Billing for your dairy and milk shop in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Every packet counted from the first customer of the morning, and every family's month on its own page.
What the dairy shelf owes to the harbour
Even a milk counter has a long line behind it.
- Port Blair has the Haddo, Wharf and Chatham harbours for ships to the mainland, about 1,190 km from Chennai and 1,255 km from Kolkata. Whatever on a dairy shelf the islands do not make comes through them.
- Trade in copra, dried coconut kernel, has long been the mainstay of the Nicobar islands, which depended almost entirely on copra exports for outside goods (2010 report). A dairy shop in the Nicobar islands sells to people whose trade has long been coconut.
The morning queue for packed milk and a notebook of ticks
When the van's crate is all the packed milk until the ship comes
When the ship is late, the packets on the shelf are all the packed milk the island has. Every packet that goes to the first person in the lane is one less for the family with an account. By seven you are choosing between neighbours, and nobody wrote down who got what. The family with an account is the one that remembers it, and tells the lane. Write down who took a packet as it goes, and the evening has an answer.
Fresh milk, packed milk and curd in one breath
Customers ask for fresh milk, packed milk and curd in the same breath, and each has its own rate and its own unit. Fresh comes in a can, packed in a crate, curd in a cup. The sum is done while the next person in line is already holding out the money. Curd is cut and weighed, milk is counted, and the cup you pour is not the cup you weigh.
A packet every morning, a payment at the month's end
Dozens of families take one packet or two each day and settle once a month. The notebook has a row of ticks for each, and a month later a tick looks the same whether it is a packet, a curd cup or a mistake. The settling is slow and, for the family, annoying. When a family is away for a week the tick is not rubbed out, and the question of that week comes up on settling day. The ticks look alike, and a month of mornings needs a better memory than yours.
Tools for a milk counter that sells by the packet, the cup and the hundred grams
Credit book (khata)
The family on a packet every morning has a page of daily bills, so at the month's end the page is the account and the row of ticks is gone.
Online orders
A family orders tomorrow's packets and a cup of curd from the shop's own page tonight, and the order is waiting at the shutter.
Low stock warnings
When the crate gets thin, the person at the front of the lane is offered curd, and is not made to wait for a packet that is not there.
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A count of packets that reads the same at seven and at noon
The shutter goes up on a number
At opening the count of packets is what the van left. By the time the shutter goes up you know what the morning has to sell, and you can tell the first people in the lane at once whether there is enough, instead of finding out at the sixth customer.
At seven the account families are served first
By seven the packets are going to family pages and to people paying on the spot, in turn. Open the pages of the account families who have not come yet and keep a packet or two back for them before the lane takes the last, so a regular is not the one left standing at the empty crate.
The day's litres reconciled at closing
At closing, the litres taken in are set beside the litres billed. When the ship is late and the shelf is thin, a small gap matters more: it is a spilled packet, or a packet handed over without a bill, and you see it that evening.
Questions island dairy and milk shops ask
Packets sell out by seven when the ship is late. How do I see which families took one that morning?
Every bill goes on the family's page with its date, so the morning's bills are the list of who took a packet. The count of packets left is on the item.
Fresh milk is scarce here and powder milk is not. How do I tell a customer which one she is taking?
Say which one she takes before the bill, and let her choose. Her choice is on the bill, and the fresh count tells you when the fresh is gone.
The plant's slip says more packets than I count when the van is unloaded. Which number do I keep?
The count you made at the shutter. Note it against the plant, and the shelf starts from what was really unloaded. The slip stays on the plant's page, so the gap is read there and not argued at the counter.
Fresh milk, powder milk and the plant at Port Blair
The islands need about 4,500 litres of milk a day; only 2,200 litres is fresh milk and the rest is made from reconstituted milk powder. A dairy shop sits in the gap between what the islands need and what they milk.
ANIIDCO's Port Blair milk plant can process 8,000 litres a day and makes pasteurised milk, curd, paneer and khoa, with surplus milk brought from North and Middle Andaman. A shop that buys from the plant takes in several products on one delivery.