Billing for your organic store in Karnataka
Millets by the kilo, oil by the litre and each farmer's lot, written down as you sell it.
Tools for a counter of millets, jaggery and cold-pressed oil
Bills on your phone
A bill for a hostel's monthly order of millets, with the weights in kilos on every line, sent to the warden's phone for him to check.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the farmer group for ragi after threshing, with the date it is expected written beside the order, so the last kilos on the shelf are stretched to that date.
Offers for regular customers
An offer for the household that has bought millets from you every month, so a loyal customer is recognised at the counter.
What a Karnataka organic shelf carries that no other shelf does
Oil from a drum, flour from a sack and honey in a jar
A customer asks for half a litre of cold-pressed oil, a kilo of ragi and a small jar of honey in one visit. The shop sums it all on a paper slip, one line for the oil, one for the ragi, one for the honey. The slip goes into a drawer with the others, and the customer leaves with a number and no paper of her own.
Farmer groups deliver when the harvest allows, not when the shelf is empty
The farmers who supply an organic shop work to the season. Ragi comes when the crop is threshed, jaggery when the pans are boiled, and cold-pressed oil when the mill has a free day. The shelf can be empty for a week and full for the next. The owner has to remember which group promised what for when, and a promise that is only in memory is easy to lose.
Flour and oil that do not keep like rice does
Cold-pressed oil does not like a long wait on the shelf. A shop that buys a big lot to get a better price is left with an old sack in the corner, while a shop that buys small runs out before the next delivery. The monthly customer for the family's millets is the one you cannot afford to disappoint, and the one most likely to be told that the stock has finished.
Farm districts of Karnataka that an organic store hears about
An organic store buys from farm districts, and each district's farming tells you what the farmer can bring.
- In Ballari, 75% of workers depend on farming, in a district that also holds 25% of India's iron ore reserves and has JSW's Vijayanagar steel works at Toranagallu.
- Kalaburagi is famous for toor dal (pigeon pea), and the district also has large limestone deposits.
- Dakshina Kannada is famous for cashew nuts and cashew products, and for red clay roof tiles called Mangalore tiles.
- Tumakuru district has 9 APMC market yards, at Tumakuru, Tiptur, Gubbi, Sira, Huliyar, Pavagada, Madhugiri, Kunigal and Turuvekere, which is where a farmer in that district may take produce to sell.
The farmer's name on the lot and the same basket every month
The promise to a farmer group lives only in your head
A farmer group brings its lot when the crop is threshed, not on a day anyone fixed, and what you said you would take sits only in your head. When the lot comes, the group is waiting with its sacks and you are serving customers, so what you agreed gets said in a hurry and written nowhere.
The jowar of the north and the ragi of the south on one shelf
Karnataka eats two different staples, jowar for rotti in the north and ragi for mudde in the south, and a shop in a town between them sells both. Keep each as its own item with its own rate and count. A family from the north asks for jowar by the kilo and a family from the south for ragi, and the bill names what each asked for.
The city flat's order for millets, taken on the shop's own online page
A family in a city flat orders ragi, jowar and a tin of oil on your shop's own online page. You weigh the ragi and the jowar, measure the oil, and bill all three. The bill goes to her phone, and the packet goes with it.
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Questions Karnataka organic store owners ask
Flour goes stale sooner than rice. How do I know which sack is the oldest?
Write the week it came in into the name of each flour sack. The stock list then shows the oldest sack by its name, and you open that one first. A newer sack is never sold from the front while the old one waits at the back.
A customer wants to know what she bought last time, from which farmer. Can I find it?
Yes. Her earlier bills show the item names you gave, and the farmer is in the name. You can read out last month's lot in a few seconds.
Can I see which farmer's lot of jaggery sold out first?
Yes. Each lot is its own item named with the farmer and the season, so the report shows which one went first and which stayed on the shelf.
Three hundred stalls and two decades of organic farming
Karnataka's three-day Organics and Millets trade fair in Bengaluru from 23 January 2025 had over 300 stalls, bringing together farmers, farmer groups, companies and agencies. For a store owner it is a place to meet the farmers whose lots sit on the shelf.
Karnataka has promoted organic farming for two decades and held its first organics and millets trade fair in 2017, the agriculture minister said in January 2025. The shops that sell organic goods now work in a state that has been backing the idea for a long time.