Have not tried the book (waiting on my copy) but if your city has a refresh meetup - you should start there. This is the local chapter in Chicago http://www.meetup.com/Refresh-Chicago/ - well attended and interesting speakers.
These are just edible pickles - no promises of renewable energy that I know of. We have helped people make theremins, web apps, and curriculum already so pickles seems like a logical progression :)
We have not determined the spend with the founder yet - but are excited to have another physical product company. From our experience - the small amount of money can have a noticeable impact when you are not dealing with the abstractions of web startups. He has a product, fixed costs, and a process - so I am hoping we can connect him with people familiar with scaling single food products (getting into stores, higher production levels, etc). Also the marketing/branding since there are lot of creative campaign ideas surrounding a cartoon pickle.
There are some success stories demonstrating that creating a buyer-seller hybrid is not always necessary. Take http://www.uship.com/ for example. Most ebay sellers and small business needing to ship packages will rarely have experience (or interest) in the trucking industry, but still need reliable delivery. The truckers using the service may list an item to be shipped in the future, but are most likely not the typical customer on the site.
The uship team just found two groups that were not paired and probably did a tremendous amount of legwork to create activity on both sides. I think sometimes you can just replace "they need to be the same person" with "we need to be solving a specific problem."
Bourgeois Pig has a decent selection of teas, including the Theanine heavy Gyokuro, but they don't sell in bulk. Their baristas might be able to tell you where they buy from though - assuming it is local.
I've purchased some decent Silver Needle at Coffee and Tea Exchange in Lakeview - but the prices are a little high.
So the theme is "let users know about conveniently located competitions." definitely a possibility when more hackathons are using the site to organize. Chicago today - the world next.
