Starter Kit. Idea 22 of 500. Cluster 2
Full-day courses: a five-course Sri Lankan menu
The mechanism, from the book
The craft cannot be copied and the object can. In Europe people queue to watch glass being blown and then buy the glass.
The first step
Write the menu for a five-course day, from the market in the morning to dessert, and cost every ingredient at your local market this week. Run it once for a group of friends at cost and film the day on a phone. Send the clip and a price to three boutique hotels nearby and ask whether they would sell it as an excursion. One hotel's yes is the proof.
- Who pays first
- Boutique hotels that want a full-day excursion for guests on a quiet day, and food-loving travellers who plan trips around meals.
- What leaves today
- A full day of teaching earns far more than a restaurant meal, and the skill travels home with the guest as the island's advertisement.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask whether a kitchen teaching a full day of cooking needs inspecting first.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a full-day cooking course must register as a tourist service.
Check before you spend
That the kitchen and food storage are clean and safe for a longer class, that toilets suit guests, and that insurance covers them all day.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a guest pay for a full day and a five-course meal?
- How many dishes can one cook teach well in a day?
- Which hotels nearby would book a full-day course for guests?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka. Chapter Five
"One is a meal. The other is a story they will tell for 30 years"
A meal is forgotten; a day learning to cook is a story told for years.
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.