How the Forkcast tools are calibrated

• Agmarknet (Govt. of India)

  Daily mandi prices for 12+ commodities (onion, tomato, potato, ginger, garlic, oil, etc.). Refreshed every 24 hours. Used in the menu pricing tool's mandi-priced ingredient line.

• Capital benchmarks dataset

  Curated data from 200+ Indian restaurant openings (2023-2026), cross-checked against Petpooja hardware partner quotes. Refreshed quarterly.

• Cuisine listing density

  Aggregated Zomato + Swiggy listings by pincode, normalised to city population. Refreshed monthly.

• State licence portals

  FoSCoS (FSSAI), state excise departments, MCG/PMC/BMC trade licence schedules, fire-services NOC fee schedules. Refreshed when policy changes are notified.

• IMD weather

  India Meteorological Department forecast data, used in the in-product daily forecast (not exposed in free tools).

• Daily: Agmarknet mandi prices.
• Weekly: Tool usage anonymous QA — outlier outputs flagged and reviewed.
• Monthly: Cuisine listing density refresh; viability and demand heatmap recalibration.
• Quarterly: Capital benchmark dataset refresh; format and tier coefficients re-fit.
• On policy change: Licence cost, validity, and authority updates within 7 working days.

• Capital estimates are a band, not a guarantee. Real openings can fall outside the band when the format is unusual or location is exceptional.
• The location scorer falls back to a heuristic when GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY isn't configured. The result page tells you which source was used.
• Cuisine demand is a directional read — region-specific cultural patterns (e.g. Konkan coastal seafood, Saoji in Nagpur) aren't fully captured at the slug level. Use it alongside in-person catchment validation.
• Mandi prices are reference rates, not your supplier's quoted rate. A 5-10% delta is normal; flag >15% deltas for re-quote.
• Licence fees are state-issued; some PMC/BMC sub-classifications can swing the number 30-50% within the published band.

Each tool publishes its formula and source list inside the FAQ on the tool page. When we change a coefficient or add a new dataset, we note it in the next blog issue. Pilot operator feedback drives the weekly QA loop — if a tool's output disagrees with their lived experience, we investigate.

Comments, corrections, and dataset suggestions are welcome — write to hello@forkcast.in. We acknowledge every email and credit substantive corrections in the next monthly digest.

Open the free tools or read the blog for the latest applied research.