Starter Kit. Idea 34 of 500. Cluster 2
Pluck, wither and hand-roll your own tea on an estate, and take home the tea you made
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
Ask a tea estate or a small grower whether visitors could pluck leaf in the morning, wither it and roll it by hand with a tea maker, and take home what they made. Agree a fee per visitor and a fair share for the workers who teach. Run it for a small group at a trial price. A full group, and a guest who asks to buy more of the estate's tea, are the proof.
- Who pays first
- A visitor in the hill country who has walked through a tea factory and wants to make tea with their own hands.
- What leaves today
- Visitors watch tea being made through a window and buy a packet; making it themselves sells the craft and the day.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask whether tea made by visitors can be packed for them to take home.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a tea-making experience on an estate must register as a tourist service.
Check before you spend
Confirm the estate's written permission, a fair fee for the workers who teach, safety around the factory machines, and insurance for guests.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay to make and keep their own tea?
- How much made tea does one visitor's plucking produce?
- How many visitors can the estate host without slowing the work?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka. Chapter Five
"One is a meal. The other is a story they will tell for 30 years"
Tea made by hand is a story the guest tells for years, not a packet bought.
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.