Billing for your dairy and milk shop in Sikkim
Milk, curd, chhurpi and paneer counted apart, and the tea shops that buy from you each morning.
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Tools for a counter of fresh milk, chhurpi, curd and paneer
Orders to suppliers
A page for each village chhurpi maker, with each lot's pieces and strings noted on the day it arrives.
Low stock warnings
The chhurpi bowl and the paneer tray each get a line of their own, and the chhurpi's is the higher one, because it arrives from a village on the maker's day and not on yours.
The whole shop in one place
The Union's sealed packets, the village can, the cup from the hot pan, the paneer and the string of chhurpi each carry their own unit, so a winter morning's counter is one list and not five slips.
Each maker's lot counted, cups and litres kept as two items, and every day's setting of curd named for its day
Chhurpi counted in two units: pieces in the bowl, strings on the nail
Count chhurpi in two units, each its own item: pieces in the bowl and strings on the nail. A village maker's lot comes as strings and sells as pieces, so the nail and the bowl are read apart. A bowl nearly empty while the nail is still full tells you which one to cut next.
Pots set for the Dasain tika morning, counted apart from the daily curd
Families want curd on the morning the elders give tika at Dasain. Make the pots you set for that morning an item of their own, apart from the daily pots. The count of the tika pots comes down as families collect them, and the daily curd is not drained to fill them.
Each day's setting named for its day
Name each day's pots of curd for the day they were set. The canteen's cook is sent to the shelf of Tuesday's pots, and Wednesday's stay on the other shelf, counted apart, still setting. Each shelf is its own count, so a cook never takes a pot that has not finished setting.
A string of chhurpi from a village maker, hot milk by the cup on a winter morning, and curd that sets slowly in the cold
A string of chhurpi from a village maker, and no two lots alike
Along with fresh milk, a hill dairy sells chhurpi, the hard cheese that is bought in small lots from makers in the villages. One lot is a few pieces, the next is a full string, and the rate differs from maker to maker. The pieces sit in a bowl, the strings on a nail, and the count is whatever the owner remembers about each. A customer asks whether you have the soft kind or the very hard kind, and you go to look.
Hot milk by the cup on a cold morning
In the cold months people stop at the dairy for a cup of hot milk before the day begins. It is poured from a pan into a steel cup, and the litres in the pan come from the same can that fills the vessels. The can is counted in litres and the cups in ones, and when the can is empty nobody can say how many litres went to the pan.
Every family wants curd on the same tika morning
On the morning of tika at Dasain every family wants curd, fresh and thick. You set extra pots, but nobody has counted how many the town will take, so some pots are left on the shelf to sour and some families are told there is none. The pots set for tika and the pots set for every day stand in the same row.
Lal Bazaar's chhurpi, the cheese a Sikkim dairy hears about
A dairy shop in a hill town stocks more than milk, and its customers ask for the cheese of the market they pass on the way.
- Lal Bazaar in Gangtok sells fresh fruit, organic vegetables, cheese including chhurpi, and bamboo and cane baskets, and is liveliest on Sundays.
Questions Sikkim dairy and milk shops ask
Soft chhurpi and very hard chhurpi sell at different rates. Do I make two items?
Yes. The very hard chhurpi keeps on the nail for weeks and the soft one does not. Give each its own rate and count, and sell the soft one first.
I pour hot milk by the cup from a can I also sell by the litre. How do I count off the cups?
Count the litres into the pan item when you fill the pan, and let each cup sold take one cup off it. At closing, what is left in the pan count is the milk you pour out.
On the cold hill days, which sells more, the Union's packet or the village can?
Read the daily report for those days: the packets by the piece and the can's litres sit on two lines. A cold morning that sends the lane to the can shows at once, and you know which to order more of.
One maker brings full strings and another brings a few. Which of them do I ask for more?
Set each maker's lot against what sold. A lot of full strings still on the nail a week later is a reason to ask that maker for fewer, whatever it looks like. The maker whose lot always empties first is asked for more.
The Sikkim Milk Union behind the morning milk
The Sikkim Milk Union, formed on 1 July 1980, is the apex body of village milk producers' co-operative societies and sells hygienic milk to urban consumers.
In 2024-25 the Sikkim Milk Union averaged 52,205 litres of milk procured and 51,150 litres sold a day, supplying the Indian Army and civilian markets in Sikkim's urban centres.