Meeting other single people is tough.

Ready-Set-Date wants to make it a little bit easier  and more fun, too.

It’s the brainchild of sisters Vicky Leitnaker of Olathe and Rebecca Price of Lawrence, who recently brought the increasingly popular trend of “speed dating” to Lawrence-area singles.

The concept is simple. A roughly equal number of men and women pay $30 to attend a social event hosted by the business at a Lawrence restaurant or bar. Men and women are paired off at tables, and the clock starts ticking.

Each couple has seven minutes to get to know each other, asking questions that can range from superficial to silly  whatever participants need to do to get a sense of their “date.”

When the seven minutes are up, Leitnaker or Price blow a whistle, and the conversation’s over.

Each person takes a few minutes to make a few notes and mark down on individual scorecards who they’d be interested in getting to know better and who they wouldn’t.

Then participants are paired up again, and a fresh round of seven-minute conversations begin.

Ready-Set-Date guarantees that each participant will meet at least seven people before the event is through.

At the end of the gathering, people turn in their scorecards.

Leitnaker and Price tabulate the results. If there are any matches indicating mutual interest between two people, the sisters will call or e-mail each person with contact information so the two can get in touch on their own. Typically, that means e-mail addresses are swapped.

After that, Ready-Set-Date participants are on their own.

“It feels like a necessary service. Once you’re out of college, it’s just so hard to find someone single. It’s not that easy. But when you come to these events, you know everyone is looking  that’s why they’re here,” Leitnaker said.

Go with the flow

Since Ready-Set-Date made its debut Sept. 9 with a gathering aimed at people in their mid-30s to mid-40s at Raoul’s Velvet Room, 815 N.H., it appears to be a hit with area singles.

Like Pete Williams, 45, an industrial engineer from Lawrence who attended a recent event at Molly McGee’s, 2429 Iowa.

“When I first came here (to the Ready-Set-Date event), I had to force myself to walk through the doors. The way I look at it, everyone else is in the same boat as you are, and you have nothing to lose. It opens up a wider range of possibilities,” he said.

Williams gave a good review of his first experience with speed dating.

“Over all, it went really well. Everyone makes everyone else feel comfortable, and I’d recommend it to other people. I just talked to 11 women, and I’m exhausted. I was ready for it to be over.”

Rick Nuñez, 44, a car sales manager from Lawrence, tried participating in a recent Ready-Set-Date event because it sounded interesting and different.

He was pleased with the results.

“It’s a good way to meet some people in a more comfortable setting, a little more of a relaxed atmosphere. I think it’s well done, and I would recommend it. It’s a good way for a mature person to meet a person of the opposite sex without going to the bar scene,” Nuñez said.

“The time went by really fast. We just asked each other normal, general questions.”

Suzanne Fletcher, a Lawrence woman in her 40s who works at Hallmark Cards, Inc., attended a Ready-Set-Date gathering Sept. 29 at Molly McGee’s.

Early in the evening, she appeared to be having a good time.

“It appeals to me that I’m not with people that long, so you don’t feel stuck. Out of three dates so far, I’ve got two men down (on her scorecard). Whether they want to see me again, that’s another story,” Fletcher said, laughing.

How were her dates going?

“The men have pretty much taken hold, and I just go with the flow. They ask kind of typical questions: ‘Tell me about yourself?’ or ‘Where do you work?’ Then they start talking about themselves.”

Fletcher was doing the Ready-Set-Date event as sort of an experiment.

“I have some women friends who are waiting for me to get through it and tell them how it went. I’d like them to do it, too,” she said.

Romance or friendships

There have been lots of matches made so far at Ready-Set-Date events, where a number of participants have expressed mutual interest in meeting each other again.

It’s not always the case for everybody, though.

Sometimes affections go unrequited, and the sense that there’s good chemistry in the air is a one-way perception.

“That’s the hardest thing for us, scoring the cards at the end of the night. We’ve met all these people, and we want everybody to walk away from this experience happy. But we don’t always get what we want in life,” Price said.

The upside is that people can come back again  maybe an interesting match will be made with someone at the next Ready-Set-Date gathering.

And, even if you don’t meet your soul mate, you still might strike up a friendship or two with a person you’d to work out with, share a cup of coffee or see a good movie.

For most people, it turns out to be a fun experience.

“One women came in to an event, and the first thing she said was, ‘I’ve been sitting in my car for 20 minutes, working up the courage to come in,'” Leitnaker said.

“But once she got started (on dates), she had a great night. You could see it on her face.”