Starter Kit. Idea 150 of 500. Cluster 6
A Sri Lankan food hall in one European city, run as a showcase and a wholesaler at once
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
Rent a stall for one weekend at a food market in a European city where you or a relative live, and sell three dishes plus jars and packs from island producers. Record what sells and ask every buyer who wants the packaged goods for an email address. Then ask two nearby delis whether they would buy those goods wholesale from you. That list is the wholesale half of the food hall.
- Who pays first
- Food lovers in one European city who tasted Sri Lankan food on holiday and want to buy it again at home.
- What leaves today
- Island producers have no showroom abroad, so their products never meet a European buyer and stay raw or local.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which suppliers they know who could stock a food hall abroad.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register a company that imports and wholesales abroad.
Check before you spend
That the business can legally import and sell each product there, that the lease works for both shop and wholesale, and that suppliers are reliable.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a food hall site cost to rent in that city?
- How many Sri Lankan suppliers can meet export rules today?
- What will restaurants there buy wholesale?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"Eat Sri Lanka in 60 minutes: Jaffna, Kandy, Galle, Colombo, the East Coast"
Every kitchen of the island side by side is the book's showcase idea.
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.