Billing for your bakery and sweet shop in Mizoram
The cake ordered by message, the bread for two shops and the packets you buy in, each on its own line.
Tools for a bakery that takes its orders on WhatsApp and bakes before dawn
Low stock warnings
A mark on flour and sugar, so a warning comes the evening before the early bake and not at five in the morning.
Online orders
A family orders a cake from your online shop page, and the order, the size and the day arrive together instead of in four messages.
Daily reports
The loaves, rolls and cakes of each day listed, so Saturday's order of flour is written from a number.
Flour ordered by the week's loaves, own bakes counted apart and a sack read in loaves
Flour and sugar ordered from the week's loaves, and written early for the road
At the end of the week open the sales and count the loaves, rolls and cakes that went. Write the order from that number. In December a sack written on Monday can arrive late if the lorry is held on the road, so write it earlier than the sack seems to need, and the oven is never lit with the sack nearly empty.
The feast-week lorry and the oven, counted apart
In Christmas week the lorry that brings the packets is the one most likely to be late, and the cakes are in the oven every day. Count the packets at the door when they arrive and the cakes when they come out, and the week's report shows which shelf the feasts emptied first.
A sack read in loaves, so a short morning shows
Count the flour in kilos and the loaves by the bill. At the end of the week, set the kilos that went beside the loaves that were sold. If a week gives fewer loaves for the same flour, you see it at once and look at the dough or the oven. A short morning no longer hides inside the week.
Where bread moves in Mizoram: a market town and a border town
A bakery sells to whoever walks past, and that depends on the district. Two of them.
- Aizawl's main market held 1,073 traders and sellers in 2019, who need tea and something to eat through a long day at their stalls.
- The Zokhawthar trade centre in Champhai handles essentials, soft drinks, bread, edibles and electronic gadgets for the border trade with Myanmar, so bread is one of the goods on the road there.
Four messages about one cake, packets beside your own bakes and a sack that makes fewer loaves
The slip beside the oven says what no one asked for
A family asks for a cake for Thursday evening. The weight in pounds is in one message and the name to write in another, and a later message changes one of them. By Wednesday night the slip beside the oven carries the weight from the first message and the name from the third. The cake is baked from that slip, and the family arrives expecting something else.
Hot loaves and cold packets on one shelf
What you baked at four in the morning and what the wholesaler's lorry left on Tuesday sit side by side on the same shelf. Customers pick either. At the end of the month the takings are one number, and the rent is paid from it, so you cannot say whether the oven or the lorry's packets carried the month. The next order for flour and the next order for packets are both guesses.
A sack of flour that should make sixty loaves and makes fifty-four
You know what a sack of flour should give: so many loaves, if the dough is right. Some mornings it gives fewer. The dough took more water, the oven ran cool, or a few loaves were burnt and eaten at home. There is no number anywhere for the sack and no number for the loaves, so the difference stays a feeling and the flour is bought again.
Questions Mizoram bakeries ask about cake orders, flour sacks and Christmas customers
A customer wants a cake by the pound with a name written on it. Where does the name go?
Make the cake an item sold by the pound and write the name on the order slip for the baker. The bill on her WhatsApp carries the cake and its weight, and the baker reads the slip in the morning.
The lorry with the milk is held up. Can the milk bread be kept apart so I see what that day lost?
Keep the milk bread as an item of its own. On the day the milk fails, its line is short or empty while the plain loaves go on as usual, so the loss sits on one line and not across the whole shop.
A stranger on Christmas Eve wants two cakes now and says she will pay after the new year. Do I open a page for her?
Only if you decide to give her the udhaar. If you do, open a page then and put the bill on it. Everyone else on that night just gets a bill on WhatsApp and no page.
How many cakes and loaves should I bake for next Urlawk Zan?
Open that night's sales this year. The cakes and the loaves are on their own lines, and the last-minute buyers show in the times on the bills. Bake next year's night from those lines.
Imported milk and the feasts of Christmas week
Mizoram depends on imported milk, mainly Amul Taaza from Gujarat. For a bakery that bakes milk bread and cakes, the milk on the shelf has come a long way, and a blockade, a landslide or a closed road makes it a serious worry.
Communities hold feasts in their localities during Christmas and New Year in Mizoram. The Christmas celebrations begin on the pre-Christmas night called Urlawk Zan.