How Stockpot works

The rules.

Your kitchen's agent trades on your behalf. These are every rule it follows, and why each one exists. Nothing here is a promise about the future — it is what the software does today.

When your agent decides to trade

Two sums, run for every ingredient, every day.

It offers food up when you will not use it in time: If your stock will last longer than the food will, the rest goes in the bin. That is the moment to sell it.
It goes looking when you will run out before a delivery arrives: If your stock runs out sooner than your supplier can restock, you are about to be short. That is the moment to buy.
The same signal will not fire twice in a day: Otherwise one problem becomes fifty listings, and nobody can see what is really happening.

Who gets asked

Not everybody sees every auction.

Only kitchens that cook with that ingredient: A bakery has no opinion about paneer. Asking anyway wasted an AI call and put strangers in your results.
You are never asked about your own listing: Bidding against yourself is not a market.
A new kitchen only watches until you say otherwise: Your agent decides and writes down what it would have done, but spends nothing, until you switch it on. Trust earned rather than asked for.

How an auction runs

Two kinds, running in opposite directions.

Selling spare food: the highest offer wins: You are giving something up, so you want the best price for it.
Buying what you are short of: the lowest offer wins: You are the one paying, so you want it cheapest.
A tie goes to whoever bid first: And if two bids land in the same instant, the tie is broken the same way every single time. The same auction always produces the same winner.
A clock closes it, not a person: The clock is kept outside the app, so killing and restarting the app mid-auction still closes it on time.
No bids means it expires, not that it hangs: A listing nobody wanted must end, or it sits open for ever.

Bids that get refused

Every refusal comes with the reason, in words, on screen.

The auction is not open: It has not started, or it is already finished.
The window has closed: Late is late.
It is your own listing: See above.
Below the seller's floor, or above the buyer's ceiling: Both sides set a limit before bidding begins. Nothing gets through it.
A price or amount of zero or less: Not a bid.
More than is actually on offer: You cannot buy 20kg from a 15kg listing.
The wrong currency: Two currencies in one auction is a bug, not a trade.
A bid that does not beat your own live one: Otherwise you could quietly walk your own offer backwards after seeing the competition.

How far food will travel

Somebody has to drive it, so distance is a rule and not a hope.

You set two distances, not one: How far you will drive to deliver, and how far you will accept a delivery from. They are different questions — a corner shop that will walk 500m and a caterer with a van should not be forced to share a number.
The stricter of the two wins: A trade only happens if both kitchens are happy with the distance. Your limit is yours; nobody can talk you past it.
Food close to its date travels less far: Something with a day left goes 5km, three days left goes 15km. It only ever shortens the trip — a long shelf life never stretches your own limit.
A kitchen too far away is never even asked: It saves everyone time, and saves us paying an AI to be told what a subtraction already knew.
And if it bids anyway, the bid is refused: Not asking is politeness. This is the rule. The refusal tells you exactly how far apart you were.
If either of you has not set a location, the trade is allowed: We will not guess. Screens say “location not set” rather than pretending to know, so you can see why a far-away kitchen got through.

Money

The part that has to be right.

Your card is approved once, up to a limit you set: Your agent physically cannot spend above it. The card network refuses, not our code. That is the difference between a promise and a guarantee.
Nothing is charged until the food arrives and you accept it: Winning an auction moves no money at all.
Half turns up, you pay for half: You are charged for what you actually accepted, never the amount agreed.
Rounding goes your way: On a part delivery the fraction of a paisa is left with the buyer, because the seller set the price.
Pressing charge twice charges once: The database refuses the second one. A retry after a dropped connection cannot take your money twice.
Reject the delivery and nothing is charged: No money moves, and the approval is cancelled.

Handover

Proof that food actually changed hands.

The buyer gets a six-character code: Only the buyer ever sees it. It is scrambled before it is stored, so it is not sitting in our database in plain sight.
The seller must type that code, out loud from the buyer: Saying it in person is what proves the driver is genuinely standing there.
The seller can never look the code up: If they could, the code would prove nothing. Trying it returns a refusal.
Three wrong tries and it locks: After that even the right code is refused, or the limit would only slow an attacker down instead of stopping them.
A two-hour window, opened when the seller sets off: Enter it too early or too late and the code is dead.

Getting paid

You sell, we collect, we pass it on.

The buyer's card pays Stockpot, not you directly: Card networks will only pay a registered business, and a restaurant is not one. We are honest about the money stopping here on the way through.
We keep 2.8%: Taken off the seller, never added onto the buyer — and shown as its own line so you can see exactly what was taken.
Rounding goes the seller's way: Any fraction of a paisa in the fee stays with you.
A person makes the bank transfer: Our card provider has no way to send money out, so somebody sends it and records the bank reference. You can check that reference against your own statement. We never show a tick for money that has not moved.
The same earnings cannot be paid twice: Each line of your statement can only ever belong to one transfer.
A failed transfer gives the money straight back: It returns to your balance. Nothing is lost, and you can ask again.
You cannot mark your own payout as sent: The person receiving the money is not the person who confirms it went.

When it asks you first

You set the line.

Under your limit, it just gets on with it: That is the point of having an agent.
Over your limit, it texts you and waits: Nothing happens until you reply. A thumbs up is enough.
No answer means no: After two minutes it gives up and declines, so a silent phone frees the market instead of freezing it.
Set the limit to zero and it asks about everything: Your agent, your rules.

Honesty

Rules about what we tell you.

Made-up data is labelled as made-up, everywhere it appears: Sample sales are marked as sample sales. You can always ask which figures came from your real till.
Your waste number is an estimate, and says so twice: Nothing anywhere measures what you actually threw away. We show the working instead of a confident number with no source.
Every decision is written down, including the refusals: The reasons your agent said no are usually more interesting than the times it said yes.

Not built yet

Things people reasonably assume are here, and are not. We would rather list them than let you find out.

Nobody moves the food but a person: There is no courier, no tracking, no route. Someone drives.
One country, one currency: Trading across a border needs several currencies, customs and food licences. It is not a longer drive; it is a different product.
No reputation score yet: A kitchen that lets you down does not yet carry that record into the next auction.
We do not check your bank details: Nothing we have can. Read the last four digits back before your first payout.