It's kind of been a soft launch, to test the initial response, and fine tune before a bigger launch.
I'm not listed on any of the ICO websites yet for example. The only way someone would have heard about the idea is my postings here, postings at bitcointalk, and the flyers I've handed out around town.
My feedback from the flyers I've handed out around town are as follows:
1) The vast majority of regular folks don't care about crypto currency, even free crypto currency, politics, being a home chef, food revolution, building a food network, home cooking, getting to know one's neighbors, improving community relations, creating a food distribution superior to restaurants, half built websites, half built projects, etc.
The only thing regular folks care about are:
1) What food are you serving?
2) What is the price?
3) How good is the quality?
4) Do you deliver?
5) Everybody loves free food.
I'm thus retooling the website and am going to do another flyer campaign. The goal is to get proof of concept by building a home food network in Rancho Cordova/Sacramento and having a model that would work nationally. Once I have proof of concept, launch the ICO on a big scale, raise the funds, expand nationally.
My new flyers will only focus now on:
1) The type of food offered.
2) The low price and why we can beat restaurants in quality and price (home cooking)
3) Free delivery.
4) First meal is free (instead of offering free crypto)
Chefs will be recruited in other ways in order not to confuse regular folks.
There are two keys to solving the billion dollar potential of home cooking:
1) Smartphone recording of the entire meal preparation so people know it's safe.
2) Making it delivery only so that nobody knows exactly where the chefs are located (so the health department cannot serve the chefs cease and desist letters.)
I hadn't quite realized this 2nd key until this past week. The thinking a month ago was that having people come to your house to get the food was better because it improved community relations, allowed people to get to know their neighbors, etc. I was going to use the 1st amendment, crypto currency, and lack of a central entity to protect the network against the health department, but that's not enough. Josephine.com was a home cooking network that was destroyed when their chefs got cease and desist letters because even though Josephine could fight it in court, a scary letter was enough to scare the cooks into stopping.
But my initial feedback from this past month is that nobody wants to go to someone else's house for food because it's awkward, and that awkwardness will triumph over better quality food at a lower price, and they'll go to McDonald's instead.
But I also learned that:
A) Everybody loves delivery.
B) It's extremely easy to deliver when the people live within a mile radius of your house. It barely takes any time at all, making it cost effective.
Thus the service will be changed to delivery only. Nobody will know the exact location of the chefs, only the approximate location.
I've consulted with 3 health inspectors on this issue, including my mother, who is a retired health inspector. They all confirm that if they cannot find the location of the offender, they will usually just give up due to a lack of time/resources, unless the offender is a serious health hazard.
Now Josephine had 37 chefs in Oakland on their network that all got letters at the same time because their location was listed on Josephine's website. It destroyed the network.
But imagine being a health inspector and trying to locate 37 chefs for a delivery only service. It's absolutely impossible given their resources. Maybe if they really wanted, they could track down 1 or 2 chefs by doing a stake out, waiting for the delivery guy, and following him back to his house.
With these new adjustments, I can beat any restaurant in quality and price by a significant margin. I'm not seeing any clear obstacles currently on what is going to stop me. If my model does work, it can be billion dollar in potential, and it can beat bitcoin in terms of market penetration. 100% of the population needs food. Less than 10% of the population needs digital gold.