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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?

#251

Post by emodendroket »

logicallee wrote: post #226
emodendroket wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “It depends on the needs of the website,” said Boris Epstein, co-founder of the tech recruiting firm Binc. “Coding academies and boot camps” — short courses lasting a few weeks to several months — “graduate people who are perfectly fine.” As a result, wages for web developers nationally increased only modestly during the same period, though the rate of increase was most likely higher at more tech-heavy companies, w…

you quoted "a few weeks to several months" as a "short" course in web development. how long do you think a "short course" is in baking?

It depends on what you're baking, don't you think? How long do you think it takes to learn to use JS to add an animation to a Web page?

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

#252

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

lostlogin wrote: post #242
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joel Spolsky spoke about this several years ago, using Jamie Oliver as an example. In a nutshell, as long as everything stays constant, the process can turn out excellent food. The problem is that unless you manage the living hell out of your supply chain, the inputs change all the time and it takes a lot of skil to compensate. Continuing with your pancake example: the way I make bread in summer is different than in…

Do you make Sourdough? If yes, I've had success rising it in the fridge - takes longer (1.5-2 days) but conditions in their tend to be fairly constant. As a bonus, you get a ton of oven rise.

I used to have a starter but not now. Never tried a fridge rise, but it does sound like the consistent conditions would make for a consistent rise. I'll have to try that!

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

#253

Post by lackbeard »

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…

In Seattle some higher-end restaurants have done away with tips and added an automatic surcharge of 20%. They're very diligent about making sure customers know this before they order, and they make it clear that the money is split between the front and the back of the house.

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

#254

Post by emodendroket »

Chris2048 wrote: post #222
emodendroket wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever looked into how many businesses do nothing but set up WordPress sites for customers with light customization? Quite a lot of companies want such services.

"Writing code is not really hard" isn't the same thing. Maybe you can bang together such a site without really coding, as soon as you do, even simple PHP or HTML it gets harder. I'd also take "writing code" to mean writing code, not just a subsection of particularly easy code - you can't advertise as "software developer" in general if all you can do is wordpress.

You can't advertise as a "pastry chef" if you just know how to bake cupcakes either.

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

#255

Post by Retric »

logicallee wrote: post #225
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if they are doing prep work or washing dishes, that's fine. If you've never made a loaf of bread and don't know the steps, you aren't training them in 90 minutes. The first loaf likely won't even bake - heck, a lot of baked goods take an hour or two. The dough for croissants takes some hours in itself. You might have 15 different sorts of breads you make (admittedly some will use a master dough). And this is as…

I got a lot of push-back for my comments and Googled, completely neutrally, the exact searches "how long does it take to become a baker" (without quotation marks) and "how long does it take to become a software developer" (since the statement I replied to used 'softwere development.') The former gave me confidence that I could be hired as a baker apprentice tomorrow and learn on the job over a matter of months. The l…

You can get someone in as a software tester basically off the street which is comparable to a jr baker. AKA limited part of the process that makes developers more efficient. We also use collage interns to do some development tasks, which might take 6 months of focused training from scratch so 1-2 years training from tester to Jr dev seems about right.

Thus there is a path for someone to be useful their first week with zero training to gradually become a senior developer in less than 10 years.

PS: Just remembered, my dad actually went from cabinetry to developer and his background was a few years of a philosophy degree. Granted, this was ~40 years ago, but the jump is not as hard as you might think.

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

#256

Post by lamontcg »

Klover wrote: post #131
lamontcg wrote: post #129

The problem here is the Restaurant industry. Overall, its not growing like high tech is growing. While even the article notes: “Restaurants are being built much faster than I can produce professionals.” That sounds like it'd be good for "professionals", but when you think about the industry that sounds bad for "restaurants". That means higher competition between restaurants for the consumer's food dollar. The wages t…

Good points. On top of that you might also argue that restaurants are very consumption oriented. Fast food can save you time by letting you focus on other things than cooking. A pastry chef will take more time to make something special. During that time you might be entertaining potential clients or business partners, though on the global scale of restaurants, most people are probably going out to dinner to enjoy din…

> I personally see limited innovation potential here

Yep, there's really no "iPhone" of food coming out anytime soon. Fast food already happened, which was the commoditization of eating out. Starbucks may have been the closest thing to that, but that is a $4 drink, not a $400 phone.

> you make it sound as if a daily $4 latte is that normal. It isn't, is it?

That is about what a double-tall latte costs these days. Usually around US $3.50-3.75, but with tip its $4 or $5 if its your regular place and you find the barista attractive...

And yeah, there's been times when 1 or 2 a day was typical for me (sometimes 3 when work was particularly bad), but I mostly work from home these days, so have a machine.

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

#257

Post by et-al »

harryh wrote: post #176
et-al wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It's called tip out, and in my experience it's been 3-4% of my total sales going to the other staff (sometimes 4% of only the liquor sales to the bar). Othertimes, it has been a percentage of my tips themselves (~30%: 10 bar, 10 runner, 10 bussers, I think.. been years).

All of the tip outs you describe are to FOH staff.

Pretty sure the first gig with the 4% of sales went to the kitchen, but okay.

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

#258

Post by harryh »

lackbeard wrote: post #253
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…

In Seattle some higher-end restaurants have done away with tips and added an automatic surcharge of 20%. They're very diligent about making sure customers know this before they order, and they make it clear that the money is split between the front and the back of the house.

I can see how that would work but as a consumer I kind of hate that and look at it as dishonest pricing. Annoying.

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

#259

Post by Chris2048 »

emodendroket wrote: post #254
Chris2048 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Writing code is not really hard" isn't the same thing. Maybe you can bang together such a site without really coding, as soon as you do, even simple PHP or HTML it gets harder. I'd also take "writing code" to mean writing code, not just a subsection of particularly easy code - you can't advertise as "software developer" in general if all you can do is wordpress.

You can't advertise as a "pastry chef" if you just know how to bake cupcakes either.

I'm not sure this is relevant to my point that coding isn't easy. I don't know anything about pastry-cheffing.
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