Billing for your dhaba and restaurant in Punjab
The tandoor's rotis, the function degh and the night's dal, each counted and billed on your phone.
From the first roti of the tandoor to the last bowl of dal
Rotis, naans and kulchas billed by the piece, as the tandoor hands them over
Make each bread an item with its rate by the piece. A table's bill picks them with the dals and the lassi, and the count of each shows at night. If the dough and the pieces do not match, you can see it in the numbers the same week and not in a quarrel with the cook.
The function's degh on a bill of its own, apart from the tables
Make a bill for the function when it is ordered, with the dal and the rice as two lines. The tables are billed as usual. At night the function and the tables are two separate sums, and you can tell which of the two earned the day. A function that wants a second degh of dal on the same evening adds one more line, and the dining hall is not touched.
The overnight pot counted down by the bowl
Put sixty bowls of dal makhani into stock when the pot is ready. Every bowl that goes out on a bill takes one off. At one o'clock you can see that twelve are left, and decide to cook more or to stop selling, and the cook is told while the fire is still lit.
Why a Punjab dhaba cannot tell its tandoor count from its cash
The tandoor man hands out rotis and nobody counts
The tandoor is lit before the first customer and the man at it slaps out rotis, naans and kulchas by the hundred. Each goes to a table by hand. At night you have dough that was used and cash that came in, and no way to say whether the two match. A helper who eats two rotis a shift, or a table that was served and never billed, shows up only as a bad day. The cook says the tandoor was busy. The cashier says the cash was short. Both may be right.
A degh for a function and the dhaba still serving at the same hour
A house is holding a function and wants a degh of dal and a degh of rice delivered by noon. Your kitchen cooks it, and the same kitchen has to serve the tables at the same time. The function's order is on a slip and the tables are on the counter slips, and the two get added together at night into one number that is of no use to anybody.
Dal that cooks all night and is gone by two in the afternoon
The dal makhani goes on a slow fire the evening before, and the saag does the same in the cold months. When the pot is empty it is empty until tomorrow. You know it was a good lunch only by the taste of the last spoonful. Nobody knows how many bowls the pot gave, and so nobody knows whether to put on a bigger pot tonight.
Tools that fit a dhaba kitchen in Punjab
Low stock warnings
A warning as the bowls of the overnight dal fall low, so the decision to cook more is made before the queue is long.
Daily reports
Rotis, naans and kulchas by the piece for each day, so the tandoor's count can be set beside the dough that was used.
Online orders
A parcel of chhole kulche or a function's order sent from your own online shop, and arriving on your phone as an order.
Grain, trade and the dhaba tables of Punjab
A dhaba in Punjab sits between its grain markets, its roads and the visitors on them.
- The closing of the Attari trade check post after the Pahalgam attack ended a major source of income for Amritsar, hitting trade and jobs (December 2025).
- Bathinda grain market received 795 tonnes of paddy between 5 and 11 October 2026; rain wetted stock lying in the open.
Questions a Punjab dhaba owner asks
The dough is set in the morning for the tandoor. How do I see in the afternoon how many pieces are left to make?
Add the pieces the dough will give to the stock of each bread. Every bill takes its pieces off, so in the afternoon the phone shows what is left to make of the roti, the naan and the kulcha.
A second degh is wanted for the same evening. Can it go on the house's bill?
Yes. Make a second bill in the house's name for the second degh. Both stay under the house, so the house reads one page for the two degh, and the tables on their own bills are not touched. The dining hall goes on as before.
Tonight's dal cooks until morning. How do I decide how big to make the pot?
Open the lunch plates of the same weekday in the last few weeks and see how many bowls went. Make tonight's pot a little above the highest of them, and in the winter weeks do the same count for the saag.
How many bowls of saag go through the cold months? Can I read the week's bowls?
Make the saag an item by the bowl. At the week's end open the bowls and set them beside the greens the supplier brought. The next week's order to him is the bowls you read, not the bowls you hoped for.
A table finishes its kulchas and asks to carry some home. Is that on the same bill?
Yes. The kulchas to carry come out of the same dough as the table's. Bill them as a line of their own, and each bill takes its kulchas off the dough's count, so the afternoon's count holds both.
Amritsar's eating houses, counted
Amritsar's nearly 2,000 hotels, restaurants, dhabas, sweet shops and tea joints are big buyers of commercial LPG refills, and the city sees over 1.50 lakh daily footfall including tourists. A kitchen that sees such crowds needs to know its day's plates before the fire is out. If a kitchen is short of a refill the day before a crowd, it helps to see yesterday's plates to judge how much fire to buy.
When a fuel-supply disruption cut Amritsar's tourist flow by 40 to 50 per cent, several dhabas, sweet shops and eating joints began closing on some days of the week. A dhaba deciding which day to close can look at its lunch plates by weekday, and the day with the fewest plates is the one to close.