Meet Friend Cult, a Supper Club-Meets-Masonic Lodge Meeting

At Friend Cult, a Supper Club Meets a Masonic Lodge

A NIGHT WITH FRIEND CULT, THE MASON-CODED SOCIAL CLUB FOR THE WORK-FROM-HOME SET.

By Ian A. Stewart

Next to the sign-in sheet, there’s a giant papier-mâché head of Mithras, the Roman god of rebirth, a candle burning inside its roaring mouth. A short red-velvet cord is laid out nearby, to be worn around the neck by “acolytes.” A sign spells out the rules of engagement: “Kill the stranger. Choose good gods. Conjure new culture.”

This isn’t some centuries-old secret society, though. It’s Friend Cult, a buzzy new group that’s putting a modern spin on an age-old tradition, or maybe an old-fashioned spin on a recent phenomenon.

Either way, it’s got a definite whiff of Masonry to it.

So what is it? Much like Freemasonry, Friend Cult is both simple and a challenge to explain. The brainchild of Courtney Owyang and Matt Goss, both former research and development professionals who came up with the concept during the pandemic, Friend Cult is perhaps better described by what it isn’t.

It’s not a supper club, its founders say, although the gatherings do revolve around a shared meal. It’s not quite a social club, either. It’s not a fraternal organization, although it borrows liberally from their aesthetics. And, just to make clear: It’s not a cult, despite the name.

Rather, Friend Cult is a weekly meetup and dinner party with a mystical veneer—something like a cousin to a Masonic table lodge.

The night I attended, the gathering included about 20 people, mostly thirtysomething artists and professionals from the Bay Area, many of whom had been intrigued by the neon-green flyers for the group posted around Lake Merritt. As a rule, members were friendly and chatty, ready and eager to strike up conversations about topics from the esoteric to, well, the topical.

According to Owyang and Goss, the idea for Friend Cult came from a COVID-era urge to simply get out and socialize, only to find that people had either retreated into their digital lives or become impossibly over-scheduled. At the same time, loneliness has grown into what’s been described as a public health crisis. “I think we realized that there was a massive gap in American society—like our culture was broken,” Goss says. “As researchers, we looked at this and said this was a problem we want to solve.”

Friend Cult's branding invokes esoteric and vaguely mystical symbology. — Friend Cult’s branding invokes esoteric and vaguely mystical symbology.

That led them to launch a recurring dinner party with friends and, increasingly, friends of friends, first at their home and later at a rented space in downtown Oakland. In 2024, the pair quit their jobs to focus full-time on Friend Cult, using their professional background and expertise to refine the group’s structure. Members pay a flexible monthly “tithe” to join, invite friends, and be part of an ongoing Slack channel.

It’s not the only new-school group offering a remedy to the modern social malaise, as all manner of co-working groups, supper clubs, and sports leagues have sprung up in recent years to entice work-from-homers back out into the world. Friend Cult’s playful mystical motif is its main differentiator. Says Goss, “I’d always had a fascination with the occult and of course the Freemasons,” whose model of ritualistic initiation appealed to him. “There was also an understanding that if we’re trying to introduce this kind of culture, then we’d need to attract people who are open to that kind of thing.”

In the end, the Friend Cult dinner wasn’t quite a Masonic lodge meeting. The pomp and esoterica were presented mostly tongue in cheek, a jumping-off point for members to get an open-minded style of conversation going.

But still, the food was good and company great. And as all Masons know, it’s that last part that’s the real secret of the society.

Above: Members of Friend Cult at their downtown Oakland meeting spot.