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# It’s chicken soup for the lonely souls
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/its-chicken-soup-for-the-lonely-souls/
- Published: 2006-04-03T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T17:28:56.000Z
- Author: Kevin Herrera
- Tags: Business, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Site for workaholics serves afternoon delights*

CITYWIDE — Sometimes working around the clock, paying off the Beemer and building a respectable nest egg can leave an upwardly mobile professional hungry for more. Fear not, Charles Tran never wants you to have to eat lunch alone again.

In January, he quit his job and has been helping people take a bite out of life ever since.

Tran is not a lunch companion for hire, but rather the creator of a new Southern California-based online community called Lunch- Spark (www.lunchspark.com), which helps workaholics reach out to likeminded individuals to see if they’d like to grab a bite to eat — and possibly more.

A quick search for Tran’s Web site will soon have respondents creating a brief profile that includes a picture, a short blurb of information, likes and dislikes, and a list of three favorite restaurants. Once that’s completed, the search for other lonely professionals with similar tastes in food, and life, begins in earnest.

“It’s really about getting people to meet for lunch, discover new foods and new people,” said Tran, 25, who built the site after watching too many people eat alone at lunchtime. “Often, I would have meetings during lunch and would miss out on eating with the regular lunch crew, so I would run to grab some fast food or something, and every time I went into a restaurant I saw at least half the tables with just one person sitting by themselves, looking kind of depressed.

“As kids, there wouldn’t be a problem of just hopping in and joining another table, but as adults there is this barrier.”

After receiving a job promotion, loan specialist and LunchSpark member Dani Birch had to relocate to Laguna Hills. Her only option for lunch was eating with co-workers who often wanted to talk shop.

> “It’s nice to build a network of people who can actually become friends outside of work,” — she said

To her surprise Birch discovered LunchSpark, and within five minutes of creating her profile, she said she met a companion who worked less than five minutes away. The two exchanged e-mails and a few phone calls before deciding to meet at a Vietnamese restaurant near their offices. The two hit it off and plan to get together again for lunch.

Birch said she has also met four other potential lunch mates.

However, meeting a stranger can be dangerous. The FBI recently released a bulletin reminding people to be careful when they join free, Internet communities like LunchSpark and Santa Monica-based MySpace, which has come under fire from police and child advocates who have seen pedophiles use the sites to locate potential victims. Some have tried to arrange meeting with underage girls by using the site.

Authorities warn those who join these sites to not use their real names or give personal information, including where you work.

Tran said members who do not meet criteria set by those they are trying to contact are not allowed to send private messages, but still need to use discretion when it comes to how much information they want to post.

Tran, who said he has not heard from any users about bad experiences and hopes more people will join the site, claims he isn’t making any money on it and is even offering restaurants free advertising.

“I just did this for fun,” he said. “My other job was building financial applications, and that can be kind of numbing, so I decided to take a year off and build stuff I like. My friends think I’m crazy to do this, but I don’t care about the money. I’ll just get another job.”

As for Santa Monica, Tran thinks the city is a great place for LunchSpark to grow.

“You have so many businesses in a small area with so many great places to eat, it seems like a perfect fit,” he said. “All you have to do is just go online.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 3, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/040306.pdf?ref=smdp.com)