Frozen Food and Meat Distribution in Nepal: Cut-offs, Doorstep Proof and Restaurant Credit

Frozen and chilled food, such as momo, sausages, nuggets, frozen vegetables, chicken and other meat products, is a trade where the clock does most of the damage. A late order means a late load, a late load means a long drive with the door opening at every stop, and a restaurant that receives soft stock sends it back. On top of that, the best customers, busy restaurants, hotels and canteens, are also the ones most likely to run up a large balance. This guide follows the working day of a frozen food distributor in Nepal, from order cut-off to collection, and shows where records help. It does not cover food-safety rules: follow the requirements that apply to your products and licences.

Who you are serving

Most frozen and meat distributors in Nepal sell to four kinds of customer, and each behaves differently.

Customer	How they order	What they care about	Credit risk
Restaurants and cafes	Evening phone call or standing order	Arrival before lunch prep, consistent quality	High: weekly orders, slow payment
Hotels and banquet halls	Event-driven, large and sudden	Exact quantity on the event day	Medium: large but planned
Shops and supermarkets with freezers	Weekly, through a salesperson	Fresh dates, small packs	Low to medium
Canteens, hostels, institutions	Scheduled, sometimes by contract	Fixed price, reliable supply	Slow but steady payment

Demand also moves with the calendar: festival weeks, wedding seasons and the tourist season each lift particular lines, and school or office holidays drop canteen demand to nothing.

The day by the clock

The single most useful thing a frozen distributor can do is fix the times. Here is one way a day might run. The times are examples; set your own.

Time	What happens	Record kept
Previous evening, fixed cut-off	Last orders accepted for next morning	Orders booked in the app or by the office
Early morning	Dispatch list by route; pick nearest-expiry batches	Stock moves out of the cold store by batch
Loading	Last stop loaded first, doors open briefly	Delivery person assigned to each order
Delivery window	Each customer served inside an agreed window	GPS, photo and receiver name at each drop
At the door	Rejections counted and reasons noted	Return raised with reason
After delivery	Cash or wallet payment collected where due	Payment recorded against oldest invoice
Back at depot	Returned stock checked and put away or written off	Return reviewed, credit note if approved

A firm cut-off sounds harsh, but customers adapt quickly when it is applied every day, and it is the only way to load in route order. Late "just add two kg" calls are what break the chain.

Dispatch nearest expiry first

Receive every product and pack size as a SKU, in batches with expiry dates, into the cold store it sits in. Each cold store or depot is a branch with its own stock. When the dispatch list is picked, take the batch with the nearest expiry that the customer will still accept. Stock movements in gamitrack are append-only, so when a batch runs short you can see exactly where it went.

Low-stock levels on your fast movers, typically momo and the most popular chicken cuts, warn you before a Friday rush leaves you short.

At the restaurant door

Most disputes in this trade are about what happened at the door: "you sent 8 kg, not 10", "it arrived soft", "nobody here ordered that". A short doorstep routine prevents most of them.

Doorstep checklist for the delivery person

• Hand over against the order, line by line, in front of the receiver.
• Let the receiver check condition before signing off.
• Count anything rejected and note the reason.
• Record delivery in the app: GPS location, a photo of the goods and the receiver's name.
• If payment is due on delivery, collect it before leaving and record the mode.

In gamitrack the delivery person sees the amount due, the customer's location and directions on the driver tab. The delivery record carries GPS, photo and receiver name. If the delivery is marked far from where the customer is supposed to be, it is flagged, which catches the "delivered from the depot" habit.

Rejections and returns

A rejected item becomes a return with a reason (damaged, expired, wrong item). Returns go through review, and once approved the stock comes back into a branch with a credit note to the customer. Stock that cannot be resold should still be recorded with its reason, so the loss is visible in the history rather than hidden in a stock difference at month end.

Review returns by customer every week. A restaurant that returns a little every week is usually over-ordering. Reduce its standing quantity rather than arguing about each return.

Restaurant credit: short leash, written terms

Restaurants are good customers until the balance gets too big to ask about. Weekly orders on credit can add up to a month of sales before anyone notices.

Keep it simple:

1. Written terms for every account. Payment due in a fixed number of days, and a balance ceiling.
2. Due days from dispatch. gamitrack fixes the due date at dispatch, so there is no argument later about when the clock started.
3. A weekly statement. Send the party ledger statement every week; aging shows what is overdue and by how long.
4. A weekly collection plan. Each officer gets a list of who to collect from; the plan shows planned against collected.
5. Collect at the door when you can. For cash customers, the driver collects after delivery and the payment is allocated oldest-first.

Payments can be recorded as cash, eSewa, Khalti, Fonepay, bank or cheque. Advances paid by event customers stay on the ledger and are used against the next invoice.

A hypothetical example

Suppose a busy restaurant orders frozen momo and chicken three times a week on 15-day terms. In the third week the aging view shows two invoices past due. The weekly collection plan puts the restaurant on Monday's list, the officer visits with the statement, and the next delivery goes with an instruction to collect before unloading. The numbers and the customer are hypothetical; the habit is the point.

Sales visits, pricing and invoices

Salespeople still matter in frozen food, mostly for shops with freezers and for winning new restaurants. Build routes with ordered stops, start the day with GPS, and record each visit with geofence check and photo. At each shop, note closing stock and requests for items you do not carry; that list is often the start of your next product.

Prices come from price lists: a default list, a list for each party type (restaurant, shop, hotel) and overrides for large accounts, applied in that order. VAT is added only on taxable lines, and invoices follow the IRD format, numbered per fiscal year. Check the current IRD rules for how your specific products are treated.

If you supply other towns through sub-distributors, use via-dealers mode with monthly dealer stock reports, so you can see expected against actual closing stock at each one.

What gamitrack does not do

To be clear: gamitrack does not measure temperature, does not control freezers and does not replace your cold-chain logs. It keeps the commercial record of stock, batches, orders, deliveries, returns and money. Keep temperature records the way your operation requires.

Your first 30 days

• Days 1 to 7: enter your top products as SKUs, set up each cold store as a branch and receive opening stock in batches with expiry.
• Days 8 to 14: agree the order cut-off and a delivery window with each regular customer, and assign delivery people.
• Days 15 to 21: record every delivery with GPS, photo and receiver; log every rejection with a reason.
• Days 22 to 30: review returns and aging by customer, adjust standing quantities and start weekly collection plans.

Related reading

See proof of delivery and collections, selling to hotels, restaurants and cafes and batch and expiry control. Industry page: Dairy.

Next step

Start with your ten biggest restaurant accounts and one cold store, and run a month on fixed cut-offs and recorded deliveries. Compare plans on the pricing page or contact us.