Beach-hut cafés run to a standard, licensed, with the sanitation that the beaches lack

A first step

Spend a weekend on one popular beach counting visitors, noting where they eat, and asking 20 of them what they would pay for a clean toilet, shade and a proper coffee. Then take those answers to the local council office and ask exactly what licence a beach cafe needs and what it costs. The survey gives you demand, and the licence answer gives you the true cost of doing it to a standard.

Who pays first

Families and foreign visitors spending a whole day on the beach, who pay for food and toilets they can trust and come back the next day.

What leaves today

Visitors cut beach days short or stay inside hotel gates because the beach lacks basic sanitation, so their spending never reaches the shore.

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. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
  An ocean eight times the size of the land

More from cluster 13

• 251Sailing charters and a yacht marina at Galle or Trincomalee, with the crew trained here
• 252Diving schools at the wrecks of Trincomalee and the reefs of the east, certified to international standard
• 253Sport fishing charters with catch-and-release, sold to the Gulf and Europe
• 254Sea-cucumber and seaweed farming in the northern lagoons, which Japan and Korea buy
• 255Tuna graded, loined and vacuum-packed at the harbour for the sashimi market, not sold whole
• 256Crab and prawn from the lagoons as a branded chilled export, with the lagoon's name

All 20 ideas in this cluster