Billing for your sweet shop and bakery in Gujarat
The Dussehra queue, the Diwali boxes and the morning bake, each counted on the phone.
Ahmedabad's night food lanes, Bhavnagar ganthiya and Banaskantha milk behind a Gujarat sweet shop
Three places a Gujarat sweet shop hears about from its customers.
- Manek Chowk in Ahmedabad is a vegetable market in the morning, one of India's largest gold, silver and jewellery markets by day, and a food market at night.
- Bhavnagar is an important trade city, 50 km from Alang, the world's largest ship-breaking yard, and is famous for its ganthiya snack.
- Banaskantha is Gujarat's largest potato producer, and Banas Dairy at Palanpur, sold under the Amul brand, is Asia's largest dairy cooperative.
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The sambharo counted with the fafda, the ghari list ready at the shutter, the dawn fry set against the evening tray
Sambharo and chutney counted as packs, beside the fafda that takes them
Make the papaya sambharo and the chutney items counted in packs. When a kilo of fafda goes on the bill, the packs go on with it, and the count of each falls as the queue moves. At seven the phone says how many packs are left, and the kitchen mixes another tub before the stack runs out.
The ghari orders as a list at the shutter, not a pile of slips
On Chandi Padvo morning the boxes are packed against each family's name and the weight it asked for, and the family that ordered for three houses finds three boxes waiting. Nobody at the shutter sorts through slips to find them.
The dawn fry set against the evening tray
Each morning add the kilos of gathiya, sev and chevdo you fried as stock. Every bill takes its kilos off. At closing the phone says what is left in the trays, and the gap between what went in and what went out shows how much was left to go soft. Tomorrow's frying is sized from that gap.
Fafda without its sambharo, a Chandi Padvo ghari order and farsan gone soft by evening
Dussehra dawn: every kilo of fafda leaves with its sambharo and chutney
Fafda goes out by the kilo, and with each kilo go a pack of papaya sambharo and a pack of green chutney. Neither is on any slip. The kitchen makes them in a tub before sunrise and runs out at nine, when the queue is still at the corner, because no one could tell how many packs the first hundred kilos had taken.
Chandi Padvo, the one morning Surat comes for ghari
The day after Sharad Purnima, families in and around Surat want ghari, the rich sweet that goes with the night's moon. Orders are taken by phone and on slips for days, by the kilo and by the half kilo, and on the morning the pile of slips is higher than the pile of boxes. A family that ordered for three houses finds one box short.
Farsan fried at dawn, sold by the pav, soft by the evening
Gathiya, sev and chevdo are fried fresh in the early hours and sold from open trays by the pav and the half kilo. By evening what is left has gone soft, and the owner marks it down by feel. At closing nobody can say how many kilos were fried, how many sold at the fresh rate and how many at the lower one.
What a Gujarat mithai counter keeps on its phone, from the Dussehra dawn to Chandi Padvo
Bills on your phone
A bill that names the fafda by the kilo, the jalebi by the piece and the sambharo and chutney packs, handed over the table in seconds.
Online orders
Ghari ordered from the shop's own page in the days before Chandi Padvo, arriving as a list the owner reads at the shutter.
Low stock warnings
A warning on besan and frying oil, the two things the Dussehra dawn fry cannot start without, so the order is asked for while there is still a day to wait for it.
Daily reports
The kilos of fafda and jalebi on Dussehra morning, set beside the sambharo packs that went with them, so next year's pack count starts from this year's.
Credit book (khata)
The head of the family pays for the ghari of three houses once, after Chandi Padvo, and each box stays dated on his page.
Questions Gujarat sweet shops and bakeries ask about Dussehra, Diwali boxes and the morning bake
On Chandi Padvo a family orders ghari for three houses. Can each house's box be on its own bill?
Yes. Put the three bills under the family's page, each naming its house and its weight. When someone comes for one of them, you open that bill and the other two stay as they were.
Families buy fafda-jalebi on Dussehra for the whole house. Can I make a standard pack one item?
Yes. On Dussehra morning the queue at the shutter is long, and the helper taps the pack of fafda and jalebi for four with its rate. The pack count at night tells how many families you served.
On Dussehra morning the queue is long and the sambharo ends. How do I find out how far into the queue it lasted?
Open that morning's bills in the order they were made. The last bill with the sambharo on it shows how deep into the queue the pots lasted, and next year you fill more of them before the shutter goes up.
Fafda-jalebi on Dussehra in Ahmedabad: the morning in numbers
On Dussehra it is customary in Ahmedabad to eat fafda-jalebi, and an estimated 8 lakh kg of it is consumed in the city that day. Almost the whole city buying the same two sweets on one morning is what a counter has to prepare for.
More than 10,000 fafda-jalebi counters are set up in Ahmedabad for Dussehra, selling at 15 to 20 rupees a piece. A shop with a proper counter competes with all of them on the same morning.
On Dussehra 2020 long queues formed outside prominent fafda, jalebi and cholafali shops, as people in Gujarat buy crores of rupees of them that day. A queue at the shop door is a normal sight on that morning.