by Rika Goldberg
In this interview with Zack Guzman, the founder of Best Dish Ever, we delve into a broad range of topics, including community building, DAO cooperatives, the shortcomings of traditional media, on chain memberships and subscriptions, and even a chef’s touching moment. Zack is also the co-founder of Trustless Media and Coinage. It was an absolute pleasure talking with Zack!
Best Dish Ever is a community of food lovers in NYC. Community members get to share their voice, earning rewards and perks, while supporting local restaurants. With the help of Unlock, Best Dish Ever is able to abstract away the technical nuances of Web3 and create a membership program that is on chain.
I love how this quote from Best Dish Ever captures the heart of the community: “Great food isn’t a fad, it’s culture.”
Without further ado, let’s jump into the interview with Zack!
You have a robust online presence. What is one thing that you want readers to know about yourself that is not already shared online?
Zack Guzman: It’s been interesting to see almost everyone agree that traditional media is broken. Having come from the traditional media world, I’m wholly committed to exploring how DAO cooperatives can help realign incentives in the next era of the internet.
Most people who take the plunge to work in blockchain have a “falling down the rabbit hole” story. What is yours?
ZG: My brother gifted me some Bitcoin years ago as a graduation present and when I saw the price explode I was definitely intrigued.
At a prior outlet, I pitched the idea of focusing on crypto full-time and got laughed out of the room. When I saw NFTs being introduced it became clear to me that crypto was evolving from purely a financial story into a cultural one.
While I think most of the early use cases have mostly been cash grabs, Constitution DAO unlocked my brain as to what community-ownership could look like online in the era of Web3. Now, Trustless Media is pioneering a new way for creators to co-own media entities with their fans in Coinage and Best Dish Ever.
You studied Economics at Harvard. Did your undergraduate degree prepare you for the level of technical proficiency needed to run an on-chain media company or was there a steep learning curve?
ZG: As much as everyone wants to make crypto a tech story, I think the best projects have actually nailed everything beyond the technology itself. Look at how many Layer-2s or Layer-1s there are. How many are actually being used?
I studied behavioral economics, which focuses mostly on incentive structures and why we make financial decisions. The most beautiful thing to me about Bitcoin and now web3 actually isn’t the tech — but how you can use the tech to re-align incentives to serve a community.
Bitcoin pioneered that in finance, but I believe getting that piece right will come to revolutionize entire sectors beyond it. Luckily, that is getting even easier as more projects build the infrastructure for less tech-proficient founders like me to pick up the ball and run with things.
How does Best Dish Ever, a community for foodies, fit in with your long-term vision of Coinage and Trustless Media?
ZG: At Trustless Media, we are empowering creators to leverage the power of the communities they have already built. We believe incredible network effects get unlocked when creators can build with their followers and not just for them. That really hasn’t been possible on the internet until web3 introduced the concept of co-ownership.
I was the first guinea pig that Trustless helped support by building out Coinage as a DAO cooperative. We’ve attracted a community of co-owners (members who are NFT holders) who are not only able to unlock token-gated content, but are also legitimate co-owners in the brand we’re building. We spent a year digging into the legal process and set up a path for our NFT holders to become official members with a path to patronage dividends.
In that sense, we are building a blend of Kickstarter and Patreon mixed with onchain co-ownership. We have seen it work in the crypto news space, and now in the food space with some incredible creators working with us on Best Dish Ever.
Frankly, I think this structure can and will work in every media niche and we look forward to working with more creators to help them do the same.
Best Dish Ever’s business model is based on membership tiers that unlock perks. Some people may say that this results in exclusivity. What are your thoughts on that?
ZG: I actually think having membership tiers reduces exclusivity. (Chris Dixon has a great pricing chart on this). That is, the idea is to meet the consumer where they are at, rather than a one-size fits all pricing model. Our tiered membership model separates enthusiasts who care so much about something they don’t merely want to consume it — they want to influence it.
For example with Best Dish Ever, we learned that most people might just be passive fans of food. Maybe they just want to find suggestions of restaurants to try. But others are passionate foodies. They want to influence our content and be tastemakers in the category. Our superfans want to co-own this with us and steer the project.
Offering the ability to “upgrade” from being a passive viewer of content to being an active voice and co-owner has unlocked some really powerful network effects for us. I see it as a win-win, rather than a way to exclude.
Offering the ability to “upgrade” from being a passive viewer of content to being an active voice and co-owner has unlocked some really powerful network effects for us. I see it as a win-win, rather than a way to exclude.
Best Dish Ever uses Unlock Protocol on the Avalanche network to power membership and ticketing. As a non developer, what has your experience been like to setup and manage these features onchain? Do you work with a technical team?
ZG: I feel like the entire industry is waking up to the fact that it’s far easier to grow when you abstract away the complicated parts of web3. For Best Dish Ever, we partnered with Unlock Labs and used Unlock Protocol to make it as easy as possible for people to join our community whether they are crypto natives or not.
Considering we teamed up with creators who are culinary experts and Food Network stars, we knew a lot of the fans drawn to Best Dish Ever wouldn’t necessarily have experience with NFTs or crypto and didn’t want that to be a blocker. Having support from the Avalanche ecosystem means we’ve brought in a fair number of foodies from that community as well. All in all, it’s a healthy mix.
Do you have any future projects in the works that you can publicly share?
ZG: Trustless Media is continuing to grow our backlog of creators who are looking to create things that couldn’t be created elsewhere. We’ll be expanding to new content verticals soon. Any creator looking to build with their community should hit us up!
What is the best dish you’ve had this summer?
ZG: The best dish I've had this summer was at a Best Dish Ever event at Fat Fowl, where the chef unveiled his masterpiece: the Oxtail Grilled Cheese. This sandwich, perfected over 12 years, carries an emotional backstory tied to his grandmother’s braised oxtail. As he served it, the chef shared, "It's emotional, connecting with people over food. It's love. That's the only way I could describe it — love."
