Starter Kit. Idea 288 of 500. Cluster 14
Tamarind, lime and ginger pastes for the restaurant trade abroad
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
Make three pastes in small jars, tamarind, lime and ginger, and test the shelf life by keeping samples for a month. Send them with a trade price to the chefs of five South Asian restaurants in London, and follow up by phone a week later. A chef who reorders, or tells you the pack size a kitchen needs, gives you the product specification.
- Who pays first
- A restaurant kitchen abroad that grinds its own pastes every day and would pay to save the labour if the taste holds.
- What leaves today
- Tamarind, lime and ginger leave raw or dried, and the ready-made paste that saves a kitchen hours is someone else's product.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what a kitchen needs before selling pastes to restaurants abroad.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which restaurant suppliers abroad buy ready-made pastes.
Check before you spend
Whether your pastes keep safely for the shelf life you claim, and what the buyer's country requires on the label.
Find out these three numbers
- What do restaurant suppliers abroad pay per jar?
- How long do the pastes keep unopened?
- Which chefs would order after tasting a sample?
A comparison from the book
London. Chapter Seventeen
"in London pays £8 for an inferior one with better packaging."
A good paste in a plain jar sells cheap; the packaging is part of 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.