Starter Kit. Idea 274 of 500. Cluster 14
Frozen tropical fruit pulp for the smoothie chains of the world
The mechanism, from the book
The smallholder sells raw to a collector at the gate and the collector sells to a packer who puts his own name on it. Denmark's farmers got rich the day they owned the creamery.
The first step
Pulp and freeze a small run of mango and passion fruit, then ask a local smoothie bar or cafe to use it for a week and record how it performs against what they buy now. Take the result, the cost per kilo and the manager's comments to food importers abroad by email. A trial order from the cafe and a price enquiry from abroad are the two signs you need.
- Who pays first
- A cafe or juice bar buying fruit pulp by the carton, which needs a consistent taste all year and cannot risk a bad batch.
- What leaves today
- Tropical fruit leaves the island fresh or not at all, and the pulp that smoothie chains buy all year is made elsewhere.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask which standard covers frozen fruit pulp for drinks.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which smoothie chains abroad buy tropical pulp, and from where.
Check before you spend
Whether your pulping room has food approval, and whether the freezer chain from farm to ship holds the temperature the buyer demands.
Find out these three numbers
- What do smoothie bars pay per kilo of frozen pulp?
- How much fruit makes a kilo of pulp?
- What does frozen shipping cost per container?
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.