Why Breakfast Dates Are So Much Better Than Dinner Dates

croissant breakfast sandwich
Laura Hayes/Thrillist
Laura Hayes/Thrillist

Sometimes, you go on a date and the person you're meeting ends up eight years older than their dating profile picture suggests and missing teeth. But rather than bail (the reservation was hard to secure!), you end up drinking six White Russians to cope and then make out with this toothless hack in a booth before going back to their sister's basement, where they live, to do decidedly unsexy sexy stuff. It doesn't have to be this way.

Eating breakfast food on a date typically happens the morning after a dinner-and-drinks date, which is super uncomfortable. So here's why you should rip off that BAND-AID and just make your earliest interaction with a new person as awkward as possible right off the bat.

1. You're not drinking so you won't have cloudy judgment

Which means you likely won't end up sleeping with that no-teeth troll you just stuck the date out with because you had nothing better to do since you're in that really weird time between finishing one series before starting a new one. You'll be more clear-headed and equipped to tell if you actually like this person, like, with real feelings and not your liquor brain.

donut
Chona Kasinger/Thrillist

2. You'll know what they look like when you're sober!

But also, it's kind of a double-edged sword because they'll know what you look like when they're sober. Unless they're blind.

3. Breakfast food is easy to love

Going to a restaurant for dinner is a whole to-do. Just choosing a venue you both agree on is a task, and once you're there, you're locked in for multiple, often confusing courses with names like sea buckthorn juice-marinated fermented squab that you have to clandestinely Google under the table lest you look ignorant. Plus, each menu item will have you overthinking how you look while eating. Basically, you're fucked if you get salad -- you will most definitely have green stuff in your teeth all the way through to dessert. Also, are you guys going to get dessert?? There are too many variables here.

But breakfast dates cut out the restaurant politicking because everyone likes at least one morning food, and they're familiar, simple, and not usually green. Waffles, eggs, breakfast sandwiches, cereal, a goddang croissant! Breakfast foods are the best. It will be easy to find something you can both get down on, even if it's just a cup of coffee.

breakfast tacos
Perry Santachote/Thrillist

4. There's a built-in time cap

In opposition to the traditional "drinks" format -- which can go on indefinitely -- you both will (presumably) have to go to work at some point that morning. It's the perfect excuse to leave if your date turns out to be an unsavory character who still gets high at O.A.R. concerts every summer. If you don't have work to go to, however, there are any number of things you could say to cut the conversation short, such as you have to feed your dog, you left your oven on, or you have to go pick up your twin daughters from their slag of a mother's house. Also, definitely do this during the workweek. Wasting a weekend on someone new is a garbage idea.

5. A breakfast date is less risky

If you go on a date straight from work, you're probably going to bring a whole lot of baggage with you. Work sucks! You'll probably need a drink or three to take the edge off the day. Inevitably you'll end up complaining about that overpaid moron Don from sales the whole time, which is not a good look. But with a breakfast date, you'll be fresh off a good night's sleep and in good shape to keep the day's imminent anxiety from boiling up for at least the hour it takes to decide if you care to see someone again.

Eggs benedict
Laura Hayes/Thrillist

6. Breakfast dates are mad cheap… or cheaper than dinner and cocktails at least

... Unless you go to one of those bougie-AF coffee shops where an artisanal Pop-Tart is, like, $9 and then you eat three of them. But that's on you, man.

7. They afford you the time to go on two dates in one day

One in the morning, and one at night -- each with a different person!! Tight.

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Carrie Dennis is a Food & Drink editor for Thrillist. Her ideal breakfast food is toast. Her ideal date is eating toast. Follow her on Twitter @CarrrieDennnis.