Starter Kit. Idea 127 of 500. Cluster 6
Premium chilli sauces, chutneys and preserves
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 3 recipes you are proud of, bottle 30 jars of each with a clear label and a best-before date, and keep a few back to check they hold. Sell them at a weekend market and to a guesthouse shop, and ask a Sri Lankan grocer abroad what shelf price they would put on them. The recipe that sells, and the price the grocer names, tell you what to scale.
- Who pays first
- A visitor who tasted the chutney at dinner and wants a jar to take home, then orders again from abroad.
- What leaves today
- Chillies and fruit are sold raw at market prices, while the jar, which travels and carries a name, is made by somebody else.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what hygiene standard a kitchen making bottled sauces must meet.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what standard and labelling bottled sauces should meet for sale and export.
Check before you spend
That the kitchen meets food hygiene standards, that bottles are sealed safely, and that labels meet the rules of each country you sell into.
Find out these three numbers
- What do shops abroad pay for a bottle of chilli sauce?
- What does a bottle cost to make and pack?
- How long does the sauce keep once bottled?
A comparison from the book
London. Chapter Seventeen
"in London pays £8 for an inferior one with better packaging."
The same sauce earns many times more abroad once the packaging is right.
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.