The pre-order is the forecast

A few days before Eid al-Adha, which is expected around the end of the month depending on the sighting, the small kitchens stop selling and start taking a list.

It happens on WhatsApp, on the phone of whoever owns the place. A whole lamb, cooked, for the table on the first day. Trays of rice. Sweets for the family visiting on the second. A transfer for half of it, a name, an hour for collection. The list is kept in a notebook or in the chat itself, and it is never called a forecast.

It is one, and a better one than the business will produce all year.

By the time the holiday starts, that kitchen knows what it is doing. How much meat to order and when. How many trays. Who collects at eleven and who at two. How many hands are needed on the morning and which ones can go home after the lunch. The kitchen next door is waiting for walk-ins, guessing at a week that has already been decided in a few hundred chats it is not part of.

A deposit is an opinion with money behind it. Nothing else a small operator can look at has that property, and nobody counts it: the list lives on one phone and is thrown out when the week ends.

A pre-order is a forecast the customer has paid for, and what they are paying against is last Eid. Open the list a week early and a guess has been replaced by a deposit.