Starter Kit. Idea 221 of 500. Cluster 11
Cinnamon quills in retail packs with the grade printed, since almost no consumer knows the grades exist
The mechanism, from the book
The imitation out-earns the original. Vietnam earns more from cassia than Sri Lanka does from true cinnamon, because the cassia arrives on the shelf as a product and the cinnamon arrives at the port as a bale.
The first step
Buy one kilo each of 3 cinnamon grades from a processor in the south-west, pack them in small clear bags with the grade and its meaning printed on the label, and put them side by side in a local shop that serves tourists. Offer the owner a share. The proof is which grade sells first and how many visitors ask what the grades mean.
- Who pays first
- A tourist or home cook abroad who already buys cinnamon every week and would pay more once the label tells them what they are buying.
- What leaves today
- True cinnamon is sold at the port as bales, and consumers abroad never learn that grades exist, so the finest quills fetch a commodity price.
Ask first
- Department of Export Agriculture. Ask how cinnamon grades are defined, so the printed grade on your pack is correct.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which standard applies to cinnamon quills sold in retail packs.
Check before you spend
Whether the grade on your pack matches the official grade description, and which food labels the shop's country asks for.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a retail pack of true cinnamon sell for abroad?
- What does a processor charge per kilo for each grade?
- Which shops would stock a pack with the grade explained?
A comparison from the book
The cinnamon trade. Chapter Four
"The bark leaves in bales. The buyer grinds it, blends it, brands it, and sells it on"
Pack and label it here, and you take back the steps the buyer abroad now does.
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.