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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?

#161

Post by wyclif »

metaphor wrote: post #146
cheriot wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The popularity of Whole Foods in the USA seems to contradict that statement.

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

#162

Post by varjag »

skybrian wrote: post #106
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.

That might be true for a shop, but fancy restaurants have limited upside. If they're filling the seats, more demand doesn't matter that much - it just makes it harder to get a reservation. So above a reasonable level of quality, profit margin will matter more to the business.

They can raise the prices until the backlog of reservations is still respectable but not hopeless. That's in fact what many of them do.

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

#163

Post by eloisant »

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…

The big difference is that a software developer can have an impact on software used by millions (sometimes even billions) of users. So it can be cost-effective to have an expensive software developer.

A pastry chef however can only produce so many pastries every day, so for them to get better pay they need to sell the pastry for more. Is the high-quality high-price pastry market big enough for that?

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

#164

Post by Sacho »

ryhamz wrote: post #118
Spooky23 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty ridiculous statement which pretty much speaks for itself. Software development is as much robotics as baking. I'd guess that easily 75% of the tasks being performed by programmers in 1999 are fully automated by APIs and frameworks today.

>I'd guess that easily 75% of the tasks being performed by programmers in 1999 are fully automated by APIs and frameworks today. Not defending this guy, but it's not like we are still making the same product (pastry equivalent) as 1999. We go through the automation and then build on top, right?

I find it hard to believe that pastries and pastry-making haven't evolved with the introduction of better tools, materials, different recipes, etc..

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

#165

Post by cbr »

whyenot wrote: post #115
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!

Are you familiar with Amy's Baking Company? Sometimes disappointing one customer can have catastrophic consequences. http://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/dining/2015/12/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy%27s_Baking_Company

They disappointed a lot of customers! It was a pattern of behavior that blew up in their faces, not one incident.

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

#166

Post by logicallee »

Sacho wrote: post #164
ryhamz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd guess that easily 75% of the tasks being performed by programmers in 1999 are fully automated by APIs and frameworks today. Not defending this guy, but it's not like we are still making the same product (pastry equivalent) as 1999. We go through the automation and then build on top, right?

I find it hard to believe that pastries and pastry-making haven't evolved with the introduction of better tools, materials, different recipes, etc..

I think everyone completely missed my point. You can hire someone (who has no baking skills) away from starbucks and teach them to follow an exact recipe precisely, in a few hours. You can't hire someone with no programming skills (doesn't know what a loop or if statement is) and train them to join your programming team in a few hours or even a few days. It's just not possible, unless they learn miraculously quickly. I think other respondents might have forgotten what it means not to be able to program at all, or what it means to follow a recipe precisely. You can't compare the two.

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

#167

Post by verbify »

eloisant wrote: post #163
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…

The big difference is that a software developer can have an impact on software used by millions (sometimes even billions) of users. So it can be cost-effective to have an expensive software developer. A pastry chef however can only produce so many pastries every day, so for them to get better pay they need to sell the pastry for more. Is the high-quality high-price pastry market big enough for that?

Many software developers write in-house applications for SMEs. These will be used by sometimes dozens or hundreds of people - not millions or billions.

Companies that write software applications that have millions or billions of users generally hire expensive developers.

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

#168

Post by Broken_Hippo »

carterehsmith wrote: post #105
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.

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'm sorry, but what you are thinking of is a baker. A simple baker.

Most folks can make a simple pastry, which is what is more common in homes and such. A lot of folks can make a simple cake. Not everyone can make the puff pastry themselves, get delicate things to come out correctly, and so on. Not everyone can successfully make a 4-tier wedding cake, be able to tell the cake itself has enough structural support, nor can they effectively decorate it - on top of producing the myriad of other desserts needed. Folks take some months getting good at the decorating itself, actually.

Add in there bread and any sort of savory item that might be in a pastry shell as well. Knowing the spices and stuff like that.

"It will not be glorious but it might be edible" : Is this truly enough for you if you are paying for it? Getting married? Would you pay a premium for something simply edible? Yeah... Neither would I.

Additionally, pastry chefs (and other chefs) often have some education in business practices and margin producing sorts of things. Would you have thought of ordering grade b potatoes to mash? How about onions? Could you take some leftover food and make it into some wonderful-tasting special the next day?

The bigger reason chefs have bad salaries is because it is kitchen work. It is a service job. And service pays badly.

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

#169

Post by ansgri »

Moru wrote: post #147
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #101

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. 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...

After reading enough American news I can only joke that they are afraid that the ownership of marginally precise scales would automatically summon a police drug raid against them.

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

#170

Post by bryanrasmussen »

dwc wrote: post #41
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…

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.

right, a higher quality pastry chef produces higher quality pastry and as a consequence of that the higher quality pastry chef should also be the more expensive pastry chef.
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