KyleM, I totally agree. But I’m not really asking anyone for a donation. More like trying to just embed a social good into an existing product or market, like free trade coffee or compostable containers. So I’m hoping that people who would already spend money on something will just spend money on this thing instead. The challenge, and why it hasn’t caught on yet, is finding a way to make the product competitive in spite of the actual cost of the social good. So like being the first to switch to compostable containers, but actually selling at a discount by partnering with the manufacturer of compostable containers instead of paying regular wholesale for styrofoam containers.

In this case, instead of a high end restaurateur making a small margin, the consumer will get a discount and the charity will get some funding. It would be boring to get into the nitty gritty of restaurant economics, but let’s just call it socially motivated arbitrage. If you actually care about numbers I’m happy to email you.

Jacob, presumably anyone who wants to donate money already would. The target audience is foodies who aren’t inclined to donate, so implicitly they wouldn’t just by me asking, and regardless, I’m just not asking for a donation.

I agree that the whole thing could be more efficient if Chase donated $250k to the Food Bank, or at least that it would take a year or more for this endeavor to raise more than $250k. It would definitely be a more efficient use of my time. The reality is that Chase is awarding grants to small businesses with a community serving agenda, not donating money to anyone. I am just proposing a community serving small business. If Chase’s panel chooses someone else who wants to put solar panels on their factory or something, that’s cool too. I just think this would be a) interesting and b) probably more community serving than a lot of the 2,000 plus applicants.

The vote I think your referring to is the qualifying 250 votes of support for this grant. Voting costs $0 so it’s not really asking much.

True, I never really refer to myself as a chef if I can help it. Do I design and execute successful dishes in restaurants? I guess, but I’m pretty content to let people who want to be chefs be the chefs. Maybe like how the RZA sometimes raps, but honestly, is a better producer.

A better idea would be to buy a $10 burger instead and donating $5 to the food bank.

This would also forego the costs of developing a mobile kitchen, paying a chef, etc. and reach the end goal much quicker!