Small business owners know how important it is to offer a good, unique product. While in Bali this summer, we learned about a popular, expensive and unique beverage that made us a little queasy.
Indonesia produces the world’s most expensive coffee. It’s called Kopi Luwak, and you would never guess where it comes from.
These coffee beans only grow in a few exotic places including the islands of Bali, Java and Sumatra. Hold on tight to your coffee mug because here’s the fun part. The coffee beans are eaten by wild cats called civets. The cats don’t chew the beans, they swallow them whole.
Something about the cats’ digestive juices impacts the beans in a richly positive way. Then, of course, the beans are … how shall we say … released for production. Farmers come along and collect this production and then remove the coffee beans from the poop.
One presumes these digested beans are thoroughly cleaned and dried. Kopi Luwak fans pay big bucks for a pound of these beans, which they say produce the most delicious aromatic coffee that’s not as bitter as most coffee.
That’s not as bad as the chocolate pie in the movie The Help, but wouldn’t you like to know how someone ever came to discover that those beans made good coffee.
“Honey, look here at Tigger’s poop. Looks like berries in there. (long pause) I wonder how they’d taste?”
Our tip for entrepreneurs today is: find a coffee tree, climb it and eat a handful of beans. Who knows? You could make a cool million supplying a new flavor to Starbucks. All kidding aside, make sure you offer a product or service consumers need that they can’t get anywhere else.
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