Saturday, January 20, 2001

Meet your mate at JiffyDate:
Sessions offer dating crowd lots of options

By Rebecca Rothbaum
Poughkeepsie Journal

Ready, set, date!
That is the premise of a new singles event from LifeWorks Service for Thinking Singles, a Hudson Valley Dating Service.

In what has been appropriately dubbed JiffyDates, 40 potential matches meet in 10 five-minute minidates.

“I think you only need five minutes to know if you want to date somebody,” said Frayda Kafka, the founder and director of LifeWorks. ‘This way you get 10 different dates in one hour.”

JiffyDates makes its debut on Sunday at Bacchus Restaurant in New Paltz, but it is already popular. Kafka said all 80 slots for the event have already been filled and she has started a waiting list.

Kafka modeled JiffyDates after the popular SpeedDating, a-year-old Jewish dating service based in New York City which gives daters, by comparison, a glacial seven minutes to meet each other.

Chemistry key

So successful has SpeedDating been that it has spawned chapters around the globe, from British Columbia to South Africa.

Like SpeedDating, JiffyDates resemble musical chairs. Men and women - the service caters to heterosexuals - chat at tables for two in restaurants or cafes that have been rented out for the event.

After six minutes, a bell rings and, before switching tables and dates, the potential matches fill in “dating cards,” which LifeWorks will later scan for matches. Matches will be notified within 48 hours.

So what can a person possibly learn about a perfect stranger in five minutes?

“I think a lot of it has to do with - and I hate to use this word - chemistry,” said Kafka, a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist and “born matchmaker.”

"It's about how you feel when you are with that person."

Holly Rossi, a human resources coordinator who is coming from Albany for the event, said 10 mini-dates with relationship-minded people seem more likely to offer a payoff than one ordinary date.

"Dating is like a crapshoot," Rossi said. "You could spend hours on a date but you usually know within a half hour whether you're interested.

I'm hoping it will make the whole process more fun," Rossi said. "Dating can be really difficult."

Kafka said another JiffyDates is in the works...

Advanced registrations are being accepted.