Safety Guidelines

Version 1.0 · Last updated: 10 August 2026

What we do, what we cannot do, and what helps.

This is not a list of ways to avoid being harmed. If something happens to you, it is because someone chose to do it — not because you missed a tip on this page. We have written this because practical information is useful, and because you are entitled to know exactly what we do and do not do.

1. What we do

• Every Experience is in a public, licensed or staffed venue. We do not send Groups to private homes, and we do not arrange one-to-one meetings.
• We choose the venue and we book it. You are not meeting a stranger at a place a stranger chose.
• You are never matched alone. Groups are four to six women. If a Group drops below three, we cancel and refund rather than let it go ahead.
• The address comes through the app, from us, and never through a private message.
• We check in afterwards, and we read the replies.
• Every report is read by a person, within 24 hours.
• We will suspend an account before we finish investigating if a member may be at risk.

2. What we do not do

• We do not run criminal record checks or background checks on members. No consumer app in this category does, and any that implies otherwise is overstating it. The checks we do run are listed at cherie.social/verification.
• We cannot verify everything a member tells us about her job, her life or her intentions.
• We do not supervise Experiences. Nobody from Chérie is at the table.
• We do not control what happens after — in the group chat, on other apps, or in person.

We would rather tell you this plainly than let you assume otherwise.

3. Before you go

Tell one person

Where you are going, who you are going with, and roughly when you expect to be home. One text to one friend. This is the single most useful thing on this page.

Share your live location

Both iPhone and Android will share your location with a chosen contact for a set number of hours. Set it for slightly longer than you think you need.

Get the details from the app, not from anyone

The venue, the time and the table come from us, in the app. If a member messages you a different address, or asks you to meet somewhere else first, do not go — tell us. We will never change a venue by private message.

Arrive and leave independently

Do not arrange to be picked up by someone you have not met. Make your own way there.

Sort your way home before you go out

Know the last train, or have the app for a licensed cab, or set aside the money. Deciding at eleven at night, tired, is how people end up accepting a lift they did not want.

Charge your phone

And consider a small power bank. A dead phone at midnight is a genuine safety problem, not an inconvenience.

4. While you are there

Ask for Angela

If you feel unsafe, uncomfortable or threatened in a licensed venue in the UK, go to the bar and ask a member of staff for “Angela”.

It is a recognised code phrase. Trained staff will understand that you need help without you having to explain, and will discreetly take you somewhere safe, reunite you with a friend, put you in a taxi, or ask the person causing the problem to leave.

It is used across bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants in London and beyond, and posters are usually inside the toilet cubicles. You do not have to justify it to anyone.

Your drink

Watch it being poured if you can. Keep it with you — take it to the toilet rather than leave it. If you lose sight of it, leave it and get another. Nobody at a Chérie table will think anything of it.

Trust the feeling

You do not need evidence and you do not need to be able to explain it. If something is off, act on it. Being wrong costs you an evening. Being right and ignoring it costs more.

Keep some things to yourself

First names are enough for a first Experience. There is no need to give your surname, your street, your building, your employer’s address, your children’s school, or anything financial. Share more when you know someone, not because a question was asked.

If someone else looks uncomfortable

Ask her if she wants to get some air. Suggest you both walk to the station. Change the subject away from whatever it is. You do not need to confront anyone to help — just give her somewhere to go.

Leave whenever you want

Again, because it bears repeating: no reason, no notice, no consequence. “I have got an early start” is a complete sentence. So is leaving without one.

5. Getting home

• Book before you leave the venue, not on the pavement outside.
• Check the plate, the make and the driver’s name against the app before you get in. If any of it is wrong, do not get in.
• Sit in the back, and share your journey with a contact through the app.
• Use a licensed cab. In London, a black taxi can be hailed; a private hire car must be booked in advance and cannot legally pick you up off the street.
• Do not accept a lift from someone you met that evening, however nice she seemed and however much easier it would be.
• Text your person when you are home.

6. Afterwards

The group chat

Reply or do not. There is no obligation to keep talking to a Group that did not click, and no obligation to explain why you went quiet.

If someone will not leave you alone

Block her — in Chérie, and on whatever else she is using. Then report it to us. We will act even if the contact happened on another platform, because it started here.

Never send money

Not a loan, not a deposit, not an investment, not to help with an emergency. Not to someone you met three weeks ago and like enormously. This is the most common way people are defrauded by someone they met socially, and it works precisely because the friendship is real to you.

Save the evidence

If something has gone wrong, screenshot it before you block. Keep messages, times and names. It makes what we can do for you much stronger.

7. Spiking

It is worth knowing the signs, because the whole point of spiking is that it does not feel like being drunk.

Report it to us afterwards, and to the police on 101, or 999 at the time. Reporting it also protects whoever is in that venue next week.

8. If something has happened

It was not your fault. Not because of what you wore, what you drank, what you said, who you left with, or which tips on this page you did or did not follow.

Tell us

Email hello@cherie.social or report in the app. You can tell us as much or as little as you want. We will:

• read it within 24 hours, and act the same day if there is a risk to anyone;
• make sure you are never matched with that person again;
• preserve the records rather than let them be deleted;
• take action on the account, up to permanent removal;
• support a police report if you want to make one, including providing what we hold; and
• never require you to make a police report as a condition of us acting.

Tell the police, if you want to

That is your decision and yours alone. Nobody at Chérie will pressure you either way.

9. Numbers worth having

We keep a fuller list of support services, including local ones, at cherie.social/support.

10. Practical bits

• Allergies. We tell the Venue when we book, but always check directly with the staff before you eat. We do not prepare the food.
• Access. If a Venue is not step-free we say so on the listing. Tell us your requirements and we will match around them.
• The bill. Where you pay the Venue directly, agree how you are splitting it early rather than at the end.
• Photos. Ask before you take one, and ask again before you post it. Some women have very good reasons for not appearing online, and they should not have to explain them.

If anything on this page does not match what you experienced with us, we want to know. hello@cherie.social — it comes to us, and we read all of it.