WHY NOT SRI LANKA? සිංහල

Starter Kit. Idea 188 of 500. Cluster 8

Coconut dessert cafés and product lines for visitors, so the story travels home

Back to the idea

Written for this site as a starting point, not from the book. Rules and fees change: ask the bodies named below before you spend money.

The mechanism, from the book

The whole-nut principle. Sri Lanka's coconut exports are growing, which makes this the one chain already moving. Almost every part of the nut has a market and most of them leave the island unprocessed.

The first step

Run a stall for a weekend in a tourist town selling three coconut desserts, each with a small printed card saying where the coconut came from and how the dessert is made. Offer a packed version to take home. Count how many visitors buy the take-home pack and ask each for an email to reorder. Those names are the start of an export list.

Who pays first
A visitor who ate a coconut dessert on holiday and wants to take some home or order it again later.
What leaves today
Visitors eat coconut here and forget where it came from; a café that tells the story sends home customers for the packaged products.

Ask first

  • the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what a café or stall serving desserts needs to show before opening.
  • the local council (Municipal Council, Urban Council or Pradeshiya Sabha). Ask whether a weekend stall in the tourist town needs a trading permit.

Check before you spend

Whether your stall or café needs food-premises approval and a trading permit, and what the landlord allows for cooking on site.

Find out these three numbers

  1. What does a visitor pay for a dessert at a café near the beach?
  2. How many visitors pass your spot on a busy afternoon?
  3. How many buyers ask where they can buy it again at home?

A comparison from the book

A cooking course at home. Chapter Five

"One is a meal. The other is a story they will tell for 30 years"

Sell the story with the dessert, and the visitor carries it home to their friends.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

WITH500BUSINESS IDEASTO STARTTOMORROW

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.