Potato Salad Project on Kickstarter Raises $17K

Zack Brown says potato salad isn't 'mean or snarky'
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 7, 2014 5:10 PM CDT
Updated Jul 7, 2014 7:10 PM CDT
Potato Salad Project on Kickstarter Raises $17K
A potato salad that probably cost less than $17,000.   (AP Photo/Matthew Mead)

Zack Brown's Kickstarter project started with the modest goal of $10—and blossomed into an Internet darling that's already worth over $17,000. The project? A potato salad, of course. "I'm making potato salad," wrote Brown on Kickstarter. "Basically I'm just making potato salad. I haven't decided what kind yet." With donations flowing in, he quickly added stretch goals, like hosting a pizza party at $75, live-streaming the salad-making at $1,000, and renting a venue for the project's backers to party at $3,000, The Verge reports. He offers rewards, too, like a salad bite for $3 donors—which is seemingly simple but geographically complex, as he realized in a Reddit Q&A. "Yea, it's going to be a challenge," he wrote. "I thought I'd just go to people's houses and hand it off."

Brown's project is benefiting from looser rules at Kickstarter, which used to restrict certain things ("fund my life" campaigns, charities, sunglasses) in favor of creative projects that can be shared. But starting this summer, the crowd-funding platform will approve pretty much anything that isn't dangerous, regulated, or against the law, The Verge notes. Which brings up the question: Why are Brown and his donors doing this?

  • "We're all craving interaction and feeling like we're a part of something bigger," writes Brown. "Potato salad isn't controversial, it isn't mean or snarky. Potato salad is lawful good—something incorruptible that we can all rally around."
  • "For me potato salad is more than a dish, it's a connection," writes a donor, CNET reports. "Feelings of love, joy, family, and friends."
  • "This is important to me on a deep and spiritual level," writes another.
Brown, meanwhile, warns that the salad itself "might not be that good. It's my first potato salad." (Click to read about a guy who raked in the bucks with a Kickstarter project to buy ... a burrito.)

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