ABOUT DNNR
DNNR is building the next era of community
DNNR is a white-labeled dinner club platform that turns audiences into recurring revenue and real-life community.
Our origin story
The product needed to change, but the mission did not
DNNR began with River, an in-person meetup platform built around a simple belief: in-person community matters. River proved that people wanted meaningful ways to meet, but its free, volunteer-led model was difficult to sustain.
The model changed. The mission did not: help creators and community builders bring their audiences together in real life without planning the experience or having to show up themselves.
So we pivoted to build DNNR.
The magic of a DNNR dinner comes from three things. Guests already share a creator, publication, or community. They have chosen to meet new people. And a personality quiz customized for each community matches them into compatible tables of six.
Shared context, open intent, and thoughtful matching create serendipity by design. Strangers click quickly, exchange numbers, and make plans to meet again. Some describe the experience as life-changing.
For the creator or community behind the dinner club, it feels almost effortless. Partners choose the dates and cities, invite their audiences, and earn revenue. DNNR handles the booking experience, matching, restaurants, guest communication, customer support, and reporting.
Today, more than 150 dinner clubs have used DNNR to bring 40,000 people together across more than 200 cities. Those experiences have paid over $450,000 to creators and generated more than $2 million in local economic activity.
DNNR is building the infrastructure for serendipity at scale: smaller tables, stronger relationships, and communities that can support themselves.
The team
The Team Behind DNNR
Rae Lambert
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
Berni Kobos
Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder
Ryan Lambert
Chief AI Officer and Co-Founder
Ana Rivera
Director of Customer Success
Eduardo Verona
Senior Software Engineer
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Lemmy Mwaura
Senior Software Engineer
Luciana Arrieta
Director of Restaurant Operations
Esteban Rivera Schmidt
Restaurant Operations Manager
Alex Klekotka
Restaurant Operations Manager
Together, the team is building infrastructure for smaller tables, stronger relationships, and communities that can sustain themselves.
Our vision
Our Vision for the Future of Community
People do not need another place to follow each other. They need more reasons to sit across from each other.
DNNR believes the next generation of community will be built by organizations that turn digital attention into real-world belonging. The experience can feel intimate for every guest and still operate across hundreds of tables, cities, and communities.
Audiences should become communities
A subscriber list, follower count, or membership directory is not the same as a community. Community begins when people form relationships with one another, not only with the person or brand they follow.
Connection can scale without losing intimacy
The best conversations often happen in small groups. DNNR uses technology and managed operations to create tables of six while coordinating many tables across a city or around the world.
Belonging can sustain the people who create it
Community builders should not have to choose between meaningful work and a viable business. Paid dinner clubs create recurring revenue for creators, memorable experiences for guests, and new business for local restaurants.
What we do
What DNNR Does
White-labeled dinner club experiences
DNNR creates a branded booking experience using each partner's name, logo, colors, images, and content. The dinner club feels like an extension of the creator, publisher, or community that invited the guest.
Personality-based table matching
Guests complete a customizable quiz covering interests, preferences, dietary needs, and other matching criteria. DNNR uses those responses to create compatible tables of six instead of assigning seats at random.
Restaurant and after-party coordination
DNNR sources restaurants, makes reservations, manages dietary requirements and budgets, and coordinates table changes. When a campaign includes an after-party, DNNR also secures the venue and reveals it to guests after dinner.
Guest communication and support
DNNR sends confirmations, reminders, restaurant assignments, day-of messages, and after-party details by email and SMS. Its team also handles attendee questions, cancellations, reshuffling, and operational issues so the partner does not need to build a customer-support function.
Ticket revenue and sponsorship
DNNR gives partners a repeatable way to earn revenue from their audience through paid dinner experiences. Partners can also add sponsor messaging, offers, and calls to action across the landing page, quiz, email and SMS reminders, restaurant reveals, after-party reveals, and post-dinner follow-up.
Reporting and multi-city operations
DNNR reports on demand, bookings, attendance, guest feedback, revenue, and city-level performance. The same operating system can support a recurring local dinner club or a coordinated program across many cities.
Why DNNR
What Makes DNNR Different
Software and operations in one platform
DNNR does more than provide an RSVP page or event-management software. Its team manages the matching, restaurant reservations, attendee communication, customer support, and day-of logistics that usually require a dedicated events team.
Intentionally small tables
DNNR matches guests into groups of six using shared interests, personality, and compatibility. The format is designed to make conversation easier while allowing many small dinners to run across a city or across multiple cities on the same night.
A brand-first guest experience
Partners control the name, visual identity, guest journey, eligibility rules, pricing, and communications for their dinner club. DNNR powers the experience behind the scenes while the audience continues to interact with a brand it already trusts.
Pricing aligned with partner revenue
Creators can start without an upfront platform fee. DNNR receives 30 percent of dinner income, subject to a minimum take rate that is typically $5.00 per seat, and the creator keeps 70 percent of sales proceeds.
Proven local and multi-city scale
DNNR has powered dinner clubs for customers including The Free Press, 6AM City, Axios, Marin Buzz, Seacoast Stories, Wichita Life, Waco Buzz, Silicon Slopes, and Craft + Commerce. The Free Press used DNNR to send 2,000 readers to matched dinners across more than 40 cities on a single night.
Our customers
Who Uses DNNR
- Hyperlocal newsletters use DNNR to turn readers into a recurring local community and an additional revenue stream.
- Independent creators, influencers, and podcasters use DNNR to give followers a place to meet without producing another piece of content or becoming event planners.
- Business and professional communities use DNNR to match founders, operators, members, and peers into small-group dinners.
- Global publishers and media companies use DNNR to activate subscribers through branded dinner clubs in multiple cities.
- Conferences and event organizers use DNNR to help attendees form useful relationships before, during, or after the main event.
- Theaters and cultural organizations use DNNR to add curated, social experiences around their programming.
- Campaigns, fundraisers, faith communities, and touring creators use DNNR to organize values-aligned gatherings for supporters in different locations.
Trusted by local and global brands
Our story
Our Journey
The beginning
The team started with River, an in-person meetup platform created to help large online communities gather locally. River worked with major brands to organize free meetups through volunteer hosts.
What River proved
People showed up, formed relationships, and demonstrated a clear appetite for in-person connection. River also exposed the limits of a model that depended on unpaid hosts and did not create sustainable economics for the communities organizing the events.
The pivot
The team chose to solve the same human problem with a different operating model. It replaced free meetups with paid, hostless dinner clubs and built the technology and restaurant operations required to run them behind the scenes.
The first table
The first DNNR customer came from home. Seacoast Stories is a local podcast and media brand created by Troy Farkas in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the same community where DNNR began.
Troy had recently been laid off from Spotify and was trying to turn Seacoast Stories into a sustainable independent business. When Rae and Ryan asked him to become DNNR's first customer, the idea was still an experiment: invite a trusted local audience to take a personality quiz, match them into tables of six, and send them to dinner without requiring Troy to host or manage the event.
The first Seacoast Stories Dinner Club launched on June 17, 2025. It started with seven local tables and quickly grew into a recurring, multi-city community across the New Hampshire and Maine Seacoast. Nineteen events generated $30,000 in revenue for Seacoast Stories, giving the business a dependable source of income during months when sponsorships and other opportunities slowed down.
"Dinner Club saved Seacoast Stories, and Seacoast Stories saved DNNR."
For Seacoast Stories, Dinner Club became what Troy calls the lifeblood that kept the lights on. For DNNR, Seacoast Stories provided the first proof that the new model could work. Those early tables gave the team its first customer, its first real-world feedback, and a reason to believe that paid, hostless dinner clubs could create meaningful relationships and sustainable revenue at the same time.
The two companies gave each other a path forward. That relationship still defines how DNNR thinks about its work: the strongest products are not built for communities from a distance. They are built alongside them.
DNNR today
DNNR enables creators, publishers, and community builders to launch dinner clubs under their own brands. Partners choose the dates and locations, invite their audiences, and earn revenue while DNNR handles matching, restaurants, communications, support, and reporting.
What comes next
DNNR is working toward a future in which any trusted audience can become a network of real relationships, one table at a time. The goal is not to create bigger crowds. It is to make genuine belonging repeatable in every place people want to meet.
The process
How DNNR Works
- 1
Customize the dinner club
The partner adds its logo, colors, fonts, images, and content, then customizes the matching quiz. It chooses the cities, dates, ticket price, cadence, and any eligibility requirements for the campaign.
- 2
Invite the audience
The partner announces the dinner club through its existing channels. DNNR provides launch resources and a branded page where guests can select a date, answer the matching questions, and purchase a seat.
- 3
Match the guests
DNNR uses quiz responses to arrange compatible tables of six. Matching can account for shared interests, personality, dining preferences, dietary needs, and program-specific criteria.
- 4
Run the logistics
DNNR books the restaurants, coordinates dietary requirements, communicates with guests, manages changes, and handles support. Guests receive their restaurant assignment by email and SMS on the day of the event.
- 5
Bring everyone together
Guests meet their matched table for dinner. When the campaign includes an after-party, DNNR reveals the shared venue after dinner so the smaller tables can join the wider community.
Most dinner clubs can be configured and launched within a few days. Standard creator campaigns require at least 30 sold seats per district for the dinner to run.
For reference
Key Facts
- Company Name
- DNNR
- Pronunciation
- Dinner
- Type
- Privately held white-labeled dinner club platform
- Founders
- Raechel Lambert, Bernard Kobos, and Ryan Lambert
- Origin
- DNNR grew out of River, an in-person meetup platform
- First Customer
- Seacoast Stories, a podcast and local media brand based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
- First Customer Launch
- June 17, 2025
- Website
- https://www.dnnr.io
- Core Offering
- Branded dinner club software and managed operations for organizations with an existing audience
- Creator Pricing
- No upfront platform fee. DNNR receives 30% of dinner income, typically subject to a $5.00 minimum take rate per seat. Creators keep 70% of sales proceeds
- Enterprise Pricing
- Custom pricing through the DNNR sales team
- Services
- Branded booking, guest registration, personality matching, restaurant coordination, after-party coordination, email and SMS communication, attendee support, reporting, sponsorship integration
- Campaign Minimum
- 30 sold seats per district for standard creator campaigns
- Notable Customers
- The Free Press, 6AM City, Axios, Marin Buzz, Seacoast Stories, Wichita Life, Waco Buzz, Silicon Slopes, Craft + Commerce
- Dinner Clubs Supported
- 150+
- Dinner Attendees
- 40,000+
- Cities
- 200+
- Creator Payouts
- $450,000+
- Local Economic Activity
- $2 million+
- Average Attendee Rating
- 4.4 out of 5
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/joindnnr
- https://www.instagram.com/dnnr.io/
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
DNNR is a white-labeled dinner club platform for creators, publishers, and community builders that want to turn an existing audience into paid, in-person experiences. DNNR handles guest booking, table matching, restaurant logistics, communication, support, and reporting, and has supported more than 40,000 dinner attendees across more than 200 cities.
DNNR has no upfront platform fee for standard creator dinner clubs. DNNR receives 30 percent of dinner income, typically subject to a minimum take rate of $5.00 per seat, and the creator keeps 70 percent of sales proceeds. Conference and enterprise programs use custom pricing.
DNNR combines software with managed operations. In addition to providing a branded registration and payment experience, DNNR matches guests into tables of six, books restaurants, sends email and SMS updates, coordinates optional after-parties, handles attendee support, and reports on performance.
DNNR was co-founded by Rae Lambert, Berni Kobos, and Ryan Lambert after their work on River, an in-person meetup platform. Rae serves as CEO, Berni serves as CTO, and Ryan serves as Chief AI Officer.
DNNR provides white-labeled booking, payment collection, customizable guest questionnaires, personality-based table matching, restaurant reservations, after-party coordination, email and SMS communication, customer support, reporting, and sponsorship integration. Enterprise programs can also include audience analysis, eligibility controls, multi-city program design, and dedicated oversight.
No. DNNR is designed to run hostless dinners, so creators and community leaders do not need to attend every event or manage the reservations themselves. The partner sets the campaign, invites the audience, and promotes each date, while DNNR manages the operating work behind the experience.
Join the table
Turn your audience into a community that meets in real life
The first DNNR tables began at home in Portsmouth. The next ones can begin in your city.
Launch a branded dinner club that creates recurring revenue and gives people a reason to come back to the table.