Hudson County Locals Discover New Ways to Make Friends with Hangout App Designed by a Jersey City Resident 

Hudson County locals are “bunching” together with this free hangout app called Bunch. Started in January 2025 as a dining club, the intention of the app is to allow locals to set up meets and attend them to create real connections with people around them. Currently, it has over 3600 members from Jersey City, Hoboken, and other parts of North Jersey. 

Aleksandra Czajka, a local Jersey City resident, is the founder and lead developer of Bunch. As a software engineer who has built startups for others for the past fifteen years, she wanted to find a way to launch an app that could help people socialize. “I noticed what demand there was for socializing,” Czajka said, “many people tell me ‘I’ve been looking for this exact thing!’” Czajka first came up with this idea during 2022 when she went to a large corporate event for her work. “I met 50+ people and had great conversations with them. We talked for ten minutes, exchanged numbers, had a great connection, but the next day when I reached out to these people, I never got a response back.” Czajka saw how these large-scale events, combined with the current loneliness epidemic, never resulted in a real connection. “We want people to meet up for the small things, such as getting a coffee together,” Czajka explained. “It’s about meeting people with the purpose of hanging out with them next time.” The app has now expanded to become a widely used meeting app, a more local and directional alternative to Whatsapp and Facebook.

Czajka’s favorite “bunch” was a white water rafting trip she organized when the app had just started. “It was crazy because it was with people I already knew, but suddenly one person had to leave and another person joined using the app’s features,” Czajka explained. “It was amazing seeing someone from the community, a true stranger, come and raft with us!” 

What attracts many locals to the app is its reliability. Because attendance is a key factor of the hangouts, users can track who RSVPs and who cancels. Users can also block certain persons or create hangouts with specific age and gender constraints. The app also has special anti-bot parameters to make sure every user is a real person. The most popular hangouts in the app are coworking socials, dinners, and board game nights. During the summer, kayaking, hiking, volleyball, and long distance trips are also popular in the app. Even though the app was not designed for large events, many locals organize event gatherings so that they can go to these large community events together. These include the All About Downtown Festival and the Pizza Fest in Jersey City. 

Today, the app is currently working on how to make the app available for teenagers and young adults to improve its accessibility.