Rakesh's Homestay Kitchen Board

Guests who want to cook take a numbered place in the kitchen line, Rakesh records each session, and they settle the whole thing in cash before they leave.

Who this is for

Rakesh Bhandari, 51, runs a six-room homestay above the market in Kausani, Uttarakhand. One kitchen, two burners, and guests who mostly come for a week and prefer their own dal to his. The moment is 7:40 in the morning, when three families and a solo cyclist all want the stove for tea and poha, and Rakesh is standing on the stairs with a wet towel deciding who goes first.

How the job is done today

There is a steel-spined notebook on a nail by the kitchen door. Guests are supposed to write room number and time, and mostly they do, except when a child writes it or someone from Room 2 quietly cooks maggi at eleven at night. Bhagwati shouts room numbers up the stairwell when the stove is free. There is also a WhatsApp group for whoever is staying that fortnight, where people ask if the kitchen is empty and nobody answers for twenty minutes. At checkout Rakesh counts the notebook lines and the guest says it was four, not six, and Rakesh usually lets it go.

The screens, in order

1. Kitchen board — Shows who has the kitchen right now and the numbered line of rooms waiting behind them.
2. Give the next number — Lets Rakesh put a room into the line and hand them the number that comes next.
3. Mark it finished — Ends the current session, moves the line forward, and adds one cooking session to that room's running list.
4. Room's list — Shows every session a room has used since they arrived and what that adds up to in rupees.
5. Cash taken — Records that the room handed over notes to Rakesh and clears their list to zero.

What it keeps track of

• Rooms — room number, guest name, phone, day they came, day they leave
• Kitchen line — which room, what number they hold, when they joined, whether they are cooking now, waiting, or done
• Sessions — which room, which day, when they started and stopped, the rate for one session, whether it is still owed
• Cash taken — which room, how many sessions it covered, how much cash, which day, who took it

The one decision that matters

The real choice is who is allowed to change the board. Option one, guests add themselves to the line from their own phones, which saves Rakesh the walking. Option two, only Rakesh's phone can give a number or mark a session finished, and everyone else opens the same board and can only look. Go with option two. The number in the line is only half the point; the other half is the count that decides how much cash comes out of the wallet on Friday morning. If four strangers can edit that count, Rakesh is back to arguing at the gate. One hand writes, everyone reads, and there is nothing for a guest to sign into.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out booking the kitchen for tomorrow. It sounds useful and it will break the one rule the app exists to hold up, which is that the number in the line is the only claim anyone has. The moment Room 5 can reserve eight in the morning three days ahead, Rakesh is back to negotiating. Also leave out any online payment. The cash is not a problem to be solved, it is how this house works.

How you would know it worked

On a Sunday checkout, the man in Room 4 opens the board on his own phone, counts five sessions, and puts 750 rupees on the desk before Rakesh has said a number. The notebook on the nail by the kitchen door stays shut for a whole week.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a six-room homestay in Kausani and my guests like to cook their own food, but I have one kitchen and four families wanting it at the same time every morning. Make me a phone app where I give a room the next number in the kitchen line, and anyone staying here can open the same board on their own phone and see who is cooking now and who comes after them. When a room finishes I mark it done and it adds one session at 150 rupees to that room's list. On the morning they leave I open their room, see six sessions and 900 rupees, take the notes in my hand and mark it settled. Only my phone should be able to change anything. The app should never ask anyone to pay online, it just keeps the count so nobody argues with me at the gate.