Billing for your organic store in Puducherry
Fresh vegetables that last a day and jaggery that lasts a year, counted on one phone.
Karaikal's fields and Mahe's pepper: where an organic shelf in Puducherry can come from
An organic store in Puducherry buys from growers of several regions, and each region grows different things.
- Karaikal's farms grow paddy, cotton, groundnut, banana, vegetables and pulses, helped by the river that flows through the region.
- Mahe's fertile land suits paddy, coconut, black pepper, tapioca and banana, and coir making and handicrafts are important local industries.
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From the message that arrived at night to the family that pays at the month's end
The grower's rate is on every bill, and last month's bill sits beside this month's
Write each item's rate as the group's list gives it, and the bill carries that rate. A family that asks why the rate has risen opens its own page and sees last month's bill beside this month's, with both rates on them. You answer with two numbers and the group's list, and not with the same explanation you gave last week.
The weekly box read over a month, and the families that never change size
Make the small box and the large box two items with their own rates. The family chooses a size on your online shop and you pack and bill that item. Open four weeks of sales and the families that take the same box every week stand out from the ones who order once, and those are the families to thank.
The festival box at a regular family's discount, given on the day it asks
Give the family that has taken the box all year a discount on the Pongal box. The discount is on its bill with the day, and the day's sales show how many festival boxes went with it and how many at the full rate. A family that comes only for the festival box pays the full rate, and its bill says so.
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Tools for a store that takes orders on its own online shop
Your own online shop
A page that carries the week's harvest list, so the long group message with replies scrolling under it is replaced by a link.
Online orders
The order lists the greens and the jaggery as separate items, so you can pack the greens last, after the jaggery and the pulses, and they are the least handled.
Why a Puducherry organic store runs two clocks: the day-old vegetable and the dry goods shelf
Two clocks in one shop
Leafy vegetables and brinjal last a day. Palm jaggery, millets and pulses last for months. Both sit in the same store and both are counted by the same eye. The vegetables are over before the notebook is open, and the jaggery sits so long that nobody remembers when the last bag came. Each shelf wants its own kind of attention, and neither gets it in the same hour.
The customer who ordered in a message and expects what she saw
Orders reach you as messages, one under another, from people who want a bunch of this and half a kilo of that. By evening the messages have scrolled away, one name is confused with another, and a customer who paid more for organic is told that her greens are finished. A customer who ordered early is told her box is complete, and the one who ordered last gets the greens that were not counted.
Why it costs more, and what it cost last month
An organic grower's rate is higher than the market's, and every new customer asks why. A family that has bought for months sees the rate rise and asks what it was last month. The grower's rate from the group's list is not written on anything the family holds, so each question is answered from memory, and the answer is a little different every time.
Farmers who brought their market stall bills and online shop into one place
Questions a Puducherry organic store asks about orders, fresh stock and jaggery
A regular family takes the large box in the festival week. Is its regular discount on that bill?
Yes. The large box is an item, and the discount you made for the family goes on the bill when you make it. Her page then shows the festival bill carrying the same discount as her small boxes.
A family says last week's box had too much of one green. Can I see what went in?
Yes. Each green is its own line with its weight, so you see how much of that green went into the box. Pack the next box with less of it, and the family's next bill shows the lines it asked for.
A box for a Chennai family has to leave the same day. How do I pack it and know what went in?
The order shows the items and the day. Weigh each item into the box and put the weights on the bill, and the stock comes down by what went in. The family gets the same bill on WhatsApp with the box.
Growers who sold through WhatsApp groups, and a farm that delivers the same day
Puducherry organic growers told a 2019 report that big buyers offered no reasonable price, so they sold direct through WhatsApp groups and reached about 1,600 customers in Chennai and Puducherry. An organic store that buys from such growers is, in effect, the shop those groups grew into.
One Puducherry organic farm harvests vegetables by 9 am and delivers them to customers' doors by 5 pm the same day. A store in the same town is measured against that: a shopper who has had vegetables eight hours after the harvest looks at your fresh shelf and asks how old it is.