The pitch was simple: give Zack Brown $10 and he will make potato salad. Thanks to internet donations, Brown now has more than $8,800 to achieve that dream.
Although Brown hasn’t chosen a recipe for the potato salad, more than 1,300 people have backed his online fundraising campaign since it launched on Thursday.
“I’ve been hard at work in the kitchen, learning how to boil potatoes,” Brown, who may have had some inkling as to how this project would turn out when he began it – he is the co-founder of a digital creative agency – said in a thank you video he posted on the potato salad Kickstarter page.
Brown’s stated goal was to raise $10 for one potato salad. Now, with 25 days left in the campaign, he’s said he will make multiple potato salads, live-stream the potato salad-making and figure out how to send samples to people who can’t make it to the party he plans to throw in Columbus, Ohio.
To justify the amount of money that’s been raised, Brown has created a slew of potato salad-themed activities to put the funds toward. This includes renting a hall in Columbus for a potato salad party that the “whole internet” is invited to. “The internet loves potato salad! Let's show them that potato salad loves the internet!!” Brown wrote.
The rapid success of the campaign also means Brown has to figure out how to fulfill promises he made such as giving a bite of the potato salad to each person who pledged at least $3 – a reward that was created under the assumption that only people in Columbus would support the project – and saying the name of each person who donated more than $1 in the video he will produce of him making the the potato salad.
Four special people who made a $20 donation will receive a signed jar of mayonnaise and a personalized potato salad-themed haiku written by Brown, and their names will be carved into a potato that will be used in the salad.
“I think the thing people are responding to is the opportunity to come together around something equal parts absurd and mundane,” Brown said in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). “Potato Salad isn't controversial, but it seems to unite us all.”
