Aloowala grows potatoes on 80 acres outside Lahore and sells them straight to the kitchens that cook them.
Why we started selling direct
For years the crop went the way every crop in Punjab goes: to the mandi, through a commission agent, into a wholesaler's hands, and eventually to a restaurant paying two or three times what the field earned. In a good year that arrangement is tolerable. In a year like the last one, when the Afghan border closed and Punjab was left with millions of tonnes it could not move, farm gate prices fell below the cost of growing the crop and growers ploughed potatoes back into the ground.
Selling direct fixes the half of that problem we can control. The kitchen pays less than it was paying the wholesaler. The farm earns more than the mandi was paying. The margin that used to sit in the middle is split between the two ends.
What we actually do
We grow, grade, wash, store and deliver. That is the whole business. We do not buy other people's crop and resell it, which is why there are only a handful of grades on the rate board rather than a catalogue.
We do not cut, peel or process anything. A sack of graded potatoes is the product, and doing that one thing properly is the whole business.
Where we are going
Contract acreage for processing varieties, so restaurant and factory buyers can fix a price before the season instead of riding the market. If you are a buyer who wants a known cost for next year rather than a good week this year, that conversation is worth having now, before planting.