shake.

So a month later, I opened the doors of my swampy East Austin bungalow to 12 strangers — women who were very brave, and I can only imagine what they were thinking: “Who is this woman? Why am I in her home?” And I was the bartender and the florist and the chef and everything else. It was all very scrappy and very sweaty. But when I picked up the dessert plates at the end of the night, something insane happened, which was: everyone stuck around. They sprawled out over my living room floor and got their tarot cards read. And someone even offered to do the dishes with me, and I was like, “No” — and then I cried about it later. But that’s when I knew I had a problem. I was like, “Oh my god, I’m going to do these forever and ever.”

So since then, ATX Supper Club has grown exponentially. We’ve hosted over 50 public events. We’ve worked with incredible brands. We’ve hosted in warehouses and art galleries, my bungalow, and the like. But where we really shine is our themes. So this one here was our Beansgiving — it was our Thanksgiving event this year. It was a 60-person event, and beans were at the center of all seven courses. It was part canned food drive, part bean costume party, if you can imagine — which was a whole lot of fun, and really bean-centric.

And then this next one was our ode to Medieval Times. We really wanted to do a Medieval Times dinner. We called it Midsupper Night’s Dream. It was like a fairycore, Ren Fest, peasant dinner, and it was amazing. We even had a Jolly Green Giant. And then the fourth supper club ever was our spaghetti western soiree — southern Italian cuisine mixed with southwestern Americana. There were bistro tables, and the attire was, be your best and most fabulous nonna, Italian grandma.

And then this last one was one of my favorite series. We have met so many incredible people over our two years doing supper club who are these really insane professionals, and we wanted to pay homage to the PowerPoint nights of pandemics past. So this one was our sex-ed talk, supper school, and it was led by friend of the club and sex therapist Hannah Wood-Kraft, to fill in the blanks of your failed middle school sex ed. So: aphrodisiacs menu, sex toy floral arrangements. It was pretty great.

But the magic isn’t in the menus — it’s in the connections. Like the people who become roommates or fiancés, or meet their best friends. Or the girl that came to a supper club in March of last year, met three people, and now hosts one of the biggest book clubs in Austin. And then there’s Hannah. Hannah came to the third-ever supper club, a Studio 54 evening, and she stayed. We had dessert, and I sat down and we gabbed hard, and she stayed until like 1:00 in the morning talking to me, and let me know that we were going to be friends. And that was my first time experiencing the thing that I wanted everyone else to so desperately experience: to be seen and chosen. And yeah — now she’s going to be my maid of honor.

So anyway, like I said, ATX Supper Club has hosted over 50 public events. We’ve collaborated with incredible brands, and we’re actually working towards our first studio space right now. But the mission is simple: we set the table, people arrive who are strangers, and they leave and they’re not strangers anymore.

To the “me” of it all: the story started with a lonely and hungry 23-year-old, and now I’m 25, and I have a personal community and a business that brings me more joy than I can describe. Community is truly invaluable, and investing in it is the most meaningful thing I think anyone can do. And I get asked a lot, what advice would I give to lonely people? And it’s not advice any lonely person wants to hear, to be clear: the barrier between you and your people is being vulnerable enough to show up and ask for them. And after that awkward moment is the rest of your life. So thank you for hearing mine. And if you ever need a seat at the table, we’ve got one for you.