Idea 207 of 500. Cluster 10: Tea, beyond the auction
A night at a working tea factory, from the evening leaf weighing to the morning's first sorting, with the factory staff as the guides
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.
Every idea in cluster 10 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Call the manager of a small tea factory and ask whether a few visitors could stay the night: watch the leaf come in and be weighed in the evening, see it wither and roll through the night, and leave after the first sorting in the morning, with the factory's own staff showing each step. Agree a fee per head that the factory and the staff share. Offer it to guesthouses within an hour's drive. The proof is a written yes from the factory and a first booking.
- Who pays first
- A guesthouse or tour operator in the hills whose guests want to see what a factory does at night, not photograph pickers from the road.
- What leaves today
- Visitors see a factory for twenty minutes by day and move on; a night inside it, with the people who run it, earns a stay and a story.
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 150 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
- 203Tea tasting rooms in Kandy, Ella and Colombo run like wine bars
- 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
Idea 207 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.