Tea tasting rooms in Kandy, Ella and Colombo run like wine bars

A first step

Hire a table in a café in Kandy, Ella or Colombo for one evening and run a paid tasting of 5 estate teas, poured in flights like wine, with a card for each. Charge a ticket, offer the owner a share, and count how many guests buy a pack on the way out. The proof is tickets sold, packs sold and whether the owner asks you back.

Who pays first

A visitor in Kandy, Ella or Colombo looking for an evening out who has drunk the tea all week and never been told what it is.

What leaves today

Visitors leave the tea country having drunk it without learning it, so at home they buy the blended brand instead of the estate they stood on.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

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

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. ElevenThe Mechanisms
  The auction and every step after it
• Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
  Tea whose name the world has known for 200 years

More from cluster 10

• 201Single-estate teas sold direct to consumers abroad by subscription, with the estate's story
• 202A tea sommelier course in Nuwara Eliya, certified, for the hotel trade of the world
• 204Cold-brew and sparkling Ceylon tea in cans for the Gulf and Asia
• 205Matcha-style ground green tea from the upcountry, for cafés
• 206Tea cosmetics: creams and serums with a named estate's extract
• 207A picking-and-processing day at a factory sold as an experience, with your own kilo at the end

All 20 ideas in this cluster