How The Potluck App Is Combating Loneliness Through Shared Social Experiences

Former marketing director Justin Gray is intent on putting “social” front and center in people’s lives with Potluck, a subscription-based platform that enables shared experiences and beats away the scourge of loneliness.

Gray, based in Nasvhille, TN, created Potluck with the idea of making event planning functional and personal. But his overarching aim — and a distinct difference from other party planning apps — comes with a long-term view.

“Potluck is focused on organization and the shared experience,” says Gray. “Our platform is designed to help you manage your entire social calendar for a year as opposed to planning a single party. That shared experience creates a sense of community over communication.”

He adds: “Our mission is to combat the epidemic of loneliness. I’ve spent the last 15 years researching and working in the world of traditional social media and mobile technology. I believe strongly that mobile technology and traditional social networks play a crucial role in why we have an epidemic of loneliness. That has guided our design decisions, because I believe we can create something that delivers the original promise of traditional social media. Potluck focuses more on the social and less on the media part of social media.”

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

“Potluck retains your 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,” says Gray. “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.”

Potluck, launched in 2021, has quickly transcended beyond organizing traditional events such as birthdays and special family events. It can be a handy tool for any event, from a church gathering to a cookbook club, picnics, barbecues, and reunions.

“The number of events and occasions where you’ve got to figure out who’s bringing what is much larger than even I originally anticipated,” Gray says. 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 today,” says Gray. “We're aimed at very busy parents. For example, a mom of three in the Midwest needs to organize her children’s school year, her church functions, picnics in the park, and her social calendar over the year. Potluck can provide that foundation for them while helping to convert their friends who are 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 continues to grow day by day.”

The shared experience has been a way of life for Gray, who was 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,” he says. “I mean, that’s just the way [of] 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.”

That experience has remained at his core as he relocated to Nashville and then 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 says. “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, 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, a Potluck was created.

Gray says: “Where we position Potluck is with a belief that we can keep people from becoming lonely. We need to tackle the foundational reasons why people become lonely and don’t feel like they fit in, have a community, or have friends.

“It helps to nurture and strengthen relationships, and we’ve built something that can truly be a part of people’s social lives over the long-term. We are a digital platform for managing your offline social world. We are not just another party-planning app; we are much more than that.”

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.