What is a safari supper?
A safari supper is a dinner party that goes on a journey. Instead of everyone sitting at one table all night, each course is eaten at a different neighbour's home — so you dine with a different group at every stop and meet far more of your street than a single dinner ever could. In the US it's called a progressive dinner.
How a safari supper works
A group of households agree to host one course each. On the night, everyone starts with their first course at one home, then “progresses” to another house for the next course, and another for the one after — usually walking, since a safari supper is often a single street or a cluster of nearby homes. The clever part is the mixing: the groups are shuffled at each course, so you share your evening with as many different neighbours as possible and, ideally, never sit with the same household twice.
A typical evening
- Welcome drinks (optional) — everyone together, to kick things off.
- Starter — split into small groups, each at a different host's home.
- Main course — everyone moves on and re-mixes at new houses with new people.
- Dessert — one more move, one more fresh group.
- Nightcap (optional) — the whole group reunites at one house to round off the night.
Where does it come from?
The moving-dinner idea has been around for decades and goes by several names — safari supper, progressive dinner, safari dinner, roving supper. It became especially popular in rural Britain as a community and charity fundraiser: a fun, low-cost way for a village or street to get everyone mingling. The appeal is the same everywhere — it turns a dinner party into an event, and turns neighbours into friends.
For a fuller history, see the Wikipedia entry on progressive dinners.
The one hard part
Deciding who goes to which house for each course is the bit organisers dread — you want everyone seated, one host per course, nobody double-booked, and, ideally, no two households paired together twice. Done by hand it's a genuine puzzle (people have spent whole evenings on it and still ended up with clashes). That's exactly what this site does for you — automatically, in seconds.
Fancy running one?
Enter your street and a date, share the link, and Safari Supper works out the whole who-goes-where for you. It's free to use.
Plan your safari supper — freeNew to it? How to plan a safari supper →
Common questions
- What is a safari supper?
- A safari supper is a dinner party spread across several homes: guests eat each course at a different host's house — typically starter at one, main at another, dessert at a third — mixing with a different group at each stop. In the US and elsewhere it's known as a progressive dinner.
- What's the difference between a safari supper and a progressive dinner?
- None, really — they're two names for the same thing. 'Safari supper' is the common British term (often for village or street fundraisers); 'progressive dinner' is the American term. Both mean a meal where each course is hosted at a different home.
- How many houses and courses does a safari supper have?
- Three is the classic — starter, main and dessert, one host per course — but it's flexible. Some add a welcome drinks stop, a fish course or a nightcap. The key idea is that guests move between homes and meet new people at each one.
- How many people do you need for a safari supper?
- It works from about three or four households up to a whole street of twenty or more. The more households, the more mixing — and the trickier it is to work out who goes where without anyone meeting the same people twice.