Billing for your sweet shop and bakery in Manipur
Gulla by the piece, a gift box for the feast and a shop that pays next week: all on your phone.
Sugarcane in Thoubal and the stalls of Ima Keithel: where a Manipur sweet is made
Sweets start with sugar, rice and the markets that sell them.
- Thoubal is Manipur's largest sugarcane producer, and Khangabok is famed for kouna (tule) handicrafts such as mats, stools, chairs and hand bags.
- Ima Keithel in Imphal West is an all-women market with about 3,000 'Imas' running stalls.
- Senapati's farmers grow paddy, maize, cabbage and potato on terraces, and the district is 80% forest.
Why the shelves empty before noon in the weeks around Ningol Chakouba
Shelves that are bare by noon
During festive seasons like Ningol Chakouba, demand for Leimalen Foods' products surges and shelves across the state quickly empty. At a smaller counter it is the same story. By noon the trays are bare, a regular asks for the box you promised her, and you cannot tell from memory which sweet went first or who was told to come back. A tray that was filled at six in the morning is gone by ten, and the customers at eleven see only the empty steel.
The same sweet loose, in a box and by the dozen
A piece of black-rice gulla has one price on its own, another in a gift box with puffed-rice sweets and a third by the dozen for a family. The box is packed in a hurry from several trays, and nobody counts what left each tray. At night the trays and the cash box do not agree. A mother who asked for her usual box on the morning of the feast expects it as it was last year, not as it can be packed from what is left.
A kitchen at home that now supplies shops across the city
When a few shops take your sweets to sell on, they pay once they have sold them, and each has its own way of counting. One box one day, three more a few days later and a payment in between sit on a slip each. When the shop owner comes to settle, you both try to remember how many boxes were left.
Tools for a counter of black-rice gulla and puffed-rice sweets
Low stock warnings
A warning on the black-rice gulla that reaches you before you promise a regular her box, not after, so the box is never promised from an empty tray.
Sell to other businesses
The shops that sell your boxes pay once they have sold them. Each shop's boxes and payments sit on one page of its own and not on three slips: one box one day, three more a few days later, and a payment in between.
Your own online shop
A kitchen page that lists the gulla boxes, so a family picks its box a week before Ningol Chakouba.
From the stock that falls with every box to the shop that pays next week
Each tray's count falls as the boxes are sold
Every bill takes its sweets off the stock, so at any hour you see how many gulla and how many puffed-rice sweets are left. Each tray's count also tells the kitchen which sweet to make first the next morning, so the first customers of the day find the tray they came for and not an empty glass.
The box that must be right the first time
On Ningol Chakouba evening the brother stands at the counter choosing for his sister's box, and she will carry it to her husband's house. A box that goes into another family's home is not brought back. He chooses the sweets one by one, and the box is tied only when he is content.
The mother's usual box on the feast morning
A mother asks for her usual box on the morning of the feast. Her page holds last year's box line by line, so you pack the same sweets from what the trays hold, and if one has run out you tell her at the counter, before she has stood in the queue.
Questions Manipur sweet makers and bakers ask
I sell gulla loose and also tied in a Ningol Chakouba gift box. Do I make two items?
Yes. The loose gulla and the festival gift box have their own rates. The box is the one that goes out on the feast morning, so its count is read before the loose pieces.
The gift box is packed in a hurry from several trays. How do the trays' counts stay true?
Put the box on the bill as its sweets: so many gulla, so many puffed-rice sweets, each a line from its own tray. Each tray's count then falls by what went into the box, and at night the trays and the cash box agree.
Gulla began as a Ningol Chakouba sweet but people ask for it all year. How do I see what the days after the festival look like?
Open the days after the feast and read the gulla row. If it keeps selling when the festival is over, it has become an everyday sweet and deserves a tray. If it falls to nothing within a week, it is still a festival sweet.
Chakhao Gulla and the Imphal kitchen that began it
Chakhao Gulla, a sweet made from Manipur's indigenous black rice, is made by Leimalen Foods in Imphal's Top Makha Leikai; the idea took root during Ningol Chakouba. It shows how a festival can start a sweet that sells all year.
The Imphal sweet maker borrowed a machine from the District Industries Centre in 2020, and the Manipur Organic Mission Agency later helped her with a loan. A business that begins on a borrowed machine and a loan needs to know each month what it has taken in.