Starter Kit. Idea 125 of 500. Cluster 6
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.
The 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.
Ask first
- Coconut Development Authority. Ask where to buy coconut products of steady quality for desserts.
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what hygiene standard a dessert kitchen must meet.
Check before you spend
That the kitchen and storage meet hygiene expectations, that cold storage is reliable, and what labels packaged desserts need.
Find out these three numbers
- What will customers pay for a coconut dessert?
- What does one portion cost to make?
- Which shops would stock a packaged line?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.