Starter Kit. Idea 30 of 500. Cluster 2
Tea blending workshops, and your own blend packed to take away
The mechanism, from the book
The craft cannot be copied and the object can. In Europe people queue to watch glass being blown and then buy the glass.
The first step
Buy small quantities of three teas from different elevations, with some cinnamon and dried flowers, and run a blending session at a guesthouse table for its guests. Pack each blend in a bag labelled with the guest's name. Count how many pay, and how many ask to order more once they are home. Repeat orders from abroad are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Visitors to the hills, and their hosts, who want something to do with tea besides drinking it, and a gift to carry home.
- What leaves today
- Tea leaves in bulk at commodity prices; a blend with the guest's name on it sells the same leaf at a gift price.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask what registration packing tea for sale needs, even in small quantities.
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what hygiene standard a blending room open to visitors must meet.
Check before you spend
That repacking tea for sale is registered, that labels state what is inside honestly, and that the blending room meets food hygiene expectations.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay for a class and their own packed blend?
- What do tea, herbs and a tin cost per guest?
- Which tea factories nearby would sell you leaf for blending?
A comparison from the book
Ceylon tea. Chapter Four
"does its own blending and branding and packing says it gets more than 3 times the national average export price"
Blending and packing is where the tea earns more, so let the visitor do it.
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.