By: Maria Williams

Living with loneliness in large cities, such as New York, can be a debilitating and depressing experience. However, armed with the Potluck App, members are enjoying some incredible upbeat times.

Former New York resident Justin Gray is the man behind Potluck.us, a subscription-based platform that is one step ahead of generic event planning apps and one eye firmly on the long term. The bottom line: banishing loneliness blues to the shadows.

“We put ‘social’ front and center in people’s lives,” says Gray, “and it is designed to help you manage your entire social calendar for a year, not just a single party. That shared experience creates a sense of community over communication.

“Potluck was created and positioned to prevent people from becoming lonely. We need to tackle the reasons why people become lonely and don’t feel like they fit in, have a community, or have friends.”

How Does Potluck Work?

The software has been built to offer an interactive event page. A subscriber can create a list of what to bring and create and send out invitations. It also provides a private chat box and a special Moments Page to download magic moments from the event.

“Potluck retains the event history, such as your connections, so that we allow that data to organically build a social platform that we then give back to you,” said the former marketing manager turned entrepreneur.

“Our focus of the Potluck social experience is not your connections; it’s the events you had, who was there, and how you are connected to those people.”

He added: “I’ve spent years researching and working in traditional social media and mobile technology. I believe strongly that mobile technology and social networks play a crucial role in why we have an epidemic of loneliness.

“That has guided our design decisions as we can create something that delivers the original promise of traditional social media. It focuses more on the social and less on the media element of social media. Potluck suddenly becomes more personal and relevant in people’s lives.”

Transcending The Traditional

Launched in 2021, Potluck quickly transcended beyond the traditional event of birthdays and special family events. It can be handy for any event, from a church gathering to a cookbook club, picnics and barbecues. “The type of events and occasions the app can apply to is much larger than I originally anticipated,” he said. The app has been getting “excellent traction, and people are excited” by its potential.

“Once people find us, they come back, and Potluck is now part of their event planning. We’re aimed at very busy parents. For example, a mom of three in the Midwest who needs to organize her children’s school year, her church functions, picnics in the park, and social calendar over the year.

“Potluck is the foundation for them while helping to convert their friends at the party to understand how amazing the app is. They then utilize the app to organize their own personal and family events. It has snowballed and its use continues to grow.”

Potluck’s Roots In Sharing

Potluck’s evolution has been a slow burn for Nashville, TN-based Gray. His shared experience has been a way of life, even as a sixth generation family member, being born and raised on a cattle farm in rural Mississippi. Childhood memories revolved around a close-knit rural community and food.

“When somebody was born, married or died, you took food. I mean, that’s just the way the life that I grew up with. From a personal perspective, I had an early fundamental understanding of what it means to come together as a community,” he reflected.

That experience stayed to his core when he relocated to New York, where he dipped into comedy and acting before taking a crack at entertainment marketing and business development. He met and fell in love with Sarah in 2009, and so began the seeds of what eventually transitioned all those years into Potluck.

They bonded over a love of hosting and entertaining and went on to create a cookbook club. “The concept was very simple,” he reflected, “it’s like a potluck or a dinner club, except the gimmick is that everybody has to cook a recipe out of the same cookbook every month. So whoever’s hosting that month picks a cookbook. Then everybody figures out who’s doing what recipe. Then you have the party with you, trying 15 to 20 dishes from the same cookbook.”

From those experiences, the clubs got bigger, with a maximum of 30 people, and the intricate elements of making it a great party came sharply into focus. Marriage, two children, corporate life and a relocation back to Nashville later, and Potluck was created.

Gray said: “Potluck is not just another party planning app. It’s a digital platform for managing your offline social world. It is there to help nurture and strengthen relationships, and we’ve built something that can truly be a part of people’s social lives.”

To discover more: https://www.potluck.us

Published by: Martin De Juan