The 10-meal minimum: why we chose a floor, not an average.

Two weeks after launch, someone asked why we don't advertise the number bigger. On a good month, our working per-meal peg translates $8 to closer to 11 meals — the price fluctuates a few cents by region and program. Why not say "up to 11"?

Because "up to" is the phrase every donation-linked purchase in America uses to hide the fact that it usually pays out less. "Up to 5% of your purchase" almost always turns into 0.4%. "Feeds up to 20 children" almost always turns into 12. The consumer expectation for donation-linked marketing is asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. We refuse to add to that pile.

The floor changes what we're promising in a specific way. Every month, if the fund report shows fewer than $8 × subscriber-count posted to the pooled meal fund, we've broken our word — publicly, in a way anyone can count. That's the promise. Nothing complicated to interpret.

The floor also changes what we do when the meal price moves. If the partner's per-meal peg jumps to $0.90 in a specific region, our 10-meal floor still holds because $8 buys 8.9 meals at that price — we round up on our side and reserve a hair more per subscriber to keep the count honest. If it drops to $0.70, we don't reduce the meal count; we post $8 anyway and 11.4 meals get reserved. The floor never floats down. Only up.

An average version of this promise would be cheaper to run and harder to trust. Averages get gamed. A bad month can be balanced by a good month. The subscriber who canceled after a bad month never gets their meals back. A floor is unambiguous — every single month, every single subscription, the number is at least ten.

The word "minimum" carries weight only if you protect it. So we do a couple of things:

The monthly fund report is public. You can compare the count we show to the pooled fund balance and the subscriber count. If they don't match, something is wrong on our end and we owe an explanation. Once we cross the $50,000/year partnership threshold ([context here](/blog/the-fifty-thousand-threshold)), that same report carries a partner reference number too — cross-checkable on the partner's side.

The floor holds even in months where our costs spike. If Anthropic raises API prices and our margin compresses, ops absorbs it. The meal earmark is set aside first, at the moment of charge. It doesn't compete with anything else.

If we ever can't hit the floor, we say so, refund the affected subscribers' meal portion for that month, and explain what happened. That's the escape hatch. It's designed to feel expensive to use so we never do.

Ten meals a month at $0.80 each is not a marketing number. It's a contract. Averages are marketing. Floors are contracts. LADLE runs on a contract.