The mechanics of a night out

Not date ideas — there are ten thousand of those. These are the questions the ideas articles skip, because answering them takes numbers. Dinner, drinks and dessert is 3 hours 40 minutes sitting down before anyone has walked anywhere. 9pm is the busiest hour in a bar, which is a reason to arrive at 8pm. And two stops further apart than a short walk stop feeling like one evening.

How long a date actually takesDinner is ninety-five minutes, not sixty. Where the evening really goes.What time to actually show upRestaurants peak at seven, bars at nine — and the day matters more than the hour.How far apart your stops should beA radius is a circle around you, not between your stops. Why each hop is capped on its own.Planning a first dateWhy a busy room is a safety signal, and why expensive reads as pressure.

Short answers

How long should a date last?
A two-stop night is about three hours of sitting down plus travel; a three-stop night is closer to four. Our planner schedules a sit-down dinner at 95 minutes, drinks at 85 to 90, and dessert at 40. Two good stops beats three rushed ones.
What time should you go to a bar?
Bars peak around 9pm and are still full at 10. Arriving an hour before the peak gets you a seat in a room that fills up around you, which is usually the evening people actually want.
How far apart should date stops be?
Closer than the search radius suggests. A radius is a circle around you, not around your first stop, so two places at opposite edges of a five mile search are ten miles apart from each other. Our planner limits each transfer separately: walking, it is never more than a mile, which is about a ten minute walk. Getting back in a car between stops ends the evening's momentum.
Should a first date be expensive?
No. An expensive first date raises the stakes of an evening whose job is to be low-stakes, and makes leaving early feel rude. Our planner caps a first date at two dollar signs, which is a dinner around $25 to $40 a head before tip.
Is a busy restaurant bad for a first date?
The opposite. A place with people in it and reviews behind it is public, staffed and easy to leave, which matters to both people. It is the one occasion where we weight review volume up and target a moderate crowd rather than a quiet one.

Where these numbers come from, and what they cannot tell you: how it works.