The Covid-19 pandemic has had an impact on various sectors, including tourism in the Carita area which was temporarily closed. To generate income, the villagers of Sukarame, Carita, Pandeglang, process the abundant bananas in the village into banana chips and market them.
Unfortunately, “So far, the sales of banana chips are still done offline, while online sales are only done through broadcast messages through the Whatsapp application to relatives. Therefore, it is hoped that this community service activity from the FMNS Universitas Indonesia (UI) can help banana chip producers in improving the quality of banana chips brand, packaging, and selling of banana chips in Sukarame Village,” said Retno Lestari, head of the Community Service Team of Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences UI (FMNS) which socialized the development of banana chips with the Sukarame Banana Chips (SBC) brand.
This community service was conducted in collaboration with the Pandu Cendekia Foundation and the UI Scout team, supported by the UI Community Service and Empowerment Directorate. The activity was carried out by educating local residents through materials on good product packaging, the introduction of more practical cutting tools, and the introduction of online shop marketing strategies to how to create attractive broadcast messages about products. “We focus on socialization in improvising packaging and labels,” Retno said.
According to Retno, SBC banana chips have the advantage of being thinner and crisper. Eton, a community member in Sukarame Village, also explained that bananas in Sukarame Village have increased during the pandemic, so innovations were made by the community to process them. These banana chips are made using green bananas, kepok bananas, and horn bananas.
Processing is adapted to local wisdom, so that the banana chips produced have a distinctive texture and taste. Eton also added that the main obstacle in the processing of banana chips is the declining selling price of bananas, but the increasing price of oil, which leads to higher capital costs.
“I hope this activity can raise the awareness of villagers that the economic potential of the village is very large to be processed. We as residents also hope that this activity can increase the sales of our banana chips by encouraging us to continue to make improvements,” said Eton.
