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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?

#191

Post by specialist »

dorfsmay wrote: post #73
dwc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out a plausible (and common) option: a more expensive pastry chef can make pastries that sell better. This is what's in play when you see a line out the door at some shop. The prices may not be that much more expensive, but the quality is that much better.

I can imagine an expensive chef to setup processes that allows cheaper personnel to keep producing quality party. Slowly that process will suffer from time rot (eg: different floor that requires a diff cooking, but cheaper labour can't figure it out), also innovation will suffer. I see the exact same thing in dev envs, and even more so in ops/sysadmin. Cheaper unskilled labour going through old fashion processes with…

"...that allows cheaper personnel to keep producing quality party. Slowly that process will suffer from time rot."

I'm not so sure. I think its binary.

I think there's always a touch, a qwan, assumed knowledge, skill & craft, or something that's not captured in the SOP.

The master baker in the shop next door made the most delicious brioches. Left to start her own catering company. Whereas her trained replacements, using the same recipe, ingredients, and gear, just made adequate dinner rolls.

I spent years perfecting my sunday morning pancakes. Big and fluffy. While best ingredients help, there's still a touch to make them just right. I can't even delegate flipping the pancakes to untrained family members.

I've seen this with other trades too.

You and me, we're too close to our work (tech) to fully understand the value add we bring to our work. But you miss it when it's gone.

Maybe this is why the master / apprentice setup seems to work well for knowledge transfer.

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

#192

Post by merpnderp »

kuschku wrote: post #190
coldtea wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does a more expensive pastry chef produce more expensive pastry? Or can a more experienced chef produce higher volume also? If the cost of the pastry increases with the cost of the chef, then it's entirely reasonable that there is a lower demand for more expensive pastry and therefore a lower demand for more expensive pastry chefs. Yeah, god forbid the actual quality of the pastry comes into play, and that the rest…

This is exactly the worst part about the kind of capitalism that’s been popular in recent decades. It’s all about profits now, and pride in quality is gone completely. In the US it’s already in all aspects of life, in Europe it has only caught the large companies yet, but it’s something we’ll have to fight globally.

You have to fight people's acceptance of slightly lower quality if it means slightly lower prices? Maybe we can call it the Global War on Mediocrity? Like other global wars, it will result in a massive increase in mediocrity.

BTW when has capitalism not been about profits?

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

#193

Post by grinnbearit »

kuschku wrote: post #190
coldtea wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does a more expensive pastry chef produce more expensive pastry? Or can a more experienced chef produce higher volume also? If the cost of the pastry increases with the cost of the chef, then it's entirely reasonable that there is a lower demand for more expensive pastry and therefore a lower demand for more expensive pastry chefs. Yeah, god forbid the actual quality of the pastry comes into play, and that the rest…

This is exactly the worst part about the kind of capitalism that’s been popular in recent decades. It’s all about profits now, and pride in quality is gone completely. In the US it’s already in all aspects of life, in Europe it has only caught the large companies yet, but it’s something we’ll have to fight globally.

Profits come from satisfying people's values [1], if more "higher quality" doesn't lead to more profits, it isn't valued.

As an aside, I'd be skeptical of Artists who produce "Inspiring work" which refuse to find any takers.

[1] negative externalities aside

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

#194

Post by specialist »

Spooky23 wrote: post #77
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.

The problem is that you're probably representing the prototypical American, who wouldn't know good bread or baked good if it hit them. Customers don't know the difference, so most places are fine with serving frozen cakes from the local wholesaler. So the labor rates is driven by those costs.

In the early 90s, Starbucks marketing research showed (internally) inverse relationship between latte and Twinkie consumption. Think coastal vs flyover. More a validation than heuristic.

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

#195

Post by riskable »

lostlogin wrote: post #143
sgift wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I'd imagine that food-born illnesses are mostly attributed to unclean surfaces at various points in food logistics. From the farm that grows and distributes, say, lettuce to the cutting board and dinnerware used by chefs.

I'd imagine that most restaurants/food distributors employing pastry chefs have other people to do the cleaning. So the likelihood that one could point a proverbial finger at a pastry chef as the source of a food-born illness is probably extremely low.

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

#196

Post by logicallee »

emodendroket wrote: post #183
logicallee wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arguably that is not 'programming'. What I said probably doesn't apply to every IT field.

Why not, especially when we're lumping together everything from baking cupcakes to preparing a tiered wedding cake?

Because the comment I replied to said:

>The drive to employ cheaper, okay workers in action. Applies to software development as well.

That says "software development" and was the only reason for my comment. There are no "cheaper, okay" non-developers (as in, the 90%+ of the population who does not know how a loop or if statement works in any language) you can train in under a day to do "software development".

It was quite a bit more specific than "IT". There is no recipe or set of steps you can follow (as in, actual steps: 1, 2, 3, 4, and then you... ) to be a "software developer" if you aren't one, and a non-developer can't be hired for any dev role. People (including you) thought my comment was about baking; it's not, it's about software development.

If this isn't clear enough imagine an ad in a general newspaper: "Now hiring junior bakers. We will train you, no baking experience required. $18.50/hour." and imagine another ad "Now hiring junior developers. We will train you, no computer experience required. $18.50/hour."

The average barista in California for Starbucks makes $10/hour and might apply for either job. But the second job ad is ridiculous, it doesn't make any sense at all in a general newspaper and even if it's true, would entail weeks of training at a minimum.

Please try a bit harder to see my point.

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

#197

Post by Chris2048 »

wfo wrote: post #109
carterehsmith wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest. Making pastry is not really hard. You can spend 30 minutes learning on youtube, and you will be able to make some basic pastry. It will not be glorious but it might be edible. Otherplace in this thread somebody was quoting some pastry chef claiming that "it takes months" to learn to do cupcakes or whatever. That "months" is a definition of low-skill job. Which is why pastry chefs have minimum-wage sa…

Let's be honest. Writing code is not really hard. You can spend 30 minutes watching youtube videos and learn how to write basic code. It won't be glorious but it will work. The arrogance is bleeding out of the text itself, I'm not even sure how that's possible but it's happening.

How many companies need "basic code"? Many need much more than that. Your phrasing makes it seem like advancing beyond that point is just as easy, but it's not.

What happens when you need to debug, and you don't understand anything because you copy-pasted from a tutorial? How long would an employer be willing to wait while you google for the right tutorial telling you how to fix the problem?

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

#198

Post by coldtea »

grinnbearit wrote: post #193
kuschku wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the worst part about the kind of capitalism that’s been popular in recent decades. It’s all about profits now, and pride in quality is gone completely. In the US it’s already in all aspects of life, in Europe it has only caught the large companies yet, but it’s something we’ll have to fight globally.

Profits come from satisfying people's values [1], if more "higher quality" doesn't lead to more profits, it isn't valued. As an aside, I'd be skeptical of Artists who produce "Inspiring work" which refuse to find any takers. [1] negative externalities aside

>Profits come from satisfying people's values

Even bigger profits come from selling crap to people.

Especially if you help build and sustain a whole culture that teaches them to have low expectations from what they buy, lure them with BS ads that tout unsubstantial products to high heavens, etc...

>As an aside, I'd be skeptical of Artists who produce "Inspiring work" which refuse to find any takers.

So like van Gogh who died penniless?

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

#199

Post by coldtea »

merpnderp wrote: post #192
kuschku wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the worst part about the kind of capitalism that’s been popular in recent decades. It’s all about profits now, and pride in quality is gone completely. In the US it’s already in all aspects of life, in Europe it has only caught the large companies yet, but it’s something we’ll have to fight globally.

You have to fight people's acceptance of slightly lower quality if it means slightly lower prices? Maybe we can call it the Global War on Mediocrity? Like other global wars, it will result in a massive increase in mediocrity. BTW when has capitalism not been about profits?

>BTW when has capitalism not been about profits?

At the era when industrialists took pride in their creations.

E.g. to the point to refuse to put out something that they know is subpar or to sweat the details beyond what the ignorant layman will immediately appreciate -- even if those things means reduced profit margins.

Of course that presupposes companies that listen to people and their vision, not shareholders screaming to maximize value.

The current attitude that its all about the profits is why we can't have nice things...

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

#200

Post by debacle »

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…

Take heart, as the industry matures I'm seeing much more wariness about fresh employees and a refreshing willingness to spend money on talent.
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