We recently connected with Saanya Ali and have shared our conversation below.

Saanya, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

SOIRÉE is a platform dedicated to simplifying the stress of hosting to make it easy and accessible for a new generation of entertainers.

Post-pandemic, we have a generation of young people who place high value community and crave gathering more than ever before, as seen by the 25% increase in Americans wanting to host dinner parties over pre-pandemic numbers and Evite’s report of a 148% increase in searches for “dinner parties” just since 2023*. That said, this generation doesn’t have the time, space, money or attention span to plan these gatherings, leaving Gen Zers and young Millennials stuck in the gray area; either wanting to host and never achieving their goal—fearing the time commitment, absence of skill set, and reluctance to add more to their to-do list—or actually hosting a dinner party, but finding it needlessly stressful and time consuming. SOIRÉE helps bridge that gap through our content, consulting, and community.

*Other stats include:
– A 52% increase in search for “dinner party aesthetic”
– A 34% increase in search for both “dinner party inspiration” and “best dinner party foods”

This has lead to the following trends emerging in the home entertaining and events space:

1. Play

The last two years has seen a a massive push towards playfulness and activities when hosting events. People are tired of overspending at bars and restaurants just to have the same small talk conversations and eat the same small food. Guests want activities. They want to do things! Whether that be a game played round the table, a craft that breaks the ice, or an element of DIY (think a make your own pizza night, a martini bar, or a classic Taco Tuesday) more and more events are incorporating an element of fun or novelty that makes the evening memorable and unique.

2. Themes
The social media generation loves any occasion that incurs good content and a dinner party is just that. 20-somethings are picking more and more themes and aesthetics to incorporate into their hosting. Whether that means a Mamma Mia themed tablescape or a roaring 20s dress code, dinner parties and other highly decorated events have taken over TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. Gen Z has learned to be thrifty when it comes to making their own menus and decorations and oftentimes prioritizes the “look” over having extraordinarily expensive or complicated dishes.

3. Education
More and more events are also incorporating an element of “learning,” but not at the expense of fun. From wine tasting lessons and cheese pairings to reading parties and trivia games, dinner parties have become so much more than just an occasion to feast with friends. This is no surprise since a major reason behind the post-pandemic rise of Gen Z hosting is due to young people learning more about food, buying more cookbooks, and honing their culinary skills and interests during quarantine.

4. Community building
Finally, community building continues to be the name of the game but in more ways than ever before. Virtual cocktail clubs have cropped up to share experiments and recipes and it seems like every other day a new supper club or cookbook club trends on social media. Young people are more desperate for connection and to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than ever before. There are also fewer and fewer occasions to meet strangers in an intimate “get to know you” setting in this increasingly digital world, so supper clubs have provided the space to do that.

Saanya, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Saanya Ali is a storyteller, writer, self-trained chef, community builder, and the founder of SOIRÉE.
Her background in event curation and consulting along with her experience writing for digital wellness company, Well+Good, inspired her to launch a platform that makes hosting easy, accessible, and fun for a new generation.

She is the 2022 winner of Nestle’s Big Ideas Better World Innovation competition and grant and a fellow of Startup Leadership Program’s 2023 cohort.

Saanya is a graduate of NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a concentration in mixed-media storytelling.

Born in Switzerland to South Asian parents, and having traveled to over 65 countries in her 28 years, she has always been fascinated by the culture, tradition, and uniting nature of food and how a meal, whether shared with a stranger or a friend, has the ability to connect us across language barriers and ideological differences, tell a story, invite a level of vulnerability and openness that might otherwise be hidden, and bring us closer to our histories, roots, and communities.

Moral of the story? She’s a nosy third culture kid who loves food and seeks connection…

SOIRÉE is a platform dedicated to simplifying the stress of hosting—because it really shouldn’t be this hard.

Through our content, communities, and consulting services, we help Gen Z build more intentional communities by marrying the formerly inaccessible information around hosting and elegant event leadership with short-form, humorous, multimedia storytelling.

SOIRÉE’s unique approach prioritizes authenticity, playfulness, and intentionality over pretentiousness or perception, keeping in mind the space, time, and financial parameters of Gen Z and providing creative solutions. By leveraging various mediums such as video tutorials, interactive calendars, cheat sheets, and TLDR guides, SOIRÉE breaks down the complexities of event planning into easily digestible and visually captivating formats. This not only makes hosting more accessible to a wider audience but also takes the anxiety out of the process.

The SOIRÉE Supper Club is a community for culinary and culture enthusiasts to meet, mingle, and connect over common interests and a shared meal. We craft unique gastronomic, design, and stylistic experiences around the city, inviting guests to to join us for everything from themed events and costume parties to craft nights, cooking lessons, wine pairings, and more, often working with our favorite brands (Brooklinen, Tiny Fish Co, Elta MD, Michel et Augustine, Swoveralls, etc.) to bring these activations to life.

Rooted in the belief that the truest connections are formed through playfulness and shared activity-based experiences, the goal is to “help people find their people.”

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I have always had a debilitating fear of failure, and unfortunately failing fast and failing often is a massive part of the entrepreneurial journey. The first year of building SOIRÉE was a lot of learning, unlearning, and moving slowly—trying to perfect every little thing before putting it out into the world. It wasn’t until realizing that I needed to pivot and then pivot again and humbled myself with the fact that my initial value proposition didn’t solve a big enough problem that I finally learned the create-try-iterate-try again dance.

I wrote three essays on the process of learning to start over, learning to fail, and learning to pivot that I’m linking below:

https://justsoiree.substack.com/p/the-non-art-of-taking-a-deep-breath

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/non-art-starting-over-justsoir%2525C3%2525A9e/?trackingId=YtTnwBdegmojUGr%2FWnBbrA%3D%3D

https://justsoiree.substack.com/p/the-non-art-of-wanting-to-scream

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Social media and word of mouth have been the most helpful sources of new users, clients, followers, and subscribers.

If I’m being completely honest, growing on social media has been difficult and slow moving. It can be discouraging to see similar start ups go viral in a day, while I continue to create and try towards smaller milestones. That said, excitingly, two years of diligent content creation has really started to pay off in the past few weeks. The biggest learning has been the power of collaboration. Growth together. I’ve loved reaching out to food and beverage brands, fashion and beauty companies, and other community building startups to work together on either creating content or hosting an event that helps further both of our marketing goals.

Most recently, I’ve partnered with Matchbox, a matchmaking software that uses relationship science to help you find your most compatible match at any event to host a 40 person Italian Riviera themed picnic in Central Park. It was a great success and the reel from the event has already garnered over one million views and helped hundreds of others discover SOIRÉE.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.justsoiree.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/justsoiree/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saanya-ali-11aba492/

Image Credits

Photos by Kaitlyn Jackson