Billing for your sweet shop and bakery in Kerala
Halwa by weight, snacks by the piece and the cake booked for Christmas, on one bill on your phone.
From the first tray of snacks to the Christmas cake pickup
One flavour's rate moves and the others stay
Halwa is made in flavours, and they do not all cost the same. The coconut-oil halwa feels the oil at once, while a flavour with more sugar feels the sugar. So when one input moves, only the flavours that use it more get a new rate, and the board does not change all at once.
The cake booking, the advance and the pickup on one name
The advance on each family's page shows how many plum cake bookings are firm. The oven is lit for the cakes that will be collected on the 24th, and the dry fruit soaked weeks before is not wasted on bookings that melt away.
The packs on the counter decide tomorrow's filling
Halwa goes into packs, and the packs wait beside the QR code for the passer-by on the way to the bus. The number still on the counter at five tells you how many to fill tomorrow. A day when none are left asks for more, and a day with many left asks for fewer.
Why a Kerala bakery counter sells by the kilo, the piece and the booking
One counter, three ways of selling
A Kerala bakery sells halwa and chips by weight, cutlets, puffs and unniyappam by the piece, and cakes by the booking. One customer takes 250 grams of halwa, four puffs and a slice of cake, and you add three kinds of sums in your head while the queue waits. The tea-time hour is not the time for arithmetic.
The dry fruit is soaked long before the first cake is booked
The fruit for the plum cakes is soaked well before Christmas, long before most families have booked. You order the dry fruit and the sacks of sugar by guess. If the bookings fall short, the soaked fruit has nowhere to go; if they run over, there is none left to soak. Last year's number is in your head and in no book you can open.
The pickup hour of the 24th jams the door
Plum cakes are baked over the week and booked for the 24th, and nearly every family comes in the same hour of that afternoon. The queue blocks the door, the boxes look alike, and the one who cannot find his cake holds everybody up.
Halwa, dry fruits and cashew: where a Kerala sweet shop's trade comes from
A sweet shop in Kerala hears about the trade of every district from the people who come in.
- S.M. Street in Kozhikode is one of the busiest streets for sweets, textiles, electronics and spices, and the place to buy Kozhikode halwa.
- Broadway Market in Kochi is a busy wholesale market for spices and dry fruits, and Mattancherry Spice Market sells pepper, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon.
- Kollam lives on cashew processing and coir. The state cashew corporation runs 34 factories there and employs over 26,000 workers.
- Chalai in Thiruvananthapuram is called Kerala's oldest market, believed to go back to the 14th century.
Tools for a halwa and plum cake counter
Daily reports
Pieces and kilos side by side on one day's report: the cutlets and puffs by the piece beside the halwa by the kilo, so the tea-time hour and the evening halwa are read together.
Online orders
The Christmas cake page, with its sizes and rates, sent to the families who booked last year, so this year's booking reaches the phone before the week of the 24th.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the dry-fruit wholesaler before the plum cake season, and a note of what arrived, so the baking is not held up by a missing sack.
UPI payments
A QR code on the counter on the 24th, where the family that booked a plum cake in December pays what is left of the price and takes the box in the same minute.
Questions Kerala sweet and bakery owners ask
I bake the plum cakes in my own kitchen but buy the chips and some sweets from another maker. Can I see which brings in more?
Yes. Give each item its own name and rate, and the daily report lists them one by one. Add a day's cakes and a day's bought-in sweets and compare them yourself.
A family books a two-kilo plum cake and on the 24th asks for half a kilo more. How do I bill the difference?
The advance bill stays as it was. Make the second bill for the cake at the weight it was finally baked, with what was paid already counted against it, so the page shows both the booking and the final weight.
Cutlets and puffs sell in the tea-time hour. Can I see at four how many of each are left, so I know whether to make a second lot?
Yes. Each is an item with its own count, and every bill takes its pieces off. At four you read what is left of each and decide the second lot then.
How many kilos of dry fruit did last year's cake bookings call for, so that I know how much to soak?
Open the weeks before Christmas of last year and add up the cakes that were booked. The fruit you soaked for that number is where to start. Order the dry fruit to it, and adjust as this year's bookings come in.
Kozhikode halwa and the plum cake: what the Kerala bakery trade is known for
Kozhikode halwa is famous across Kerala. Unlike the Tirunelveli version made with ghee, it owes its taste to pure coconut oil, so a shop that sells it sells something its customers can tell from any other halwa.
Kerala has India's largest plum cake market, and the Mambally family runs top bakeries in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Kottayam and Thalassery. A small bakery that takes plum cake bookings in December works in the same market as those bakeries.