Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mobile.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 259 posts

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

#131

Post by Klover »

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 dinner.

There is of course nothing inherently bad about this. People like going out to have food, and restaurants oblige them. But they can only really do this when their guests are in their restaurants. They cannot create more value than they do now. All they compete on is status, atmosphere, service, food quality, price. I personally see limited innovation potential here, therefore a somewhat limited market. Therefore, sort of like you said, lots of competition in many aspects besides pastry chefs, all for the limited food dollar.

Now compare that to your average software developer. There is new software I come across on a near daily basis that attempts to improve work flow one way or the other; trying to make me more productive. There is more value in a rather basic tool MS Word alone than there is in lots of dinners. If Excel didn't exist, I'm not sure if I would have the time to go to restaurants.

But software development also differs greatly to restaurants, on the developer's side. They can produce a game once, and people can purchase it and play it without the developers having to directly entertain at most a few number of people.

But what I am most surprised about is that you make it sound as if a daily $4 latte is that normal. It isn't, is it?

(Sorry for the mess, the screen kept scrolling oddly, so I could only see the last few words I typed.)

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

#132

Post by lostlogin »

riskable wrote: post #38
zanny wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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

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

#133

Post by misja111 »

wavefunction wrote: post #108
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…

I have to disagree with you completely. From your first line to your last, I can't disagree more or more strongly. "Edible" is not a sufficient performance by a decent amateur baker, let alone a pastry chef who likely also knows things quite intimately beyond cupcakes like working with sugar and various frostings, fondants, meringues, flans, pies, tarts, cakes, puddings and custards and so on... When you add that to…

Another way to stay below those razor thin profit margins is to hire cheaper chefs. Nobody is denying that better educated chefs make better pastry. But if 'edible' pastry is good enough for your average customer, then it might be a more profitable strategy to cut down on the labor costs.

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

#134

Post by ggambetta »

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.

> You can spend 30 minutes watching youtube videos and learn how to write basic code. It won't be glorious but it will work.

Mmmmmmmaybe if you're writing boring CRUD (and any non-YouTube educated engineering would probably think of automating this). Fortunately there are much more interesting problems that can take an entire team of world-class engineers to solve, working gloriously or just barely.

Some code really is hard to write.

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

#135

Post by lostlogin »

in_cahoots wrote: post #23
hughes wrote: post #14

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. With software development it's a little different - it's entirely possible for a more…

I'm not sure that your two scenarios are as different as you suggest. An expensive pastry chef may produce fewer pastries (I don't see why it would be more expensive otherwise if the ingredients are the same), but the higher quality may also yield more sales. I can bake you a muffin, but you definitely wouldn't want to pay for it. For the second scenario, most companies don't need the mythical 10x programmer. The cor…

Surely you see a correlation between pastry quality and profit? I can name a couple of places that I go out my way to visit (and a couple I avoid). Surely most people can? The places I like have queues, sell out of stock and one has opened in a second (more expensive) location. The ones I like charge premium prices.

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

#136

Post by lostlogin »

lazyjones wrote: post #80
emodendroket wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really find it hard to believe that a more experienced pastry chef can make better pastries? I think this is the same frustrating myopia that makes people assume they all could easily write software the way you do except in reverse.

> Do you really find it hard to believe that a more experienced pastry chef can make better pastries? That makes sense, but after a certain level of experience, their contribution to quality of pastries will likely reach a plateau and it will only increase further with better ingredients.

Presumably less wastage leads to more profit and a growing customer base means higher prices can be charged?

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

#137

Post by lostlogin »

carterehsmith wrote: post #128
wavefunction wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree with you completely. From your first line to your last, I can't disagree more or more strongly. "Edible" is not a sufficient performance by a decent amateur baker, let alone a pastry chef who likely also knows things quite intimately beyond cupcakes like working with sugar and various frostings, fondants, meringues, flans, pies, tarts, cakes, puddings and custards and so on... When you add that to…

Dude. You bought, hooker and sink, some bullshit ad from the local 'artisanal bakery'. Sorry but there are no 10-generation artisans labouring endlessly to bring you your $5 cupcake. Its just 15-year old kids working to get some money towards college.

It doesn't meet your 10 generation bar (not sure there would be even 4 generations of non Maori baking in New Zealand) but I can name 3 second generation bakeries/kitchens and the staff work very hard and have high standards. The things they make get high prices and they appear to be doing very well. I went to school with 4 of the younger generation and they now mostly run one of the companies.

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

#138

Post by sgift »

lostlogin wrote: post #132
riskable wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

lostlogin wrote: post #132
riskable wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by lostlogin »

cheriot wrote: post #63
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?

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.
Post reply on HN