Starter Kit. Idea 230 of 500. Cluster 11
Curry-powder blends roasted and ground here, with the district recipe named on the tin
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
Roast and grind 3 curry-powder blends from 3 districts' family recipes, with the recipe's district written on each label. Sell them at a weekend market, then send 20 tins to Sri Lankan friends abroad and ask whether they would buy monthly. The proof is repeat orders and which district's blend people come back for.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan home cook abroad who cannot find curry powder that tastes like home and would pay for one tied to a named district.
- What leaves today
- Curry powder sold abroad is often ground and blended by foreign packers, so the island exports the raw spice and loses the recipe's value.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what a roasting and grinding room needs before selling spice blends.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which standard applies to curry powder sold in tins.
Check before you spend
Whether your grinding room has food approval, and which labels and tests the country you post to requires for spice blends.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a tin of curry powder sell for in a shop abroad?
- What does one tin cost you to roast, grind and pack?
- Which district blend sells out first?
A comparison from the book
London. Chapter Seventeen
"in London pays £8 for an inferior one with better packaging."
Good blends sell cheap at a roadside; the tin, the label and the story set the price.
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.