A Jamaican herbal brew holds promise for the good Professor\u2019s errant entrepreneur friend.<\/p>\n
Last week, I was somewhat startled by Prinz Charlz, our local herbal entrepreneur, knocking at my window.\u00a0 I invited him in for a cup of tea as his economic activities always make for fascinating listening.\u00a0 As he sat down, I noticed the tag on his ankle.\u00a0 He explained that he was on probation and had sold the idea of his new business venture, \u2018community herbalism\u2019, as his route to going straight to his new \u2018woke\u2019 probation officer, Niamh.<\/p>\n
He had noticed the craze for fermenting and, using his contacts in Jamaica, imported traditional fermented products from the Caribbean, which became very popular. The top sellers aimed to address erectile dysfunction, a traditional focus of many of these products.<\/p>\n
\nThis business model faced a setback when our local farmers\u2019 market-imposed tariffs on stalls selling products that were not strictly local.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
However, this business model faced a setback when our local farmers\u2019 market-imposed tariffs on stalls selling products that were not strictly local. This was Charlz\u2019s main route to market, so he had to swiftly develop his domestic production capacity. This is where Thomas, my helpful husband, came to his aid and lent him his shed, which quickly filled with jars of fermenting vegetables and spices, putting his business back on track.\u00a0 Replicating the Jamaican products was luckily not too difficult, thanks to recipes on the interweb found by his AI assistant.<\/p>\n
The following Saturday, I decided to visit our farmers\u2019 market to see his new business for myself. I arrived to find a wall of noise created by a group of leathery old rockers, claiming to be a tribute band to the Rolling Stones. The eponymous band would probably not have counted their performance as a tribute.\u00a0 They were stumbling around the stage, producing jarring noise, and most of the lyrics were unintelligible.<\/p>\n
One band member, for no discernible reason, began a chant of \u201cdeath, death, death to IVF.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I arrived at Charlz\u2019s stall to find him looking quite worried. He told me that this group had bought a substantial selection of his products, and it seemed they were the worse for wear as a result.\u00a0 He claimed this was not the effect his products were meant to create.<\/p>\n
At that moment, one band member, for no discernible reason, began a chant of \u2018death, death, death to IVF\u2019 which went on interminably until someone thankfully pulled the plug on the band to everyone\u2019s relief.\u00a0 His probation officer, Niamh O\u2019Sullivan, felt she had to report the band to a local council office present on the basis that it was offensive to the many women likely to be present seeking fertility treatment.<\/p>\n
Now, Charlz\u2019s herbal remedies are under investigation by trading standards, and Niahm is considering recommending that he be sent back to prison.\u00a0 Luckily Niahm\u2019s partner had tried many of Charlz\u2019s products without ill effect, so Charlz is hoping that he can weather this storm and reformulate his products to avoid any recurrence of this type of fiasco.\u00a0 Sensing a growing market, he is exploring \u2018fermentation for fertility\u2019 as a potential diversification. This only demonstrates that the road to business success is never easy, and I do so admire our entrepreneurial heroes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Jamaican herbal brew holds promise for the good Professor\u2019s errant entrepreneur friend. Last week, I was somewhat startled by Prinz Charlz, our local herbal entrepreneur, knocking at my window.\u00a0 … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1521,2823,221],"class_list":["post-130620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","tag-drug-trade","tag-june-2025","tag-verity-bastion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}