Why a mithai shop’s stock is different
- You make it. A kilo of kaju katli on the shelf used cashew, sugar and ghee that were in the store yesterday, so stock moves twice for every sale.
- You sell it loose, by weight, in whatever quantity a customer asks for — 250 g of one sweet, 150 g of another.
- It does not keep. Milk sweets have a short life, and what is left at closing is tomorrow’s decision.
- Ingredients become other ingredients. Milk becomes khoya; khoya becomes peda, barfi and gulab jamun.
- Demand jumps around Diwali, Raksha Bandhan and the wedding season, when a planning mistake costs the most.
Count in grams, sell by the kilo
Price sweets per kilo — that is how customers compare — but record stock in whole grams: 350 g, not 0.35 kg. Whole numbers add up exactly, and nobody misreads 0.35 as 35 grams.
Worked example
Kaju katli at ₹1,280 a kilo. A customer asks for 250 g: ₹1,280 × 0.25 = ₹320, and the stock of kaju katli goes down by 250 g.
Weigh the sweets, not the box
Put the empty box on the scale and press tare (zero) before you fill it, so the customer pays for sweets and not for cardboard. Kerala’s Legal Metrology Department tells consumers to check that the box’s weight is not included in the weight of the sweets, and the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 makes it an offence to deliver less than the quantity paid for.
The scale has to be verified
A weighing instrument used for selling must be verified and stamped by the Legal Metrology department before it is used, and then re-verified: every twelve months for an electronic scale, every twenty-four months for weights and beam scales. Using an unverified scale is punishable with a fine of ₹2,000 to ₹10,000 under the Act.
A label-printing scale helps with pre-weighed packs: it prints a barcode on the pack that carries the item and its weight, so the counter scans it and bills the exact weight without weighing again.
Recipes and batches: stock that moves twice
A recipe is the list of ingredients one batch uses. When the kitchen records “made 10 kg of peda”, the recipe takes the khoya, sugar, ghee and elaichi off the store at the same moment, so the store and the shelf agree. Give khoya its own recipe — so many litres of milk to the kilo — and “made 10 kg of peda” reaches back through the khoya to the milk, with no second set of books.
Worked example — the numbers are illustrations, use your own
Say your kitchen gets 1 kg of khoya from 5 litres of milk bought at ₹62 a litre, so khoya costs ₹310 a kilo. One kilo of peda takes:
A 10 kg batch therefore uses 8 kg of khoya — 40 litres of milk — and costs ₹2,913 in ingredients. The ingredients weigh more than the peda that comes out, because cooking drives off moisture: weigh the finished batch, do not add up the ingredients.
If a batch would use more of an ingredient than the store says it has, stop and find out why before cooking: either the store count is wrong or the batch will come out short.
The morning count
- Start from yesterday’s closing for each item — what the register or the system says is on the shelf.
- Add what the kitchen made this morning, each batch recorded as production.
- Take out anything that has gone off overnight, as wastage with a reason, before it can be sold.
- Weigh every tray.
- Compare. Record any difference as a count correction with a reason: “tray weighed wrong yesterday”, “tasting”, or “not known”.
Worked example
One morning’s 120 g is nothing. Every morning’s 120 g is about 3.6 kg a month of your most expensive sweet — ₹4,608 at the counter price. It is worth finding out whether it is tasting, the scale or the tray weights.
Dates on trays, and first expiry, first out
From 1 October 2020 the food regulator, FSSAI, made it compulsory to show a “best before” date on trays of loose sweets. It withdrew that direction on 7 November 2023, and showing the date is now voluntary. Keep doing it anyway: a date on each tray is what makes FEFO — first expiry, first out — possible, so the tray that expires first is sold first even if a fresher one came out of the kitchen later.
A tray label needs four things: the sweet, the date made, the best-before date, and the batch weight. Boxes packed in advance, when the customer is not there, are pre-packaged goods and must carry the declarations the packaged-commodities rules require, such as the net quantity and the month and year of packing.
Wastage: write it down, with a reason
| Reason | Example | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Past its date | A tray unsold by its best-before | Too much made, or made on the wrong day |
| Damaged | A dropped tray, broken pieces | Handling or storage |
| Quality | A batch that did not set | The recipe or the kitchen |
| Tasting and samples | Pieces given to customers to try | A marketing cost — measure it |
| Staff | Sweets eaten by the staff | A policy question, not an accusation |
Value wastage at cost and compare it with what you produced: wastage % = cost of wastage ÷ cost of production × 100. A week with ₹3,200 of wastage against ₹64,000 of production is 5%. There is no reliable published “normal” figure for sweet shops — track your own week by week and push it down.
Pricing from what it cost
Once a kilo of peda has a cost, the price becomes a decision you can check.
Worked example
These figures leave GST out. If your counter price includes GST, take the tax out before you compare it with cost.
Remember what a recipe does not see — gas, wages, rent, boxes and wastage. A margin that looks healthy on ingredients alone may not be.
Festival planning
- Plan from last year’s day-by-day sales of each sweet for the same festival, not from memory.
- Make the long-life items — dry sweets, namkeen — first, and the short-life milk sweets closest to the day.
- Take advance orders for large boxes with a deposit, so production follows real demand.
- Count the shelf every morning of the festival week; that is when shortages hide best.
What the bill must show
Since 1 January 2022 FSSAI has required every food business to print its 14-digit FSSAI licence or registration number on cash receipts, invoices, cash memos and bills. From 1 April 2026 a basic FSSAI registration covers an annual turnover up to ₹1.5 crore, and a State licence covers more than ₹1.5 crore up to ₹50 crore; registrations and licences issued from that date do not need renewing.