Cinema-style popcorn, shipped in tins
Popcorn Company sells gourmet popcorn in red, blue and black tins, plus a DIY popcorn kit. Its homepage pitches cinema-style popcorn at home, with a Top Sellers row, a Gifting page and a blog in the menu.
A food order is a tax document like any other. It also comes with food-safety paperwork.
Two rulebooks on one page
A food seller in India answers to GST and to food safety rules, and both show up on the invoice. On the tax side the invoice carries the seller's GSTIN, a serial number of up to 16 characters, the date, and an HSN code for each product. Popcorn and similar snacks fall under chapter 19, and the heading used on the sample is 1904. The tax splits into CGST and SGST when the parcel stays in the seller's state, or becomes IGST when it crosses a state line.
Gift orders add a twist. The billing address and the delivery address can sit in different states, and the delivery state is the one that decides between CGST plus SGST and IGST. The invoice series also has to stay unique within a financial year, which runs from 1 April to 31 March, so many sellers restart numbering each April.
On the food side, FSSAI requires food businesses to print their 14-digit licence or registration number on bills and invoices, and the rule has applied since 1 October 2021. A licence number starts with 1 and a registration number with 2. The sample on this page puts that number, written as 14 placeholder zeros, where the template normally shows a company registration number. A DIY kit adds its own question. It bundles kernels, seasoning and sometimes a box, and each of those can sit under a different HSN heading, so a seller has to decide whether the kit invoices as one product or as parts. Rates for snack foods can differ by variety, for example between a salted and a caramel-coated popcorn, so each line should be classified on its own merits.
How Popcorn Company runs it
Popcorn Company installed PDF Invoice in 2024. Invoices come out in English with amounts in rupees on the Blue template. The account has five document types, which are order, quote, refund, packing slip and invoice, and item barcodes are switched on for the packing side.
The sample invoice is invented apart from the brand name. It lists cheese, peri peri and salted popcorn tins and three sour cream and onion pouches, all savoury, so one flat 5% rate covers the order. GST appears as 2.5% CGST and 2.5% SGST, ₹122.00 on a ₹2,440.00 subtotal, for a grand total of ₹2,562.00. The customer, address, GSTIN and licence number are all placeholders.
Results
This page carries no volume figure and no outcome claim. The story here is the setup. Invoices, order documents, refunds and packing slips come from one app, and the template has room for both the GSTIN and the FSSAI number.
Try it for your store
If you sell food online in India, start with PDF Invoice on the Shopify App Store. Put your GSTIN and FSSAI licence number into the settings once, and every invoice prints them.