Monthly seat
€14 / month
Read every volume. Save, follow, confirm. Your free €100 chip unlocks at month twelve — stake it on the place you believe in.
The model · plain language
Eat well.
Get paid.
Pass it on.
People who eat well already know the places. Cazuela turns that knowledge into a market. Members pay €14 a month or €140 a year to read the volume. Annual members get a free €100 chip on day one. Monthly members unlock the same chip after twelve months. Stake your chip on a place you believe in — if members confirm it, you earn pool share monthly. If not, the stake funds the people whose taste was right. The Cazuela never takes a euro out of the pool — only fees at the door.
Two seats
Pick your seat.
Annual seat
€140 / year
Everything monthly gives you, plus a free €100 chip on day one. Stake it any time during your year. €100 each for any chip after.
For insiders
The pool.
The pool has two sources. Forty percent of every membership fee flows directly to it — kicks in from day one, scales with the network. Ninety percent of every paid stake joins it too — €100 from each chip after the first free one, with The Cazuela keeping 10% as a marketplace fee. Every cent inside the pool stays inside — split monthly across active insiders by trust. The Cazuela never takes a euro out of it; only fees at the door.
What grows your trust score
- +1A paying member saves your gem to their archive
- +2A paying member confirms your gem is still good
- +1Your gem appears in a list a member unlocks
- +1A paying member follows your profile (recurring monthly)
What keeps a stake alive
- 5+paying members confirm in 90 days
- or 25+paying members save in 90 days (demand alone counts)
- Floorat least 1 confirm in any 180-day window
- Dies5 disappointing flags in 60 days, or no signal at all
Saves count because remote places live on demand, not just visits. A village finca with twenty-five people who want to go is alive. The trip happens when it happens.
Earnings calculator
What your one chip
could earn.
Move the dials. Annual members get a free €100 chip on day one. Founders get the same chip, free, and place it first — one of fifty per city, ever. The further out you stake, the more you earn — because the harder the find, the more the volume needs it. Floor: €0 if your stake dies. Ceiling: uncapped.
Network stage
Your stake quality
Hidden tier · The Hidden Test
The harder the find, the bigger the share.
Four automated signals: press silence · review depth (<200) · foot-traffic floor (<100 photos) · search obscurity (not in top 30). Auto-checked at submission, no human guesswork. Two yeses = Hidden. Three or more = Pilgrimage.
Monthly pool
€3,500
700 members · 25 new stakes/mo
Your share × multiplier
2.5% × 1.4
by trust × by hiddenness
You earn
€122/ month
€1,464 per year, while the stake lives.
The pool: 40% of every membership fee + 90% of every paid stake. The Cazuela keeps 10% on stakes as a marketplace fee · same range as Substack and Etsy.
A stake stays alive with 5 confirms or 25 saves in 90 days. Remote places survive on demand alone — you don’t need everyone to make the trip, only enough to want to.
The Hidden Test
The harder the find,
the bigger the share.
Distance to a city center is a broken signal — half the world doesn’t have one. So we measure attention instead. Four automated checks at submission, all queryable via public APIs. No editorial guesswork. No insider gaming. The score locks the day you stake — your bet, your tier.
Four automated signals
Auto-checked. No human in the loop.
- 01Press silence.Auto · web-search API + curated domain list
Zero mentions across our list of major food and travel publications — Michelin, Time Out, Eater, Condé Nast, Monocle, NYT, Lonely Planet, the local newspapers’ food sections.
- 02Review depth.Auto · Google Places + TripAdvisor APIs
Under 200 reviews combined across Google and TripAdvisor. Doesn’t mean nobody’s been — just that the internet hasn’t caught it yet.
- 03Foot-traffic floor.Auto · Google Places API
Under 100 user-uploaded photos on Google. Photos lag reviews — a real hidden gem has a tiny photo trail even if a few locals have been.
- 04Search obscurity.Auto · SerpAPI
Doesn’t appear in the top 30 results for "best [category] in [city]". You can’t find it through a generic Google search — you have to be told.
Score · the share
Open
1.0×
0–1 yes
Already on lists. Lots of competition. The safe bets — central, marketed, easy to confirm.
e.g. A taberna in the old town that everyone has heard of
Hidden
1.4×
2 yes
Takes some local knowledge. Smaller circle of confirmers. Real lift on share for keeping it alive.
e.g. A bodega behind a tailor · three tables · Casa Parés
Pilgrimage
1.8×
3–4 yes
Almost nobody knows. Stays alive on saves alone — twenty-five members who want to go is enough — and earns 80% more when alive.
e.g. A working olive farm in the hills · Las Tres Higueras
“Reward the find.
Not the obvious.”
All four signals run as API calls at submission. The tier locks the day you stake. If your pilgrimage gem becomes famous later, you keep the multiplier — you took the bet first. We re-check quarterly for editorial reporting only.
A stake stays alive with 5 confirms or 25 saves in 90 days. Demand is signal too.
Lifecycle
How a gem lives.
And how it dies.
Every gem moves through five states. Trusted ones earn their insider month after month. Quiet ones fade. Disappointing ones go.
- ·New
Just submitted. Trust 0. Needs a single confirmation to fully go live.
- 01Confirmed
A paying member visited and said it’s real. Earning begins.
- 02Alive
Confirmed by multiple members in the last 90 days. Fully earning.
- 03Fading
No confirmation in 90 days. Earnings paused until someone goes back.
- 04Removed
180 days quiet, or five disappointing marks in 60 days. Gem retires from earning.
What can resurrect a gem
A new confirmation flips a fading gem back to alive. A removed gem can be re-submitted by any insider once the place has materially changed — new chef, reopened, relocated.
What no amount of trust can save
Five disappointing marks from unrelated paying members within 60 days flips a gem to removed immediately, regardless of how beloved it once was. The place turned. We acknowledge it.
The launch ritual
Fifty founders open
every new city.
Every Cazuela city opens the same way. Fifty founders place a chip on a place they believe in. The volume goes live the day the fiftieth chip lands. After that, the founder door closes for that city — for good — and the volume stays open to monthly and annual members. Marbella has launched. Lisbon and Tangier are in progress. Palermo and Athens come next.
Free seat for Year 1 · Free chip · Permanent badge · Metal card by post.
See open cities →House rules
Ten rules.
The whole game.
The full ruleset lives in one place — short enough to read at the bar, strong enough to keep the table honest. No reviews, no sponsored slots, no data-selling, no exceptions.