Starter Kit. Idea 225 of 500. Cluster 11
A "true cinnamon" education campaign run by producers, aimed at bakers and chefs abroad
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
Film a 2-minute video on your phone comparing true cinnamon and cassia side by side: the quill, the colour, the smell, the taste in a bun. Send it with a small sample pack to 20 bakers and chefs abroad you can reach through Sri Lankan friends abroad or online groups. Ask each whether they would switch and what they would pay. The proof is a list of those who ask to order.
- Who pays first
- A baker or chef abroad who takes ingredients seriously, had no idea there were two cinnamons, and will pay for the real one once shown.
- What leaves today
- The world's kitchens use cassia because nobody told them the difference, so the imitation out-earns the original on shelves everywhere.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which bakers' or chefs' trade fairs abroad they attend with Sri Lankan producers.
- Department of Export Agriculture. Ask what verified facts about true cinnamon producers may safely use in a campaign.
Check before you spend
Whether every health or quality claim in the campaign can be proved, and whether the producers paying for it agree on one message.
Find out these three numbers
- How many bakers abroad know the difference between cinnamon and cassia?
- What would a bakery pay extra per kilo for true cinnamon?
- How many producers would share the cost of the campaign?
A comparison from the book
Mexico. Introduction
"The biggest buyer is Mexico, where much of it goes into chocolate and coffee, and nobody"
The buyer abroad is never told where the cinnamon came from; the campaign tells them.
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.