New Exclusive Dating App The Lox Club Debuts as the Jewish Raya

The Lox Club officially launched this fall, but the buzz about it has been growing since the beginning of the year, with comparisons to exclusive dating app Raya.

The new members-only app accepts applications from users to join, and there’s currently thousands of people on the waiting list over the course of a couple of months, according to Jewish Insider. The company’s target market is Jewish singles looking for a different, more curated experience from a mainstream app like Tinder, but you can join even if you’re not Jewish. The tagline says the app is: “for Jews with ridiculously high standards.”

The app is similar to Raya in that you can’t just sign up, you have to be accepted. However, unlike Raya, acceptance to the club isn’t dependent on how many Instagram followers you have, (though users are required to link to their Instagram page when they join), or what you do for a living, but something more intangible - what kind of values you hold.

“We’re very intentional about reading every single application,” Founder Austin Kevitch told Jewish Insider. The company currently has 10,000 members and the number is doubling every week. So far, The Lox Club has accepted only 20 percent of its applicants, according to Jewish Insider.

“We’re not looking specifically for status or who you’d want to invite to a fancy dinner party,” Kevitch told Vogue, “we’re looking for people who you’d bump into at a house party and end up talking with in a corner for hours.”

The experience on the app is a bit different, too. Instead of the more traditional sign-up process where a user fills out profile information or is presented with a few potential matches, The Lox Club first offers a story of a couple who founded a speakeasy in Prohibition-era New York City which inspired the idea for the app (based on Kevitch’s own grandparents’ history). This is followed by an invitation to apply.  

The application asks for “a brief career history and future ambitions,” so there is a bit of Raya influence in the process. However, in the style of OkCupid, the app asks users to share quirky information too, such as naming the most neurotic thing about themselves or providing their bar/ bat mitzvah themes. 

The Lox Club charges a membership fee of $8 per month for an annual subscription, $60 for six months, and $36 for 3 months. The app is open to all sexualities and offers 64 options under “gender” information.  

As for plans in 2021, Kevitch told Jewish Insider that he’s hoping to partner with delis and speakeasies to bring people on the app together in person, after the pandemic is under control. He is also planning to create a physical club for members, similar to Soho House.