It’s Friday evening in Barcelona. I pass the Basilica dels Sants Martirs and turn onto Carrer Jaume. I press the bell and the door buzzes open. Tonight’s event is hosted in an apartment with distressed walls and traditional tiles on the floor. I pass the kitchen where Chef Hug is organising his mise en place, and into the living room to join a group of strangers.
I am greeted by Ipshita, tall in a black jumpsuit with a curtain of hair that swings around as she crouches down to film bits of the evening for Instagram stories. There is Jakob, German, eyes bright and energetic, batteling with the fact that Barcelona closes for business for a hefty chunk of August.
“They have a good work-life balance here for sure.” I shrug.
“No! But imagine your advantage over your competitors if you just stayed open when everyone closed?”
Across the table is a Slovakian woman who works at as HR for Glovo.
Lemonade Social is an App that brings together Hosts, Creators, and Guests to offer a range of events and happenings.
That is the uniting theme for most of the people gathered around the table. They are young, in tech, and some have not met each other before tonight. Like me, they are here via a new App called Lemonade Social. It’s a smart platform for bringing together Hosts, Creators and Guests. Tonight, for example, Hug, a former head chef at Kaiku is making dinner. As a food blogger, it’s a good fit for me. Dinner is two different types of rice infused with smoke via a crazy contraption that Hug has invented that is fittingly called “The Volcano”. Dessert is a Crema Catalana with a layer of caramelized apples on the bottom. Both require the use of a blow torch.
However, the parameters of Lemonade Social is set wider than food. Most things can benefit from their App, from yoga classes to vintage clothes sales to musical gigs.
“There is a guy who busks down the street from here. He used the App and made 85€.” Jakob tells me.
They describe Lemonade Social as an App for people who are fatigued with social media, and it’s lack of control whether it’s a shitty algorithm that buries your posts until you cough up the fee to promote or the cookies and third parties that track you forever and anon. And that’s just off your holiday snaps. Things get even more lucrative if you are a musician trying to organize a gig, find a location, an audience and sell tickets.
Lemonade Social is about leaving your screen and going out to connect with people in the real world.
This is a group of young people, who haven’t experienced life without social media. (Crazy thought) They work in tech and they understand how the animal works and they are out to fashion something more friendly, more beneficial to the end-user, rather than what is happening now where big companies are often taking 1/3 of the revenue and skipping off into the sunset, usually tax-free.
I can imagine it working. Swiping through the App to see if there is anything on and then *leaving the house* crucial and going to a life drawing class, for a 5€, meeting some new people and leaving the house!
lemonade.social
Lemonade Social App on Google Play
Lemonade Social App on iTunes
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