Coffee Meets Bagel Launches Major Redesign as Gen Z Moves Beyond Swipe Culture

There’s reinvention in the air in the dating industry. Coffee Meets Bagel unveils its updated platform at the same time as Tinder, with each platform sending a similar message: Gen Z daters may want to meet IRL, but that doesn’t mean platforms can’t play a crucial role in their meet-cute. 

Coffee Meets Bagel’s updates “goes beyond a cosmetic redesign,” according to the app. Yes, AI is involved (“Behind every daily match is a completely rebuilt recommendation engine,” CMB says). But users can expect an app experience that’s less about the swipe and more about skill-building and intentionality. 

How does CMB know what modern daters want? They asked. “Every update in CMB WW 2.0 has been informed by real feedback from our community, because the people using the app should shape its future,” CMB says in its press release announcing the redesign. 

And listening to the public seems to be paying off for CMB. The app started rolling out its new UI in June, and the stats speak for themselves: 

The average time a user spends reading a profile has increased by 21%, and messages sent with likes have increased by approximately 30%. These stats say a lot more about CMB’s redesign than you might think. 

“This redesign marks an exciting new chapter for us: one that puts control back in the hands of daters.” -Shn Juay, CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel Worldwide

Young daters aren’t interested in investing their time in profiles or messages unless they believe the experience will genuinely move them closer to what they’re looking for. 

The fact that users are paying more attention to these details means that CMB has successfully introduced value to the user — an increasingly rare achievement in an industry dominated by dating fatigue. 

What Does ‘User Control’ Mean at Coffee Meets Bagel?

“This redesign marks an exciting new chapter for us: one that puts control back in the hands of daters,” said Shn Juay, CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel Worldwide. This is a lofty goal, but also a vague one. What does it mean for a user to have “control” in an industry that’s increasingly dependent on AI automation? 

For some modern users, the definition of “control” automatically includes added friction in the form of long-form profile creation and personal messaging. You do all the thinking; the platform merely provides a sleek-looking repository of profiles. But for others, control isn’t about added effort on the app, but about what happens after you connect.

For CMB, control doesn’t seem to be about the app itself, but the user’s own personal dating habits and behaviors. This lines up with what young daters continuously want: The power to use their voice — to have the ultimate say — while being supported by the app. 

For Juay, a Gen Z-coded app experience “starts with encouraging better dating habits, enabling more thoughtful conversations, and making it easier for people to take connections beyond the screen and into real life.”

Yes, one of the new AI innovations is a “personalized message composer” that generates conversation starters. But CMB makes it clear that this functionality is built to address a common pain point — conversation fatigue — while making the AI’s suggestions “editable”, preserving the user’s control. 

How Has Coffee Meets Bagel Transformed Itself for IRL Dating?

Dating platforms that can’t accept Gen Z’s penchant for IRL meet-cutes will inevitably get left behind. CMB doesn’t want to end up in a dust bin, which is why the app has redesigned not only its UI, but its role in the dating process. 

There was a time when we centered our dating lives around apps, but those days are gone. Perhaps the biggest mistake a platform can make right now is trying to be the “core” matchmaker for the user. A far more valuable position for a platform is, perhaps surprisingly, as a supporting act. 

After all, Gen Z doesn’t necessarily want to offload the dating experience to an app — but they do want support, advice, and skill-building tools. 

Gen Z doesn’t necessarily want to offload the dating experience to an app — but they do want support, advice, and skill-building tools.

This is why CMB is focusing so much not only on the user’s own dating skills, but on getting them into IRL settings as quickly as possible with its new Real Dates feature. “The feature directly tackles one of modern dating’s biggest drop-off points: the gap between matching and actually meeting offline,” CMB said. 

Daters of all ages lament the awkwardness of the “Are we taking this off the apps?” moment. For me, this moment’s stickiness doesn’t come from awkwardness, but from pressure: to be ready to meet, and to be as sparkling IRL as I try to be online. 

“At its core, CMB WW 2.0 is a pushback against the disposable dating era and a call to return to more intentional, serious dating.” -Coffee Meets Bagel

This is not to mention the fear of being duped, or scammed, or ghosted, or, most likely, to survive all of these stages only to realize there’s zero in-person chemistry. 

Real Dates attempts to make this moment worth both users’ while. “Real Dates helps matches move from chatting to meeting in real life by surfacing dating-style preferences and suggesting activities that align with how daters like to date,” CMB explains. 

A ‘Quality over Quantity’ Renaissance is Unfolding in the Dating Industry 

CMB’s UI shift follows what is quickly becoming a familiar theme: Platforms prioritizing the quality of matches more than the quantity. 

“At its core, CMB WW 2.0 is a pushback against the disposable dating era and a call to return to more intentional, serious dating,” CMB says in the press release. To be fair, Coffee Meets Bagel has historically eschewed Tinder’s brand of thumb-numbing profile swipes. 

“At CMB, we’ve always believed that finding a meaningful relationship isn’t a numbers game.” -Coffee Meets Bagel

“We’ve taken a different path since the beginning,” the company said on LinkedIn. “At CMB, we’ve always believed that finding a meaningful relationship isn’t a numbers game.” But the numbers do matter, especially when each platform must compete for attention in an industry that seems to get smaller and smaller by the minute. 

But it’s CMB’s dedication to quality over quantity — and its ability to provide real value, according to the app’s improved engagement stats — that gives CMB a strong foothold in the industry. 

It may not have Tinder’s scale, but it has something arguably more important: an understanding of what young daters want, and the humility to recognize that daters don’t want dating apps to be the center of their love lives.