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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?

#141

Post by lostlogin »

patrick8 wrote: post #114
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…

After hearing about the fraud in Italian olive oil I am skeptical your Eurotrash friends really know where their tomatoes are grown.

The idea that the Mafia defraud themselves is quite funny and those endless movies/tv kitchen scenes would be funnier for it, "don't burn the sauce and use the real oil".

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

#142

Post by mamon »

vmarsy wrote: post #86
blawson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think by that logic no one values high quality food? A croissant in Paris is probably about 2 euros as well. If we both agree the French tend to do croissants better, and care about it more, so how come theirs don't cost significantly more?

The parent specifically mentioned Americans. It's much easier to find the right and good ingredients for a recipe in France than is it in the U.S. Go to any supermarket in France and buy flour for instance: you'll find type T45, T55, T65, T80, T110, T150 [1]. And professional pastry recipes will tell you exactly what type of flour in what quantities. In the U.S. you will only find "All Purpose flour". I know French p…

This is higly correlated with regulatory laws governing agriculture in US and Europe.

EU has much more strict policies, limits on pesticide use, no GMO rule, plus specific laws to protect traditional (sometimes centuries old) product recipies from being faked by inustrial-scale producers, replacing natural ingredients with chemicals.

That's why food generaly tastes much better in Europe.

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

#143

Post by lostlogin »

sgift wrote: post #138
lostlogin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly harder to kill or physically harm someone with a software bug though. Bad food can be catastrophic, although fatal results are rare.

Never forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

This is true and there are others too. However everyone eats, not everyone gets a zap to the brain. The below link suggests nearly 40 million cases of food poisoning and 3,000 deaths per year in the US alone. Obviously that isn't all from pastry chefs, but it's vastly more than I'd have guessed. https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/

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

#144

Post by dagw »

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.

I'm not so sure. I'm the sort of person that quite enjoys going to expensive restaurants and tries to keep up with what's happening in that world. And I've never heard anyone say "don't go to restaurant X, they might have a good wine list and the starters and main courses was great, but their deserts are terrible". At worst they'll say "when you go to X, don't bother ordering deserts".

The truth is that while having a great pastry chef is a really nice perk, for the vast majority of restaurants the quality of the deserts are near the bottom of the list when people priorities which restaurant they want to go to.

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

#146

Post by metaphor »

cheriot wrote: post #40
mc32 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

>> In general, Americans don't value high quality food.

What precisely qualifies food as "high quality", and what meaning does value have if it's allowed to be subjectively redefined by others?

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

#147

Post by Moru »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #101
cheriot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's more people in Paris that know how to make awesome croissants. Maybe it's considered "fancy" food in the US and marked up accordingly. There's a lot of economic levers to push.

>Perhaps there's more people in Paris that know how to make awesome croissants. Maybe it's considered "fancy" food in the US and marked up accordingly. True, but I can still make far superior chocolate-chip cookies (an American staple pastry) at home, for cheap, than I've ever had from 90% of stores and bakeries. Try out the following recipe with the addition of half a lemon's juice, switching out all the sugar for b…

Would be much easier to try out recipes on the net if people would use scales for flour and sugar instead of a cup...

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

#148

Post by uhhuhuh »

carterehsmith wrote: post #126
emodendroket wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if it were really that easy there wouldn't be any need for the elaborate system of culinary schools and apprenticeships at restaurants that teach high-level versions of these skills.

I just want to say that there is a misconception here. 'Chef' indeed needs to go to school and may take years to earn the title. 'Pastry chef' is not a 'chef'. There is no culinary school involved, or required to be pastry chef.

Like "software engineer", "chef" is a pretty much unregulated title. You can be hired as a "chef" as a fairly low skilled short order cook, or as a highly skilled, highly trained master of fine fusion cuisine.

And at the top tiers (like people who do $2000 wedding cakes), pastry chefs are definitely highly skilled and highly trained.

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

#149

Post by uhhuhuh »

lostlogin wrote: post #140
cheriot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's more people in Paris that know how to make awesome croissants. Maybe it's considered "fancy" food in the US and marked up accordingly. There's a lot of economic levers to push.

I have no idea if it's true, but I've heard it said that some types of pastry are very hard/impossible to make in some climates due to humidity. French pastries can be bought uncooked from France and baked after the flight for this reason. May be a gimmick but I worked by a place with French owners that did this. The pastries were excellent.

I don't know if that's true. I've had some pretty awesome pastries in French speaking Africa, made by French trained patissiers. Pastries that rivaled ones made in France. And this was in hot and humid climates.

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

#150

Post by personlurking »

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 never thought people would pay for high-end toast, but at least in SF, they are (according to this 10 min video)

Toast: Inside San Francisco's Controversial Bread Obsession https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhPrWm-vKSY

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