It began as a joke.
“I’m making potato salad,” Zack Brown wrote in early July on the crowd-sourcing Internet platform Kickstarter.
He added a photo of a bowl of creamy, seasoned potato salad, garnished with fresh herbs.
“I haven’t decided what kind yet,” he wrote.
Then he asked potential supporters for money for his seemingly banal idea. His funding goal: $10. Then he wrote a disclaimer: “It might not be that good. It’s my first potato salad.”
Four weeks later, the Internet joke had gathered an astounding $55,492 - and put Brown in the headlines nationwide. Nearly 7,000 people from many countries jumped on board the gag and helped Brown reach 5,000 times his original goal.
“It’s completely crazy,” Brown told DPA. “It’s something that none of us could have ever imagined.”
He and his friends just shook their heads in amazement.
While the sum climbed higher and higher, Brown first promised his supporters increasing amounts of potato salad, then potato salad from various recipes, and then matching hats and T-shirts for everyone.
His payback offers escalated: “better mayonnaise”, a professional cook for an even better recipe, a live-stream during the preparations, a professional thank-you video and finally a mammoth potato salad party in his own kitchen with “the whole Internet” invited.
As the final sum topped $55,000, Brown, 31, realised that it wouldn’t be enough to hold such a festival to honour potato salad, but he knew there was no way back.
“I could’ve cancelled in the last moment and given everyone their money back,” he said. But that was never a consideration.”
Instead, he decided to put the money to use for homeless and hungry in Columbus, Ohio.
He took a break from his job at a small software firm and began to campaign for his do-good project. The money was to flow in great part to the Columbus Foundation, which would distribute it to aid organisations. Brown himself kept none of the money.
Soon, Idaho Potato, the north-west state’s official promoter of the state’s most important crop, and a mayonnaise maker saw their chance to market their products via the popular Internet site, and in addition donate money for a good cause.
Brown was flown by the state commission to Idaho, which produces one-third of the US potato crop, to do a token harvest of potatoes for the cameras.
“It was beautiful,” he said in the telephone interview.
He met a farmer in Idaho, rode along on the tractor and dug the potatoes out of the ground. The commission donated more money to the cause.
In the meantime, he found a local restaurant in Columbus that would make the potato salad, and to keep his promise to the Kickstarter contributors, he organised a potato salad festival, calling it Potato Stock - in a play on the legendary 1969 music festival Woodstock.
In all, more than 200 kilos of potato salad were made, and 2,500 small servings were doled out Saturday with the help of a Columbus restaurant and friends. In the end, it was all gone.
Matt Eisenacher of Piada restaurant called it “new ground for us”.
There were hats and T-shirts. The day’s restaurant sales of food were earmarked for the foundation.
Brown, who spent four hours last Wednesday reading the names of all the contributors on live stream, has had enough of Kickstarter for the time being.
“I really like making people laugh. I really like making jokes,” he said.
He’s thinking about writing a book when the potato salad craze has passed. And he’s sure the next joke will occur to him.
“Maybe,” he said, “we’re going eBay next. I don’t know.”