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Billing for your fruit and vegetable shop in Tamil Nadu

The morning rate, the kilo and the piece, all on one bill on your phone.

Three smiling women selling bunches of bananas under an awning in Chennai
Three smiling women selling bunches of bananas under an awning in Chennai Photo: McKay Savage from London, UK, CC BY 2.0

The wholesale yards and farms that fill a Tamil Nadu stall

A Tamil Nadu stall is stocked from the wholesale yards and the farms of many districts. A few of them, in the facts a seller would know.

  • The Koyambedu complex in Chennai has 3,194 shops for perishables on 295 acres, so a stall in the city can buy from many sellers in one morning.
  • Salem's pride is the Malgoa mango, and tapioca, grown widely and used mainly for starch, is another major crop there.
  • Viluppuram is called the sugar bowl of Tamil Nadu, and its sugarcane supplies all the cane for 7 sugar mills in the district.
Large bunches of green bananas piled up at Koyambedu market, Chennai
Large bunches of green bananas piled up at Koyambedu market, Chennai Photo: McKay Savage from London, UK, CC BY 2.0

From the first lorry at the market to the last mango of the evening

  • The pavement cart that bills without a counter

    A seller who pushes a cart from one street to the next carries the bill in his pocket. He weighs, taps the item and shows the total on the phone, and the customer pays on UPI or in cash without waiting for a slip to be written.

  • A banana bunch that ripens on the cart

    A bunch of bananas comes green and turns yellow over the days on your cart. Enter the bunch by its kilos or by the piece, as you sell it. The evening report shows how many left that day, so you see how many bunches the week's heat ripened faster than the customers came.

  • How many crates for the nine o'clock rush

    Before you leave for the yard, open yesterday and see how many kilos of the soft vegetables left before nine. Those kilos tell you how many crates the first rush needs; buy the rest as the morning goes.

A roadside fruit stall in Chennai with oranges, apples, bananas and grapes in crates under a yellow awning
A roadside fruit stall in Chennai with oranges, apples, bananas and grapes in crates under a yellow awning Photo: Vinayaraj, CC BY-SA 4.0
Two vegetable sellers standing behind a table heaped with green limes and apples in Chennai
Two vegetable sellers standing behind a table heaped with green limes and apples in Chennai Photo: McKay Savage from London, UK, CC BY 2.0

A wet week in the hills, weight that shrinks by nine and a week of credit at the yard

  1. A wet week in the hills, and beans cost much more

    When rain falls in the hills, the lorries bringing beans and carrots come late or come few, and the price at the yard jumps overnight. You pay it at four, the customers at the stall do not know why, and the rate you wrote on the cardboard last week is useless.

  2. A week of credit at the yard, owed from memory

    The agent at the wholesale yard lets you take a load on a week's credit. Each morning adds another load, and by Saturday what you owe him is a number you carry in your head, not a page you can read.

  3. Weight that shrinks between the yard and the stall

    Greens and tomatoes lose weight as the sun climbs and the water on them dries. The kilos you bought at four are not all there to sell at nine. Nobody counts how many went, and it ends up written off as a bad day.

Tools for a Tamil Nadu fruit and vegetable counter

  • Bills on your phone

    The kilos bought at four in the morning entered at the yard and the kilos sold by nine billed against them, so the weight the heap lost on the way is a number and not a feeling.

  • UPI payments

    A UPI payment for a small bag of curry leaves and tomatoes, matched to its bill, so the cash tin is not the only record of the day.

  • GST bills

    A GST bill for the hotel kitchen or the juice stall that takes plantains and papayas by the crate each morning, with the tax shown, while the woman buying limes for pickle gets a plain bill.

  • Offers for regular customers

    A discount for the household that buys at your cart every morning, so it stays with you on the days a farmers' market sells cheaper.

  • Many shops, one owner

    A stall at the Uzhavar Sandhai kept apart from the main stall, its rates set by the committee price of the day and its sales read on their own.

From fairs and weekly markets to bills and orders in one place

In Maharashtra, women's groups selling produce through Swateja Mart kept their bills and stock on paper and sold at fairs and weekly markets. With Bharatrath their bills, stock and online orders sit in one place.

Questions Tamil Nadu fruit and vegetable sellers ask

The banana load is weighed with the stalk and the leaf. How do I enter only the fruit I can sell?

Put in the kilos of fruit you can sell, after the stalk is trimmed, as the stock. Write the weight the yard gave on the agent's page, so the two figures sit side by side and you can say to him what the stalk took.

A woman buys a whole box of limes for pickle. How many boxes of limes should I hold in the pickle weeks?

In those weeks limes go in boxes and not by the handful. Hold a few boxes more, and watch the stock fall each time a box goes; ask the agent early when it nears the end.

My cart goes through three streets in a morning. Which street should I be in at which hour?

The street that paid best is the one to reach first, while the houses are at home. Put the street with the slowest hour last, and walk to it when the buyers come out again.

I buy tomatoes from two yards, one dearer and one riper. Which should I carry more of?

Carry the cheaper, riper tomatoes for the morning rush, and the dearer, firmer ones for the evening, since they keep longer and hold their rate through the afternoon.

I come back from the yard with the load. How do I enter it against what I meant to buy?

Put the kilos that came as stock, item by item, beside the list you carried. An item that is short or extra shows at once, and the agent's page carries the day.

More questions every shop asks

Koyambedu's night trucks and the Uzhavar Sandhais

Trucks with fruit, vegetables and flowers reach Chennai's Koyambedu market at 1 am, and buyers arrive from 4 am to buy at wholesale rates. A shop that buys there before dawn has the day's rates set before it opens, and writes them in before the first customer.

Tamil Nadu's Uzhavar Sandhais let farmers sell fruit and vegetables straight to buyers; the first opened at Madurai on 14 November 1999. A neighbourhood shop sells beside them on nearness and on price, so its own rates need to be ready and right.