Throughout her professional life, Jacquie Brownridge has been a matchmaker.
Her first eligible suitors were company owners and potential buyers, which she brought together as a business broker. Then it was bright, upcoming entrepreneurs in the Shad Valley program that she worked to match with internships at local companies.
Then, on Valentine's Day, 2007, Brownridge, a West Vancouver resident, took the reigns at the B.C. franchise of It's Just Lunch, an international company that does matchmaking in the more literal sense: between two eligible, relationship-ready singles.
The company pre-screens potential daters -- both to determine good personality matches and weed out any truth-stretchers -- then sends them out for a lunch date or after-work drink. After the date, the clients call their matchmakers and let them know how it went, and whether another date is on the horizon.
If not, it's back to the drawing board, and Brownridge and her team scour their list for another potential match.
It was one of these successful matches that first inspired Brownridge to buy the business. At a New Year's Eve party, she ended up chatting with a couple who had met through the service, and says she was intrigued by the business -- at the same party, she adds, a couple who she had personally set up was also in attendance. It was only days later that she heard the franchise was up for sale.
"When it actually became available I thought this is just absolutely perfect -- I love the nature of the business," she says. "I look at the dating industry as an HR strategy as well, because when someone's happy in their home life, they're definitely more productive in the business."
Though Brownridge says she loves hearing of successful matches -- her greatest triumph these days is successfully setting up her accountant -- it wasn't just her cultivated matchmaking skills that led her to her current career in the dating industry. She took over the franchise, at least in part, because of the industry's growth potential.
"The dating industry is definitely in a growth pattern right now," says Brownridge, who's hoping to expand the B.C. operation into Whistler, the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island.
On an international scope, It's Just Lunch has grown rapidly since it was founded in 1996 by Andrea McGinty, a Chicago woman whose engagement was called off just five weeks before her wedding. Since then, it's grown into a 70-office, worldwide organization, with US$30-million annual revenues.
With 13 million singles in Canada, according to the company website, there are plenty of people looking for meaningful relationships -- the company is in touch with about 1,000 of them in Vancouver alone. Many of those singles, says Brownridge, are ready to get serious about a relationship, which is why they end up contacting a service like It's Just Lunch, rather than posting their profile online, or heading to the bars.
"People come to us because of confidentiality, for starters, and they want to know that the people that they meet are in fact who they say they are. Their photos are not online, their profiles are not online, they know that we've met everyone face-to-face," says Brownridge.
Before singles meet, the company will give them the basic low-down on their match -- their first name, their profession, and a few interests, just enough to get conversation started. But they never give out last names or phone numbers, which makes the connection relatively risk-free.
Clients also contact the service because in today's business landscape, it can be tough to fit meeting people into the Daytimer.
"People are really busy these days. People travel for business, they're working from 7 in the morning to 8 o'clock at night, they don't have time often to meet people," says Brownridge.
In the future, she hopes to expand the franchise, and also expand into the area of image consulting (getting people who may have been out of the dating loop for years back into the game).
But for now, Brownridge is just happy to keep doing what she loves: making matches.
"We don't promise love or marriage, but we measure success by first dates leading into second dates (which happens about 60 per cent of the time), and of course we look forward to the phone ringing and someone telling us their either engaged or going on hold for each other," she says.
~ Canada.com
