Havyak Sweets

Our little shop, Havyak Sweets, is at number 20 on the Sarakki Main Road in JP Nagar. It is not a huge place, but we manage to fit a lot of work into it every day. Most of our time is spent in the back around the big stoves. Making traditional sweets is a slow process and you have to be patient. If you stop stirring the milk or the sugar for even a second, the whole batch could burn and we would have to start over. We use a lot of ghee and cardamom, so the shop usually has a very strong smell that reaches out onto the sidewalk. We have glass counters in the front where we keep everything on display. We try to keep it looking tidy, but when the afternoon rush comes and people want different amounts of this and that, it gets a bit messy. We spend a lot of time folding boxes and tying them up with bits of colorful string. People stop in while they are walking home or when they need a gift for a friend. During the big festivals, it gets absolutely buried in work. We stay late into the night just to make sure the shelves aren't empty the next morning. My hands are usually pretty sticky by the time I head home. We don't do any fancy marketing; people just know we are here on the main road. It keeps us busy.