Billing for your dairy shop in Bihar
The litre of milk, the pot of curd and the tea stall's weekly account, all written once.
Cattle, cane and makhana: what feeds a Bihar dairy
A dairy in Bihar buys from villages whose fields feed the cattle and sells to towns with festivals of their own.
- The Sonepur cattle fair in Saran is held each November on Kartik Purnima, where the Ganges meets the Gandak, and is one of the biggest cattle fairs in Asia.
- Samastipur has many sugar mills, and sugar is what the tea stall and the sweet shop of the district both buy.
- Darbhanga is famous for its trade in fish, mango and makhana, and makhana is cooked into a milk kheer.
- Tilkut, the festival sweet of roasted sesame seeds and jaggery, is Gaya's product on the One District One Product list.
- In East Champaran, farming is the main income, with rice and sugar cane as the major crops.
What a Bihar dairy counter keeps on its phone
Bills on your phone
A bill with a clay pot of curd for Sankranti, a litre of milk and a kulhad of mattha, each at its own rate on one slip.
Sell to other businesses
The sweet maker applies to buy milk from you by the can on credit, and his cans are kept on a page apart from the walk-in sales.
Low stock warnings
The clay pots counted down as the curd is set, so on the second morning of the rush you know it is time to ask the potter for another lot.
Online orders
Festival milk for kheer ordered from your own online shop a day early, with the litres written in.
Daily reports
Litres sold as milk and pots sold as curd on each day, so you set only as many pots as the evening usually leaves.
From the first can at dawn to the last clay cup of lassi
The Sankranti curd counted pot by pot
Keep curd as its own item by the pot and by the kilo, and set the number of pots you filled as its stock. Each pot you sell comes off that count, so in the middle of the morning rush you know how many are left on the shelf and can tell the next family honestly that the last ones are promised.
The sweet maker's milk, by the can, on a page of its own
The halwai who cooks khoa and kheer for the Sankranti weeks buys milk by the can, not by the litre. Give him a page, with each can and its day. In those weeks it is the first page you open when you plan the morning's cans, and he settles after the sweets sell.
The litres promised for kheer, known the night before the can is opened
A can promised twice on a festival morning is a quarrel at the counter. With the orders in the night before, you know the litres for the kheer family and for the sweet maker before the can is opened. Set each aside; the rest is for the counter.
Sankranti's curd pots, and a tea stall that pays on Saturday
Curd pots for Makar Sankranti, set the night before and counted by hope
Around Makar Sankranti every house wants curd for dahi-chura, and the dairy shop that sold two pots on an ordinary day is asked for twenty. You buy clay pots in a lot from the potter, set the curd at night, and by morning you cannot say how many will have set well. Some pots go to the family that ordered first, some to the one that shouted loudest, and nobody has written down which.
The bus-stand stall wants four litres before the first bus, and a different boy comes each day
The tea stall near the bus stand needs four litres before the first bus leaves, and the stall across the road wants three, so the can is opened while the lane is still dark. A different boy comes for it each morning, and the owner who pays you on Saturday has seen few of them take it.
Festival weeks, when families want milk by the can
Before Chhath and Diwali a family wants five litres for kheer, a halwai wants a full can for sweets, and the usual customers still want their half litre. The morning's milk is gone by eight and the cans are promised twice. Without a list of who asked for what, you disappoint the family that ordered first.
What dairy shop owners in Bihar ask
In which weeks does my curd sell the most, Sankranti or the hot weeks of mattha?
Open the daily report and read the weeks side by side. It shows the curd sold on each day, so you can see which weeks lift it most and plan your pots and your buttermilk to them.
The potter brings clay pots for the Sankranti curd. How do I order them and note what came?
Send the potter your order for the pots from the phone. When he brings them, note what came against the order, and the count of pots goes up by that number. The pot count then goes down as you set the curd.
A different boy comes from the bus-stand stall each day and says the can was short. How do I show the owner?
Send each bill on WhatsApp to the owner, not the boy. He sees the litres, and a short can is settled by the bill.
Bihar's milk cooperatives behind the dairy counter
COMFED sells milk under the Sudha brand through eight milk unions that cover all districts of Bihar. A dairy shop in any district sells beside a milk network that reaches every one of them.
Bihar has 32,244 village dairy cooperative societies with 14.85 lakh farmer members who supply milk to COMFED. That is a great deal of milk already moving through the villages, and a dairy shop that buys straight from a farmer works beside it.