🔴 "Excuse me, are you two a couple?"

Welcome back to Self-Timer — a series featuring one creator’s greatest hits, hardest lessons, and growth strategies.

The man-on-the-street video is everywhere in New York City right now, most of it running on comedy and hot takes. Meet Cutes NYC took the same move — walking up to strangers with a camera — and aimed it at something sincere: the love stories of New York, romantic and platonic.

Their audience has grown past 6 million, with a published book and a photobooth in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

In this issue:

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

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It’s likely you’ve scrolled by or landed on a video on Instagram or TikTok that starts with that hook.

Meet Cutes NYC is made up of three friends from New York who started walking up to couples on the street and asking them how they met. Since February 2023, they’ve grown into a community of over 6 million followers across platforms, a published book, a photobooth in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and an entire collection of memorable love stories.

Beyond the flagship, they've spun the format into a universe of accounts — Meet Cutes London and Besties NYC, the latter built around friendship rather than romance — and brought on a team to run it: Kat as the voice of London, Seth as the voice of Besties, plus an editor and a creative associate.

A typical week means hitting the streets four or five days, two to five hours at a stretch. Some days, a great story turns up in the first twenty minutes; other days, they'll approach close to a hundred people before a couple is willing to share something real.

Follow Meet Cutes NYC on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook.

The answers below have been edited for tone and clarity. Bolding and italics our own.

Meet Cutes NYC: For the first six months, we posted every single day without fail. Jeremy and I would run out on our lunch breaks just to get a video, no matter what. We wanted our audience to have something daily — something that hit their feed and made their day a little better. Most days, it was a sprint: film at noon, hand it to Victor by two, and have it edited and posted by five.

Many of our biggest milestones came from posting couples from all over the world — across different continents, cultures, and ethnicities. Every new perspective opened up our account a little more and brought in audiences we hadn't reached before.

The clearest example is the couple from Brazil we break down later as "The Smile": that one video did over 100 million views and added around 500,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram in a single week.

MCNYC: We read our comments thoroughly and double down on what our audience tells us they want.

A while back, we posted a video with photos from the early days of a couple's relationship, and someone commented, "More photos, please." That comment got around 50,000 likes — and now it's one of our most-used formats. The comments have taught us a lot: how much people care about the couple's names and how long they've been together.

Comment sentiment is our number one engagement metric. We strive for positivity and for our audience to lift up the humans we highlight on our page.

MCNYC: Our best ideas come in the spur of the moment, the same way the stories do. Some of our best videos have come after hours of rejection on the streets of New York, then a fleeting moment where everything clicks. We've built the brand by embracing that serendipity rather than trying to control it. We show up every day with optimism, curiosity, and good energy, trusting that what we put into the world finds its way back to us.

“The Smile” wasn't planned. It never is. We were out scoping couples, as we always are, just walking and watching. At 117.7M views across platforms, it’s our biggest piece to date. The week we posted it to Instagram (February 22, 2024), we gained 200,000 new followers.

Like every video we make, it started with reading the street. We walk for hours scanning for tells: couples holding hands, leaning in, laughing together. Those are our green lights — signs a pair is feeling the love and open to a stranger asking about it. (If they're holding a coffee, even better; caffeinated people are more likely to talk to us, too.)

What stopped us this time was the way this couple looked at each other, their stylish clothing. We approached them, began the interview, and pretty quickly realized we were in for something special. Every smile, every glance, every moment where words failed, and their faces filled in the gap. Love doesn't need a translator.

There's no elaborate setup — just an iPhone and two of us on the ground, usually Jeremy conducting the interview and another team member holding the camera. That's always been intentional. The lo-fi approach keeps the energy approachable, and the couple relaxed; a big production rig would change the whole dynamic.

Our edits are light, too — no heavy color grading or complex cuts, just trimming to the story — so turnaround is fast. From street to post, a great interview like "The Smile" can go live within a day or two.

Partnerships and platform revenue make up about 95% of the Meet Cutes universe total income. Of that, about two-thirds comes from Meet Cutes NYC, with the rest split between Besties NYC and Meet Cutes LDN.

The newer ventures are still thinner slices. The book, released in October 2025, accounted for roughly 4% of that year's revenue. The photobooth makes up 1% of 2026's — but it's the line they're betting on, with plans to open more locations across New York, in other cities, and possibly London.

It all traces back to one rule that's held since they made their first dollar, from the TikTok Creator Program in 2023: lead with the content, and the partnerships follow.