Did you go to school for it or learn on the job?
What is the job market like?
Do you consider it a good career?
I got pretty good, and was able to have some "subscriptions" back before that was a thing, delivering it to people at work, but in the end I was barely able to cover the costs once I'd factored in running the oven. I then moved to the northeast , where people care about bread a little more, but again are usually quite sensitive to convenience and price. The groceries here have average bakeries in store, and produce cheap reliable bread.
As for cake baking, that's a whole different ballgame. I've had a friend who tried that and she had a very hard time. People typically were extremely price sensitive, and were very hard to please. It reminded me of the tattoo business: a few rockstars charging 10k for art that gets thousands of upvotes on social media, then a mass of people doing $100 specials for customers who are never quite happy. Kind of a bummer, so my friend gave up after a year and doubled down on programming as a career. She now keeps baking firmly in the "hobby" realm, since while she loves it, she knows it's extremely hard to make a living doing it.
In general in the culinary world, schooling is like 90% a scam. You dont know how many culinary graduates I trained when I was just someone two years into the industry with a philosophy degree. People do get value out of it, and the debt is relatively small compared to regular college, but unless you go to like CIA you are going to be in the same boat as someone just off the street.
That said, the job market for pastry/bread is more competitive, they are special jobs in the whole domain. and you will likely have to prove yourself as a general cook before you can get to work with bread. Any bakery is not going to take a chance with someone without experience, so you need to get your experience in a kitchen.
Things in food service are not going to be "careers" the way you want them to be. you will not have any benefits, and you will find there is very little room to progress beyond taking the plunge and doing your own venture. in the united States at least, if you work in a kitchen/food service, you are usually in near constant precarity or you are working over 60 hrs a week. there is little reward beyond the camaraderie of your team and the satisfaction of making things on your feet. and the beer at the end of a shift.
I had some great times, but if you are presumably doing Dev work so far in your life, get ready for physical/mental/emotional challenges like you have never imagined. Coding is a million times easier than anything I had to do in food service
Bakery is learned as apprenticeship in my home, i.e. 50% school with other young bakers and the other half in the bakery which took you in. This is a very classical education type for trades called "Ausbildung". It takes 3 years and afterwards you can work or become a master/"Meister" which takes two more years. A Meister extends his knowledge and some years ago it was mandatory by law to have finished your Meister to open your own business. Personally this is a very good way to learn professional crafts and you even get payed for it - even when in school.
The job market is not so nice as there are mainly bakery chains which don't even hire bakers by education primarily due to higher labor costs.
However, there are some bakers who create their own small shops where they do everything by hand in contrast to the prefabricated and highly optimized bakery chains. The small shops make traditional bread, and you can taste it. Your stomach and digestive system will probably like it, too.
Yes, it is a good career if you dare and risk opening your own store. You will attract people by the quality of your product who will, in exchange, not only become loyal customers but being the supplier for bread in Germany is a highly valued profession - an institution.
Good people get help by other good people. This is basic human law. I feel having a platonic relationship with the baker I know and he never has IT problems for long. :)
> Did you go to school for it or learn on the job?
Well the baker I employ has a formal diploma, and it indeed helped a lot. It takes time to develop ones own recipes, but having some practice from another chef makes a huge difference.
> What is the job market like?
Speaking from the employer's perspective, it really wasn't that difficult to find our current chef. However, each chef certainly has their own touch, and it would be difficult for us to change our current chef and expect the same quality from someone else. The rates we negotiate are competitive, and my highest cost so far.
> Do you consider it a good career?
I think so. Our chef certainly enjoys his craft, and I find it to be a very rewarding art myself too. However, it doesn't fall into those lucrative jobs that brings a ton of money unless you become a head-chef of a bigger business.
If you were to run the business by yourself, it still can be as not as lucrative because we found it a bit difficult to make ends meet until we build up a good customer base. It takes us nearly 2 cakes and 12-24 brownies sold a day to break-even the rent, depreciation, utilities, staff costs, etc. Any month below this threshold is a loss-making month.
However, when things are busy, it tends to be stressful.
Things like Macarons are rather risky to bake as they are more fragile and even small changes such as a change of color and shape needs us to redo the entire thing. They also need to be made afresh for almost every order. We try to offset this repetition with items like cheesecakes and gateaux cakes, which can be safely frozen for days. Brownies, which we can bake and keep for three days, etc.
At our worst days, we had the chef working nearly 12 hours a day, and me driving for better half of the day making deliveries. We could of course optimize all these, but I suppose there will always be packed days once in a while.
I'm a software architect, and I find software industry and the baking industry to be different as day and night.
Being a baker is hard. Your staff has to be there nearly all the time prepping, proofing, baking, selling, you're competing with not only supermarkets but also operations like Costco/Sam's Club which can produce high quality baked goods at very low prices, etc.
Also remember that your operation is like a factory where you're always dealing with storing supplies, which expire in a matter of weeks sometimes, and then your produced goods expire in a matter of days.
Also, you'll be dealing with customers whose only experience is supermarket bread, which doesn't go stale, doesn't mold, etc. and they will think your product is inferior if it does.
I think things have changed since when I was a kid in the 80s, but if I were to start a bakery now, I'd be thinking about niche products- focus on a tiny market segment, specific to specific groups- health conscious, gluten free, specialty flavors or some other segment that is going to be willing to pay for a premium product. Do not try to compete on price.
I'd be thinking about marketing heavily, and I'd think about creative outlets for both producing and selling.
For example, maybe sell at a farmer's market instead of a storefront. For production, rent a commercial kitchen instead of fronting the money for making equipment, selling online or subscriptions as well. Basically cut your costs as much as possible while you do your proof of concept.
Edit: although the website is down the Twitter and Facebook pages for the business still seem active.
25+ years ago.
I got bored of the same daily grind every day and changed career to IT... am still in that space now.
I have considered going back but not really. the money is too good and the job is alway ALWAYS a challenge.
(Australia btw...)
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2018/11/19/ll...
The margins on flour, water, and salt (bread) are thin.
The margins on sugar (pastries) and meat/vegetables/cheese (pizzas) are better.
She doesn't bake bread these days, but makes a good living off of pizzas.
She wondered what the point of striving in the field was if that's what it was like at the top. She's since moved to a state where recreational use of cannabis is legal and makes more money healing people with chocolate than she ever did baking. Has weekends again. No sociopathic or sexual abuse from coworkers. Consistent peaceful workload. Creative and high craft output instead of crank-out-that-coconut-cake-again.
This is just one story and it may not last once the industry consolidates, but now is an excellent moment for bakers' mental health to shift to producing edibles.
Edit: Beware the expensive culinary schools. They can be a lot of money and don't necessarily help finding employment. Akin to bootcamps and art institutes.
The baker comes from Switzerland where he was previously a banker. He has no formal baking training, and yet produces the highest quality products.
Although the demand for high end French pastries is relatively low in Phoenix (there is no competition), he’s found a core customer base that clears him out every Saturday.
www.labelleviebakery.com/
In a large enough metropolitan area, his formula could be replicated with great success.
We are starting very slowly; almost entirely word of mouth for now. We intend to build our base slowly.
There is certainly demand for gluten free baked goods. We will hopefully be able to hire someone soon.
When you say professional baker, are you talking about owning your own small bakery that does a little of everything each day?
Are you talking about owning a shop that does limited consumer sales but sells hundreds of loaves, rolls, etc daily across dozens of restaurants ?
A high end pastry chef?
I’m not a professional baker, but I am friends with someone who operates the second option. They went to school for hospitality- their family owned a hotel.
They sell a limited selection to super markets and restaurants. They do operate a small retail store and sell at farmers markets as well. They don’t sell pastries of any kind.
As for my own training, I did not have any schooling or apprenticeship. What helped me was to hire someone with experience. The baker we hired didn’t have a grasp of fundamentals (why certain things are done), but he knew enough of the mechanics to get us going. I spent a lot of time reading, researching, and learning the underlying science of things. Also I was just crazy enough to make large changes in production with minimal testing until things worked. Changes such as swapping out starter types in a dough…
As for the job market: we are having an extremely hard time finding people. In Oregon minimum wage is $14/hour but you can drive for Amazon for over $20. Trying to strike a balance with labor costs and product costs has been very difficult, especially with Covid. Last time I priced out ingredients, a baguette cost less than $0.15, but the rest of the cost is 100% people. So we spent a ton of time getting less people involved. Today we can comfortably bake about 1000lbs of dough with one person mixing, two on the tables, and one on the ovens.
One essential part of our operations is the custom software I wrote for managing the production floor. We track orders for customers in the software and on the day for baking the mixer just uses the iPad for how much dough to make, how much batter to mix, and how much of each ingredient to weigh. Then the shapers see a list of what breads to make out of each dough, and then the bakers get to see what should be baked. Because the software automatically calculates all the quantities, the production process is MUCH less mentally challenging and basically runs on autopilot. We are looking to actually cleanup and resell the software to bakeries.
And finally, is it a good career? Depends a lot. We only have one location, so as a baker there’s only so much you can climb up the ladder. If you really wanted to make a good career you’ll need to learn all the jobs and learn them well. Then make your way into management with all the knowledge you now have. If you really wanted to climb, you’ll jump over to a large company or one thats looking to become large. Be aware that large bakeries are very different in many ways from small operations. Our bakery is looking to grow a lot, and we need people to make it happen. We are projecting to open a second production facility in a few years, and we would be looking to hire all sorts of positions, including shift managers, general production managers, and there would likely also be a production manager over both facilities. The downside is that if you’re in it because you enjoy touching the products, then too high up the management ladder you climb, the less that’ll happen.
With all that said, it’s extremely hard to own a bakery, especially starting out. The capital expenditure is huge. Yes, the margins you get are pretty good. We are hovering around a 50% gross margin now which is great, but we need to increase the volume of product we move. I still write a ton of code for my other startup that we are trying to launch soon (finance, not baking). I personally enjoy baking a lot, but I have waaaay more skill with the computer, so I’m stuck balancing where to spend my hours in the day. Becoming a baker depends a lot on what you want to do with yourself.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/13/baking-bread-i...
What I can see she is happy to hire people without prior experience and teach them on spot.
Is that good career? It depends on who will ask. Baking is blue collar job: pay is low and hours are long. For some it might make sense, for average tech worker probably not.