For Ohio's 'PotatoStock,' all you need is love, and mayonnaise

[September 26, 2014]  By Kim Palmer
 
 CLEVELAND (Reuters) - An Ohio man's modest request this summer for a little help making potato salad culminates this Saturday in PotatoStock 2014 - a charity event to help end hunger and homelessness.

As a joke among his friends, Zack Danger Brown went on the Internet funding site Kickstarter in July to raise $10 for his first attempt to make the side dish.

But fans of potato salad - and Internet jokes - can be very serious. Before the funding period ended in early August, Brown’s proposal had garnered international media attention and accumulated more than $55,000 from 6,911 donors.

Kickstarter participants are permitted to make a personal profit after all fundraising promises are fulfilled. Brown decided to donate his profits to the Columbus Foundation, to distribute to non-profit organizations.

The Columbus event will have five bands, concessions and 300 pounds of potato salad. PotatoStock is free and open to the public, or as Brown’s invite on Facebook reads: “the whole Internet.”

“I invited the whole Internet. So if a percentage of the billion or so show up, we should get a few million, which might be a problem because we only have one bar,” Brown said.

Attendees can also purchase T-shirts with the event’s theme of “Peace, Love and Potato Salad!” Brown said.

The "PotatoStock" name is a takeoff on the famous 1969 Woodstock music festival, although Brown considered other potato-related names.

"A friend said later we should have called it the Oct-tuber Fest," said Brown. "Maybe next year."

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Peter Cooney)

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