Billing for your bakery or sweet shop in Himachal Pradesh
Sweets named for where they were made, the bread round to the shops and the cake orders, all on your phone.
Made here or brought up the hill? Bread rounds and the New Year weekend at a Himachal bakery
Made here, or brought up from the plains?
A customer picks up a piece of barfi and asks whether it was made in this shop or came up the hill in a box. You know, because you stirred the pan yourself, but your other sweets came in a carton from a wholesaler. The tray looks the same, the price card says only barfi, and you answer the question from memory fifty times a day. A customer who doubts the answer buys a box from the bigger shop down the road.
The bread round to the shops up the road
Every morning the loaves and rusks go out to the small shops along the road, and the shops pay when they can. You write what went on a slip, the slip goes with the boy who carries the tray, and the tray comes back empty. By the end of the week no shop agrees with your total and the boy is the one who is blamed.
The New Year weekend, when the town fills with cake orders
In the last days of the year the hill town fills with visitors, and every second one wants a cake. Orders come by phone, by hand and by word through the hotel kitchen, all for the same two days. By the afternoon of the thirty-first you are not sure which cakes are promised to whom, and the oven only holds so many at once.
What a hill bakery keeps on the phone, from the first loaf to the last cake box
Sell to other businesses
The bread round's shops apply to buy on credit and you approve them. Each shop's page shows the loaves loaded for it, so the boy's slip and the page agree when he comes back.
Online orders
Cake orders from visitors, made on your own online shop page before they reach the town, arriving on your phone in a list.
Orders to suppliers
Flour, sugar and ghee ordered before the holiday weeks, with each delivery ticked off as the lorry unloads.
Shimla's bazaars, Kangra's tea valley and the Mandi crossroads, as a sweet shop hears of them
A sweet shop in the hills hears about other towns from the people who stop for a box, and these are the facts they talk about.
- Shimla's main shopping areas are The Mall, Lower Bazaar for daily items, Tibetan Bazaar for imported electronics and fancy items, and Lakkar Bazaar for wooden crafts.
- Kangra's economy is mostly farming, with tea a vital crop around Palampur and Baijnath. Bir Billing is a growing hub for ecotourism and aero sports.
- Mandi town sits where National Highways 20, 21 and 70 meet, and the whole district depends on it for trade and commerce.
The sweet named for its kitchen, the shops that buy bread and the cake ordered from the plains
Each sweet named for the kitchen it came from
Name the item the way you say it at the counter, such as barfi made here or peda from the wholesaler, each with its own rate. The bill carries that name, so the customer reads where it came from, and you stop answering the same question fifty times a day.
The shops on the bread round apply, and you decide
The small shops along the road apply to buy from you on credit, and you decide which ones. Each shop has its own page with its orders and what it owes, in one place. The tray comes back with no argument about a slip, because the page is the slip.
Cake orders that arrive before the visitor does
Share your online shop page with the hotels and guesthouses of the town. A visitor picks the cake and the day from it, the order comes to your phone, and the thirty-first is a list you can read at six in the morning and not a crowd you meet at noon.
What bakery and sweet shop owners in Himachal ask
The trays look the same whether they were made here or brought up. What do I say to a customer who doubts?
Open the supplier's page for that tray and show him the day it came up the hill. A tray with no arrival noted for it was made in your own kitchen.
The bread boy is blamed when a shop says the tray was short. What can I show?
Enter the bread you load on the tray as that shop's bill when it leaves. The shop's page has the count that went, with the day, so the slip in the boy's hand and the page agree.
The oven holds only so many cakes at once, and the New Year orders come in for more. How do I plan the bakes?
Read the orders as one list and set them against what the oven holds. The orders beyond one bake go to the next day's bake, and you tell the hotel which day its cake comes.
Festival sweets and food testing in Kullu
In the festive season a Food Safety on Wheels mobile lab tested 138 food samples in Kullu, and 13 enforcement samples of food and sweets went to a laboratory. The sweets of the festival weeks are the ones that get tested.
A Kullu resident told The Tribune that most of the sweets sold during Diwali there come from neighbouring states, so strict food-safety checks are needed. A shop that makes its own sweets can say so, item by item, on its bill.