Billing for your bakery and sweet shop in Goa
The first batch gone in minutes, a cake ordered for Sunday and a tea stall that pays on Saturday.
From a counted tray to a rusk packet with a count of its own
The poder's bread loaded before dawn and counted when the basket comes back
The pao leaves with the delivery boy before the shop opens, on the round to the lanes that take their bread from this bakery. Make a bill on each lane's page as the pao is handed over. When the basket is back, what is left is counted against what went, and tomorrow's baking is made from that count.
A Carnival party's trays of patties and sweets, billed to the host and settled after the parade
A street party orders trays of patties, rolls and sweets for the whole lane in Carnival week. Open a page in the host's name and bill the trays to it as they leave the bakery. The host pays when the parade is over, and the page shows what was sent and what is still to be paid.
Yesterday's loaves dried into rusks, and whether they pay
What is left of yesterday's pao is dried in the oven and packed as rusks. Give the packet its own rate and put in the packets you fill, and every sale takes one off. At the week's end the report shows how many packets went, so the owner knows whether the rusks pay and bakes the fresh bread to match.
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Why a Goa bakery cannot say how many pao went by eight, what is left of the bebinca or what became of yesterday's bread
The first batch is gone before the second is out of the oven
Fresh pao comes out of the oven in batches, and the counter empties as fast as it fills. Customers take two, a dozen or a bagful, and the owner or his boy calls out the amount and takes the money, with one hand for the tongs and one for the cash box. The late customers are told it is finished and walk to the bakery down the lane.
A whole bebinca cut into slices, and nobody counts what is left of the cake
A layered bebinca takes hours to make and is sold whole on order and by the slice at the counter. Once a whole one is cut, the shop has slices and not a cake, and the cake that was counted in the morning is a tray of pieces by noon. By evening the owner cannot say whether the pieces on the tray are three-quarters of a cake or whether a slice went home with the boy. The boy who cuts the bebinca is blamed, and he did nothing wrong.
Yesterday's pao, dried in the oven and sold as rusks, and nobody knows how many
Bread that does not sell by the second day is sliced and dried in the oven and sold as rusks in paper packets. The rusks are a good use of yesterday's loaves, but the shop writes down neither how many loaves went into them nor how many packets came out. At the week's end the owner cannot say whether the rusks earned anything, or whether the shop would have done better to bake less.
Tools for an oven, a glass counter and a tea stall down the lane
Bills on your phone
Pao by the piece and by the dozen and a slice of cake by the piece, added on the phone while the next customer's hand is already out.
Online orders
Plum cake and bebinca each listed on the bakery's own page with its rate, so a family far from the village looks before it phones. The order that comes in names the day the family will collect it.
Daily reports
The pao read batch by batch in the first hours, so you see at nine which batch ran out and make tomorrow's first batch bigger.
What a Goa bakery owner asks before starting
The poder says he took fewer loaves than my page shows. What do I do?
Look at the load written when the basket went out. If he still says it differs, write his count on his page as he gives it and the difference beside it, and settle it at the next round. The page keeps both numbers, so the talk does not start again.
A family orders a whole bebinca for the Christmas table. Does it come off the same count as the slices?
No. A whole bebinca for the Christmas table is baked layer by layer, so it is ordered ahead and its count is its own. The slices at the counter come from another bake, with their own count.
Rusks need the oven lit a second time. How do I know how many loaves went into one batch?
Read the day's pao line for what was left, and put in the packets you fill on the rusk item. After a few batches the two numbers show how many loaves one batch of packets takes.
Christmas sweets and the bakery in every village
At Christmas Goan homes make plum cake, dodol, bebinca, kol kol, dos and neureo, and cake and pastry shops take advance orders. A shop that takes such orders can put each one on the customer's page, with the day she will come.
A Herald editorial says Goa has two or more bakeries in every village, and poders cycle the lanes at dawn selling pao and poie, paid in coins or notes at the doorstep. For a bakery with a neighbour down the lane, the coins and notes of the dawn round come back as one day's takings.