Idea 125 of 500. Cluster 6: Food and drink as export, not just hospitality
Coconut-based dessert cafés and product lines
The mechanism, from the book
Dilmah says it earns over 3 times the national average price for tea, because it does its own blending, branding and packing. The proof has been sitting inside the industry all along.
Every idea in cluster 6 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Make four coconut desserts you already know, price them, and sell them from a table at a weekend market or outside a busy café with the owner's agreement. Record which sells out and what visitors ask. Then ask the café owner whether they would stock your best seller every day. A standing order from one café is the start of a product line.
- Who pays first
- A café in a tourist town that wants a local dessert on its counter every day without having to make it.
- What leaves today
- Coconut leaves the island as a cheap raw nut, while the dessert, sold finished, earns far more per nut than the nut itself.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. ElevenThe Mechanisms
What a brand and an owned variety are worth, from the kiwifruit growers - Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
The island's spices: pepper, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg
More from cluster 6
Idea 125 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.