Idea 40 of 500. Cluster 2: Sell the making, not the object
Grandmother's Kitchen: one dish, one district, one story
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.
Every idea in cluster 2 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Record one grandmother cooking one dish from her district, with her permission: the dish, the method, and the story of when it was made. Write it up as a single page with photographs. Offer a lunch of that dish, cooked by her, to visitors, and the recipe card as a paid keepsake. Bookings and cards sold are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Visitors and Sri Lankan families abroad who want to eat one district's dish from the person who has cooked it longest.
- What leaves today
- Recipes held by grandmothers leave with them, unrecorded and unpaid; a named dish with its story turns that knowledge into income.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. FiveThe Most Photographed Rock in the World
Courses instead of meals, the one the book would build first
More from cluster 2
Idea 40 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.