Billing for your supermarket or self-service store in Tamil Nadu
A full basket billed in a minute, and the shelf gaps known before the evening rush ends.
Yards, mills and sweet towns whose shoppers fill a Tamil Nadu supermarket
A supermarket's shoppers come from the yards, mills and sweet towns around it. A few Tamil Nadu districts show who they are.
- Chennai's Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex has 3,194 shops for perishables on 295 acres, so a city supermarket can set its vegetable prices against a large yard.
- Coimbatore has many textile mills and more than 700 wet grinder makers, and its working families fill a supermarket at the end of the shift.
- Tirunelveli is known for its halwa, which visitors buy to take home, so a store there sells sweets and packed goods to visitors as well as to local families.
An item with no price tag, a co-operative that sells below the market and a vegetable board that was right this morning
The item with no price tag at the counter
A shopper takes a pack from the shelf, the tag has fallen off, and at the counter the cashier does not know the price. Someone is sent running to the aisle while the queue waits, and the sale is sometimes given up.
A neighbour that sells below the open market
A supermarket in Tamil Nadu competes with state co-operative stores whose goods come in bulk from the source and sell under the market rate. Shoppers compare the price of rice, oil and sugar across the road before they pick up a trolley, and you cannot see your own margin on those items as fast as they compare.
The second load that costs more than the first
The co-operative store across the road sells below the market, and the shopper knows it. She comes to your section at six, after a day when your afternoon lorry cost more than the morning's. The cashier can only say that the rate is the rate, and the shopper crosses the road with her list. You do not find out what you lost.
Tools for baskets, aisles, offers and the cash counters
Bills on your phone
A bill for the item whose price tag fell off: pick it from the list on the phone and the rate is there, so the queue does not wait for someone to run to the shelf.
Low stock warnings
A warning when a shelf at the second branch in the next town is low while its godown still holds the goods, read on your one phone. The refill is known early.
Daily reports
Each evening's sales item by item, so you see whether the rice, oil and sugar the co-operative store sells below the market still leave your shelves as fast as the packed snacks do.
Offers for regular customers
A small discount for the families who usually come on Friday, if they come on a Wednesday instead, so the Friday rush is lighter.
Many shops, one owner
A second branch in the next town, away from the co-operative store across the road, and a godown behind it under the same account, each with its own shelves and takings.
Staff shifts Coming soon
Planned for the cashier counters: who stands at which counter in the festival weeks. This is not working yet.
A basket billed while the queue is still short, and a shelf that tells you where it is empty
The hostel mess's rice, counted before the week begins
The hostel mess takes its rice every week at its agreed rate. On Friday night the week's rice lines are read from the bills, and you see whether the sacks in the store will last through next week.
A shelf gap you hear about in the evening, not at the weekend
The phone lists what has run low after each day's bills. Rice, oil and sugar, the goods the co-operative store across the road sells below the market, are the first on that list, because shoppers compare before they buy.
Friday's rush read against last Friday's
At closing the report lists every item sold that evening. You lay it beside the same evening last week, and you see which packs went faster, which sat, and what the weekend's shelf should carry.
A women-run store in Maharashtra that put bills and orders in one place
Questions Tamil Nadu supermarket and self-service store owners ask about baskets and offers
A regular shopper has a coupon. Can the cashier apply it on the bill?
Yes. Set the coupon once under her name, and the cashier applies it on her bill. It is your answer to the co-operative store across the road that sells rice and oil below the market: the regular shopper's coupon is taken off at your counter.
Does the co-operative store's rate across the road change what leaves my shelves on Friday?
Read last Friday's lines for rice, oil and sugar. The items that sold less in the week the co-operative's rate was lower stand out, and you set this Friday's stock to those numbers.
The hostel mess has an agreed lower rate. Does it apply whichever counter bills it?
Yes. The rate is set once for the mess under its own name, so every counter that bills the mess uses it, and the mess's page shows the Friday total.
Tamil Nadu's co-operative supermarkets in numbers
Tamil Nadu's 45 district consumer co-operative wholesale stores operate 24 supermarkets, 209 mini supermarkets and 51 self-service units across the state. A private store in any district has a co-operative neighbour to compare itself with.
The co-operative wholesale stores buy consumer goods in bulk directly from producing centres, manufacturers and marketing societies, and sell them below the open market price. A store that cannot match the price has to win on a faster counter and a fuller shelf.