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Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

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Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#31

Post by douche »

Swizec wrote: post #7
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Drive" is right. It often seems like even at the cost of getting inferior work-product, many employers have come to believe that cheap labor is a moral principle. If employers would rather hire lower-skilled workers than pay over $35k/year, the pastry chefs should unionize.

"It often seems like even at the cost of getting inferior work-product, many customers have come to believe that cheap pastries are a moral principle." I think that's the gist of the issue. People want a $5 snack, not a $35 artisanal free-range organic pastry dining experience.

I'm not sure that's the whole picture. For instance, in many European cities, I can get a better quality product for $5 at a corner shop than I can for $35 at some artisanal hipster place here in the States. It's one of the things I love about visiting Berlin; I've never eaten simultaneously so well and so cheaply.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#32

Post by yomly »

uremog wrote: post #25
riskable wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but a cheap, inexperienced dev can create negative value. Not just in the product that they're working on but your entire brand. Just ask LinkedIn or Yahoo if it was a good idea to put some ignorant fool in charge of the system that stored passwords. Aside: I'm sure that person is worth more now because they won't make such mistakes (again)! Rant: Looking towards the future I want to know which ignorant…

Bad chefs create negative value just as easily. Wasted ingredients. Bad product that looks ok and leads to unhappy customers. Etc.

Poor hygiene leading to food poisoning too

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#33

Post by davidw »

AlexC04 wrote: post #24
davidw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely something to this: I spent most of the last 15 years in Italy, where people care about their food. They care a lot , and will absolutely discriminate between various tomatoes based on where they're grown, different kinds of pasta, and many other things to boot. In the US, I think we tend to just look at the price and mostly go by that if the product is not clearly awful. It is changing though: it's…

It seems he's retitled the book to "An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies by Tyler Cowen (2013) Paperback Paperback" I do like yours better, but suspect that'd be less popular stateside

That wasn't the title, I just quoted it as a subject that the book covers. Sorry for the confusion.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#34

Post by harryh »

danharaj wrote: post #30
harryh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely some evidence for this hypothesis. If you read about the restaurant industry you'll see a lot of comments from restauranteurs that seem to indicate that they think the salary ratios between FOH and BOH staff are off. We've had a couple of restaurants in NYC go tip free, instead building the cost of service into the base cost of menu items. Unfortunately it appears that this can be a challenge beca…

Sounds like something an ordinance could solve.

Indeed. In fact, one of the main reasons that some NYC restaurants have been experimenting with no-tipping policies are due to labor law changes. Not ordinances about tipping specifically but rules around pay and benefits for restaurant industry workers.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#35

Post by ufo »

harryh wrote: post #26
woopwoop wrote: post #20

Part of the reason could be the tipping system. It is impossible to raise the price of the food in your restaurant without giving a raise to your waitstaff, since almost everyone tips a fixed percentage. So if you want to give a raise to your chef, you want to fund it with a price increase, but you can't do that without giving a raise to your waiters.

There is definitely some evidence for this hypothesis. If you read about the restaurant industry you'll see a lot of comments from restauranteurs that seem to indicate that they think the salary ratios between FOH and BOH staff are off. We've had a couple of restaurants in NYC go tip free, instead building the cost of service into the base cost of menu items. Unfortunately it appears that this can be a challenge beca…

Are tips required by law to go to the FOH staff or could a restaurant split the tips between the FOH and BOH staff (assuming the staff agrees to it)?

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#36

Post by internaut »

dcre wrote: post #22
internaut wrote: post #16

There are a number of reasons why wages might not rise that have nothing to do with free market supply and demand. The most obvious is you could control wages by being the owner of inelastic goods your workers require to live, such as housing. I think this is how the feudal system worked originally, workers produced cereals but the Land and the worker's cottages were both owned by the Landlord. If the price of bread…

...what? If I could upvote the top half and downvote the second I would.

Why do you find the idea of a wage fixing cartel so bizarre? It's a phenomenon as old as labour markets themselves. The employer does not want a market for labour, they want a steady supply of workers for the lowest price. Since there are fewer employers than workers, it is easier to coordinate a plot against them.

Also when the economy becomes more centralized and bigger companies swallow up smaller ones, you should expect more cartels. That is just logical.

I didn't say I had evidence but I know the number of competitors for positions in the UK has been going down, not up. The price for labour however has not shifted.

This is indicative of fixed prices, in this case wages.

Does you think the prices for turnips can be fixed but not that of plumbers? It's all the same thing.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#37

Post by WillPostForFood »

Tony Galzin, a former pastry chef at the Chicago restaurant MK, cited ice cream making. It can take months to learn how to achieve the correct proportions of fat, sugar, protein, water and stabilizers, all of which are thrown off by the use of different ingredients.

This is an example of pastry chefs overvaluing their own skills, so not surprising there is labor substitution happening.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#38

Post by riskable »

zanny wrote: post #28
riskable wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but a cheap, inexperienced dev can create negative value. Not just in the product that they're working on but your entire brand. Just ask LinkedIn or Yahoo if it was a good idea to put some ignorant fool in charge of the system that stored passwords. Aside: I'm sure that person is worth more now because they won't make such mistakes (again)! Rant: Looking towards the future I want to know which ignorant…

Cheap, inexperienced pastry chefs can also ruin a restaurants reputation if they screw up too badly. You get the quality you pay for.

Ah, but a pastry chef can only disappoint so many customers at once. A single stupid mistake by a software developer can impact millions. The Yahoo leak alone was half a billion users.

That's a lot of dough!

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#39

Post by harryh »

ufo wrote: post #35
harryh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely some evidence for this hypothesis. If you read about the restaurant industry you'll see a lot of comments from restauranteurs that seem to indicate that they think the salary ratios between FOH and BOH staff are off. We've had a couple of restaurants in NYC go tip free, instead building the cost of service into the base cost of menu items. Unfortunately it appears that this can be a challenge beca…

Are tips required by law to go to the FOH staff or could a restaurant split the tips between the FOH and BOH staff (assuming the staff agrees to it)?

I believe that in most jurisdictions they are required to go to FOH staff. I am not 100% certain about that though.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#40

Post by cheriot »

mc32 wrote: post #29
bootload wrote: post #2

"the salaries of pastry makers in the Chicago area do not appear to have budged much, if at all. The key to this puzzle tells us a lot about why the American economy isn’t necessarily behaving the way workers have traditionally assumed. ... Employers, according to those in the industry, have increasingly turned to less experienced workers to ensure the flow of sweets" The drive to employ cheaper, okay workers in acti…

Problem is price for pastries is more or less elastic. I'll pay $2 to $4 for a croissant/crescent but I'm not going to pay more than that. An $8 croissant isn't going to be any better because the preparer gets paid more. It may taste marginally better with more expensive ingredients, but not because the chef/baker/baxter is paid more.

I think you're giving away another reason. In general, Americans don't value high quality food. A croissant is a croissant to us. Tyler Cowan wrote an interesting book speculating why. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GSYYQ2/
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