A new kind of food hall is being created in the metaverse, a crypto food hall, created by Cordia Corporation that will host 1,000 chefs was announced this week by the company.
“The restaurant environment is as challenging today as it has ever been. Most independent restaurants are barely hanging on,” said Peter Klamka CEO of Cordia Corporation in a statement. “A few new customers can literally make the difference between closing for good and surviving. Our chef collection is a fantastic and inexpensive first step for restaurants to get exposure to NFTs and the growing cryptocurrency community.”
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are pieces of artwork that are not fixed in price and can be used in exchange for goods, services, or access, as in this case.
Many chefs, such as Tom Collichio and Spike Mendelsohn, are using NFTs for access to clubs. Others, such as Gary Vaynerchuk, are using NFTs as entry to either private restaurants (Vaynerchuk’s Brooklyn Chop House) or exclusive clubs inside the restaurants priced up to $1 million.
For this new food hall, the first piece of the puzzle is the chefs.
There are 1,000 chef NFTs available, meaning that 1,000 chefs can purchase an NFT to enter the food hall. There are 500 men and 500 women tokens available, ranging from Chef Tasty, Chef Yummy, Chef Nasty, Chef Delivered to Chef BTC. The chefs basically represent various cuisines, culinary styles, and personalities
The cost per chef will be .08 ETH (or Ethereum, the currency for NFTs). Verified shareholders of Cordia Corporation will be able to purchase up to five chefs in a presale at .04 ETH.
Holders of the Chef Collection will be invited to cooking events virtually and in person and receive airdrops of the next series of Crypto Food Hall NFTs and discount codes for virtual restaurants.
In March, menu item NFTs will go on sale and in April there will be a public sale of food hall locations.
Some chefs will have actual virtual restaurants via delivery apps rather than restaurants only in the metaverse, but there is no indication yet how that will be differentiated or how one can reach that level.
Independent restaurants who purchase a chef NFT will get access to celebrity virtual restaurants for free for one year and crypto marketing support.
Cordia pledges to use 20% of all resale royalties to buy gift cards from independent restaurants that own one of the NFTs. The gift cards will be distributed randomly to members of the community who have signed up for the Crypto Food Hall Discord.