Billing for your restaurant or eatery in Puducherry
The fish by weight, the curry by the plate, and a GST bill for every table.
From the morning's catch to the tourist's GST bill on WhatsApp
The fisher's page: each morning's kilos with the day
Open a page for each fisher family you buy from, and note each morning's fish in kilos with the day. At the week's end you read what you bought from each, and set it against the dishes you sold. The fish bought and the fish cooked are on one phone.
One dated GST bill for the three evenings, for the guest who catches a train
A guest who eats with you three evenings and leaves by train needs one GST bill for his office, with the three evenings' dates on it. Make that bill on the last evening, with each evening's plates listed under its date, and send it on WhatsApp before he reaches the station. His office can pass the bill without a call to you.
Afternoon tea at the window, the lunch parcel, and the meals at the tables
The window sells tea in the afternoon and parcels at lunch, and the tables take full meals. Keep the lunch parcel as an item of its own, so the day's list shows window tea, parcels and table meals as three lines. You see which part of the day paid for the morning's fish.
Tools for a kitchen that cooks the day's catch and bills each table
Bills on your phone
A bill where the fish fried to order sits on its own line at its weight, named for what the harbour landed that morning, seer or pomfret, beside the plates of rice and curry, and goes on WhatsApp to the table that ordered it.
Orders to suppliers
A page for each fisher family you buy from. The evening before a tourist weekend an order goes to the family asking for more fish, and the kilos that come at dawn are noted on its page, so the order and what arrived sit together.
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Why a Puducherry restaurant reprices its fish every morning and splits its bill by the table
The card is printed and the boats came in light
Your menu card is printed once and the sea is not. Some mornings the boats bring little, and a dish on the card cannot be made. The waiter learns it at the table, the cook learns it at noon, and the customer who ordered it has already told two friends.
A visitor who eats with you three evenings and asks for one bill on the last
A visitor staying near the French quarter finds your place on the first evening and returns on the second and the third. Each evening is a slip. On the last he asks for one bill for all three, with tax on it, because his office will pay. By then one slip is lost and he has a train to catch.
The takeaway window and the tables, one kitchen and two counters
A kitchen with a window for takeaway and tables for sitting has two kinds of customer. The window sells tea, snacks and parcels all afternoon, the tables sell meals. Both are paid in cash across different counters, and at night the cash from the window and the cash from the tables are one heap.
Fishing at Yanam, farms and boats at Puducherry: where a kitchen's plate begins
A kitchen in Puducherry cooks what the land and the sea of its regions give it.
- Most people in the Puducherry region farm, rear animals or fish for a living, while the educated work in industries and service jobs.
- Farmers in Yanam grow paddy, coconut, groundnut and pulses, and fishing and animal rearing are important side incomes.
Questions a Puducherry restaurant asks about fish rates, split tables and parcel lunches
The boats came in light and tourists have booked fish for tonight. How much can I promise?
Note the kilos each fisher family brought that dawn. Set them against the fish plates the group wants, and promise only as far as the kilos go. Tell the group early and offer the other curry for the rest, so the table is not told at the door.
A lunch parcel goes out with rice, a curry and a fried fish. Is it one item or three?
Make the parcel one item with its own rate, and keep the rice, the curry and the fish as separate items for the tables. The parcel line shows how many parcels went out of the window, and the table items show how many plates were eaten inside.
A family books the long table for the Pongal lunch and agrees the menu today. Where do I write the guests and the dishes?
Make the bill at the booking, with each agreed dish as its own line and the number of plates, and take what the family pays now. That bill is the agreement. On Pongal morning the kitchen reads the same lines, and the family can show it on her phone if she thinks a dish was forgotten.
Visitors by the lakh, and what the fishers keep of every rupee
Puducherry receives about 19 lakh domestic and 1 lakh international tourists a year, and its Tourism Minister targets around 30 lakh arrivals by 2030. A restaurant that feeds these visitors serves guests who ask for a bill with tax on it, and who may never come back to argue a figure.
An ICAR fisheries study valued Puducherry's fish landings at Rs 980 crore at landing centres and Rs 1,350 crore at retail, with fishers getting 68.43% of the consumer rupee. A kitchen that buys fish is a buyer in that chain, and the rate it pays each morning is one step of it, which is why the fish rate on your bill moves.