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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?

#211

Post by jobu »

yomly wrote: post #32
uremog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad chefs create negative value just as easily. Wasted ingredients. Bad product that looks ok and leads to unhappy customers. Etc.

Poor hygiene leading to food poisoning too

This comment made me think of Chipotle. I haven't eaten there since all the food poisoning problems.

Chipotle is a big chain and got national attention for the poisonings, but in the age of Yelp a few people getting sick can tank a small local business.

Better to pay a little more for decent employees that care about their job and also give them benefits so they don't come in sick and spread disease.

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

#212

Post by personlurking »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #209
personlurking wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is from over two years ago; are artisanal toast shops still a thing? People in New York are no longer standing in an hour-long line to get a cronut.

While I'm from SF, I haven't lived there in several years. From the video, it seems these are just hip cafes (offering artisanal toast), rather than artisanal toast shops. Will have to wait on a current SFer to chime in here.

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

#213

Post by dorfsmay »

specialist wrote: post #191
dorfsmay wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, us…

50, or 60% of the time, the food I prepare is really good (CMM 1)

A good cook can repeatedly make a really good meal (CMM 2) but not necessarily being able to explain how and why.

A Chef can setup processes and direct any cook to repeatedly prepare really good meal (CMM 4).

A Master will improve existing recipes and invent new ones, will invent new processes to make better meal and make the kitchen work more efficiently etc... CMM 5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model

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

#214

Post by mc32 »

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.

The quality of pastry depends on ingredient quality, preparation, age of dough, and freshness out of the oven. There could be others.

A pastry out of the oven is delicious. Which is why pastry made in house taste better than the hours old stuff you get at chain coffee shops.

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

#215

Post by emodendroket »

logicallee wrote: post #196
emodendroket wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> “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, which also frequently offer stock options.

> The example of pastry chefs — a field where the artistic and technical requirements may be even more demanding — is no less striking. Tony Galzin, a former pastry chef at the Chicago restaurant MK, cited ice cream making. It can take months to learn how to achieve the correct proportions of fat, sugar, protein, water and stabilizers, all of which are thrown off by the use of different ingredients.

Please try a bit harder to read the article you're commenting on.

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

#216

Post by icantdrive55 »

"Why arn't wages rising?"

I hire a good, trained Pastry Chef. I pay her/him well. I then have that person train the line of unemployed guys who are lined up out back to become a Pastry Chef. I then fire, or tell the trained Pastry Chef I can't afford to pay you anymore. End. Repeat.

I have seen this in the telecommunications industry. I have seen it in the Electrial field, especially non-Union outfits. I have seen this in every job I have ever had, except dishwashing in high school.

Right now certain sectors of, I don't even know what to call you guys, Computer engineers; seem somewhat safe, but this field will eventually get hit hard too.

Jobs with high barriers to entry will be safe, but most of us didn't get accepted to medical school.

Sorry if I sound bitter--I am. It's human nature, in at least the Bay Area, to pay least amount you can get away with. And they do! There's a reason for unions? If those Pastry Chiefs were in a union--this common senerio would not be so common place? We wouldn't have hordes of unskilled labor comming here taking their job eventually?

"O--that's not right? Owners are wonderful/moral people? My job is so complicated--it will be years to train the right special person to do my magic!"

Yea--keep believing that, and let's keep up these stupid debates. They love it when the help doesn't quite realize when they are being exploited.

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

#217

Post by Chris2048 »

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…

> you make it sound as if a daily $4 latte is that normal

I buy maybe 2 lattes a day at 3.50 EUR each.

I also spend about 350 EUR a year on coffee beans/grounds and this year 1-2k on coffee machines (a one off admittedly, I expect a yearly average of 200-300 EUR on equipment going forward).

Maybe I'm unusual, but I expect people who buy fewer home materials will drink at cafes more?

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

#218

Post by Chris2048 »

dmamills wrote: post #47
WillPostForFood wrote: post #37

Tony Galzin, a former pastry chef at the Chicago restaurant MK, cited ice cream making. It can take months to learn how to achieve the correct proportions of fat, sugar, protein, water and stabilizers, all of which are thrown off by the use of different ingredients. This is an example of pastry chefs overvaluing their own skills, so not surprising there is labor substitution happening.

This is hysterically ironic on a forum like hacker news.

Why? Are developers overvaluing their skills?

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

#219

Post by vonmoltke »

riskable wrote: post #19
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…

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…

> 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)!

Why are you assuming the problems of Yahoo and LinkedIn were caused by cheap, inexperienced developers? From my experience I think the problem was more likely that someone implemented a basic, not-for-production system to scaffold the larger system and was not permitted to change it by management that demanded it be released yesterday.

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

#220

Post by emodendroket »

Chris2048 wrote: post #197
wfo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.
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