Starter Kit. Idea 33 of 500. Cluster 2
Spice blending, with a labelled jar of your own mix
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
Set up a table at a weekly market or a guesthouse with whole spices, a grinder and small jars, and let visitors blend a curry powder to their own taste. Label each jar with the blend and the maker's name. Ask everyone who buys whether they would reorder from home, and keep their email addresses. Reorders are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Visitors who loved the food and want to cook it at home, using a blend they made themselves and can name.
- What leaves today
- Spices leave as a bulk commodity; a named, hand-blended jar sells the same spice with the skill and the memory attached.
Ask first
- Department of Export Agriculture. Ask which spice growers sell clean, graded spice to small blenders.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what labelling standard a jar of spice sold to visitors should meet.
Check before you spend
That the spices are clean and free of contamination, that the labels are honest, and that any jar going abroad meets the buyer country's rules.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay for a class and a labelled jar?
- What do spices, jars and labels cost per guest?
- How many guests can blend at once in your space?
A comparison from the book
Cinnamon. Chapter Four
"The buyer grinds it, blends it, brands it, and sells it on"
Grinding and blending is the step buyers abroad keep; here the visitor does 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.