Idea 493 of 500. Cluster 27: The fruit nobody grades
Fruit wines and vinegars from what rots in the glut, bottled under the district's name
The mechanism, from the book
Fruit the world wants, sold in a heap by the road. Grading, a name and a cold box make the heap an export and the season a reason to visit.
Every idea in cluster 27 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Collect the fruit of the district in the glut, when growers sell it cheapest or let it rot. Make a small batch of vinegar first, the simpler of the two, and ask the health officer and the standards body what the kitchen and the label need, and what licence a fruit wine needs before you make one. Sell the vinegar to a local shop and to guesthouses under the district's name. The proof is a repeat order.
- Who pays first
- A guesthouse, a shop or a restaurant that wants a vinegar or a wine made from the district's own fruit to sell to visitors and local customers.
- What leaves today
- Fruit rots in the glut and earns nothing; bottled under the district's name, it keeps all year and sells at a better price.
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. ElevenThe Mechanisms
What a brand and an owned variety are worth, from the kiwifruit growers - Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
The island's resources, counted
More from cluster 27
- 486The Karuthakolomban mango, the finest the island grows, graded, packed and sold under its own name, from Jaffna and every district that grows it, to Colombo and the world
- 487A fruit-grading standard and the graders trained to it, so that Grade A from any district means the same thing to a buyer in Dubai
- 488Mangosteen and rambutan flown fresh in season to the Gulf and Singapore in graded boxes, not left to the roadside
- 489The island's bananas sold by name, kolikuttu, seeni and ambul, in Colombo and in the Sri Lankan shops abroad, not as "banana"
- 490Avocado orchards in the hills for the breakfast tables of the Gulf, which now fly the fruit in from much further away
- 491Fruit-tree nurseries selling grafted saplings of the named varieties, with a guarantee that the tree is what the label says
Idea 493 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.