Billing for your restaurant in Manipur
A thali, one more fish curry and a QR at the table: the whole meal on one bill.
Tools for a kitchen that cooks eromba and fried fish daily
UPI payments
The visitor from outside the state who has no change scans a QR on the table, and his payment is written against that table's bill.
Online orders
In the Sangai days a group's lunch order arrives on your phone from your own shop page, with the quantity of each dish, so the kitchen cooks to numbers and not to a shout.
Daily reports
Fish thali plates and vegetable thali plates on separate rows for the ten festival days.
Why the Sangai week fills every table and empties the cook's patience
Ten days when strangers fill the tables
The annual Manipur Sangai Festival was scheduled for 21 to 30 November in 2022, and its promotion highlighted local cuisine. In such days visitors who have never eaten eromba sit down and ask what is in the thali. Orders come faster than anyone can write them, and at the counter the slips of one table get mixed with another's. By the third day the cook is working from a pile of slips, and the cashier is adding them by candle-light of a phone torch when the power goes.
The ngari that runs out at the busiest hour
At the busiest hour the kitchen runs short of an ingredient, and the cook shouts that eromba is off. The cashier has already written two orders for it. Slips are crossed out, a guest waits, and nobody wrote what was sold before it ran out. The Ima who sits at a stall near the restaurant orders a thali at noon and pays after the afternoon sales, and the slip for her is the one most often lost.
The dawn shopping for the kitchen, and no sum at night
Fish, vegetables and rice for the day are bought early, often in cash and often from the same few sellers. By closing the cook knows what was left in the pot but not which dish sold most, and tomorrow's buying is a repeat of today's. Without a count of plates, the cook cannot tell a slow day from a day when the best dish was gone by two. The cook buys again tomorrow from habit, and a dish that never sold keeps coming back to the pot.
From the extra plate of rice to the office lunch paid at month end
Two brothers at one long table, two bills, and the table is free
On the feast evening the long table seats two brothers and their sisters' families, and the seats are wanted again. Open two bills under the table's name, so each brother has his total the moment the last plate is cleared and the table can rise. The next family sits down without waiting for a sum.
What the strangers asked for in the Sangai days and what the neighbours ordered
The daily report shows how many plates of each dish went out. Read the Sangai days beside an ordinary week. The dishes the strangers asked for climb, and the neighbours' plates stay as they were. You see which dishes belong to the visitors and which to the street. A pot of ngari scraped clean in the Sangai days is a pot to note, and one left half full in an ordinary week is a pot to cook less of. A cook who reads the plates by dish does not guess from the pot.
The noon rush of market women, each plate billed in seconds
At noon the women of the market come in all at once and eat in a hurry. A bill takes seconds, so each plate is billed as she sits down and the next one is served, and nobody leaves without paying because the queue was long.
Where a Manipur kitchen finds its vegetables and fish
The thali is built from what the nearby markets and hills send to the kitchen.
- At Ima Keithel in Imphal West, about 3,000 'Imas' sell vegetables, fruits and fish on one side of the market.
- Bishnupur's district headquarters is popular for hill-grown oranges, yongchak (tree-bean) and vegetables.
- Senapati's farmers grow cabbage and potato on terraces, among other crops, in a district that is 80% forest.
- Moreh, the international trade centre of Manipur, lies at the southern end of Chandel, a border district with Myanmar.
Questions Manipur restaurant owners ask
A visitor asks for eromba with extra ngari, a dish on no list. Can I add it while he waits?
Yes. Add the dish with its name and rate, put it on his bill, and it stays on your list for the next visitor who asks.
A visitor wants eromba with extra ngari. Can the extra be billed?
Yes. Make the extra ngari its own item, kept as stock by the spoon. Each bill takes its spoons off, so you see how much ngari the evening's erombas used.
An Ima from a stall near me eats a thali at noon and pays after the afternoon sales. Where does her bill wait?
On a page of her own, with the day. She pays after the afternoon sales, so the noon thali stays on the page until that evening. You write the payment against it the day she clears it.
What a Manipuri plate holds
A typical Manipuri meal has eromba, boiled vegetables mashed with king chilli and roasted fermented fish (ngari), eaten with rice. Each part of it is a separate item on a bill, if the table asks for a second helping.
Fish curry and fried fish are found on any given day in Manipur, and stir-fried vegetables are a compulsory item in a Manipuri thali. A kitchen that cooks them every day sells them every day.