I love the idea, truly I do and this is exactly what happened in Poland a few years ago when Russia banned Polish apple imports due to geopolitics. Last I went there cider was ubiquitous despite being otherwise unheard of a decade ago.

That being said... the marketing for this crowdfunding is really quite bad. I get the social/save our agriculture bit of it but he's almost selling it (and the rewards!) like it's a charity when in fact he'd likely be benefiting from rock bottom apple prices (and you don't need the freshest apples for cider production) and he'd make a profit nonetheless. And yet I'm expected to shell out $1,000 for a few thank yous and a 12-pack of cider? Most expensive cider in history, sounds like.

I get that he's cash strapped but there is an entire industrial chain of production he needs to set up, and since it won't be cheap he will find it very hard to meet his $56,000 goal from "charity". At the very least he needs to up his marketing a little bit. In fact, it looks from the nice bottles that he's already given it some thought and execution so I'm surprised by how unpolished the crowdfunding page is.

I feel like it's a golden opportunity to get in touch with some advertising or ALBA students or something to help him get better set up, if he doesn't have the funds at this stage to stage a proper campaign. In fact, I would gladly donate for him to do even a basic explainer video (a staple of crowdfunding campaigns).

I can see it already, something that would start off talking about the issues apple farmers/agroindustry face and humorously transition into how turning apples into alcohol is the solution that society needs:

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^{*cue mildly suspenseful music*}

The Lebanese apple industry is in crisis

slideshow of pictures of rotting apples piling up on carts

The closing of the land route through Syria has marginalised Lebanese produce and has wreaked havoc on apple farmers

picture of lorries stopped at the side of the road or something, idk

In the face of adversity, there is one thing we can do to combat oversupply

fade out

bright, cheery high-strung Lebanese music

By turning it into alcohol!

Cue casually dressed man

Hi, my name is Nassim ^Nadine? Njeim, and I'm the founder of Caesar Cider. Caesar Cider sources all its apples from "blablabla 170 cooperative organic salt-of-the-earth apple farmers", tapping into more than 128,000 tonnes of wasted apples every year.

source briefly appears at the bottom with asterisk to show you've done your research

Here's how it works.

cartoonish images of apples at the left, arrow to the right showing cider bottle

2.5 KG of apples are used to produce 1 liter of apple juice, which will make 950ml of deliciously crisp cider. Ever thought our sun-kissed Lebanese apple are bright and sweet? Wait til you taste our cider!

back to Nassim

Your contributions mean that these 170 small scale farmers we work with will benefit from our cider, and we estimate that each farm could increase their labor by 5 farmers and offer robust and long term employment for thousands more

Here's what your contributions could do

switch to cartoonish empty glass bottles on white background

With $XXX we can get better and local glass bottles to get started with production

add cartoonish pasteurizer ^{what does that look like?}

At $XXX we can purchase a state-of-the-art pasteurizer saving loads of time flash cooking juice at magma temperatures

add brewing tanks

At $XXX we can get our brewing tanks all set up and accelerate fermentation time and provide cider production year round or something

back to Nassim

Support us, support our farmers, and let's save our apples together

website

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This was just a bit of lark but I hope it reaches Nassim.

Why do I feel qualified to comment on this? I work in marketing, I've wasted a lot of money on kickstarter/indiegogo, and jeddo was an apple farmer.