Starter Kit. Idea 202 of 500. Cluster 10
A tea sommelier course in Nuwara Eliya, certified, for the hotel trade of the world
The mechanism, from the book
The Colombo auction sells tea by the lot to a buyer who blends it under his own name. Every step after the auction is where the money is, and every step can be done here by somebody who is not a plantation company.
The first step
Write a 2-day syllabus: estates, elevations, grades, brewing, pairing with food, and serving tea in a restaurant. Send it to the food and beverage managers of 10 hotels in Colombo and Kandy and ask one question: would they pay for their staff to be certified, and at what fee. Then ask a tea taster in Nuwara Eliya whether he would teach it. The proof is a named hotel and a fee.
- Who pays first
- A hotel's food and beverage manager who sells wine by the glass with a trained sommelier and wants the same authority on the tea list.
- What leaves today
- Hotels across the world serve Ceylon tea with nobody able to explain it, and the teaching of how to sell it happens nowhere near the estates.
Ask first
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask how a short sommelier course can be registered and its certificate recognised.
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask whether they would endorse or help examine a tea-tasting course.
Check before you spend
Whether your certificate can be registered so a hotel abroad will recognise it, and who on the examining panel is qualified to judge.
Find out these three numbers
- What do hotels abroad pay to train one staff member in tea service?
- How many students could one course take at a time?
- What does a week in Nuwara Eliya cost each student?
A comparison from the book
Japan. Chapter Eleven
"One well-chosen foreigner on a 2-month visit can be worth more than 100 consultants"
One respected taster can help write the course; the teaching after that stays here.
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.