September 23, 2010: The Break Out
The break out, as it has been called, is a process with no benefit until the morning. The job of the breakout worker is to set up everything that I had to do earlier in the day for the bake off. I'll just make this one a simple list...this is an average set up for the next morning:
Par-Baked Items:
Large French Bread - 30
Small French Bread - 44
Grinder Rolls - 220
European Rolls - 30
Portuguese Rolls - 30
Bagels:
Plain Bagels - 110
Everything Bagels - 30
Blueberry Bagels - 30
Egg Bagels - 15
Marble Bagels - 25
Asiago Bagels - 30
Wheat Bagels - 55
Sesame Bagels - 55
Pasteries:
Cinnamon Twists - 15
Cinnamon Buns - 10
Apple Turnovers - 48
Raspberry Turnovers - 48
Butter Croissants - 60
Chocolate Croissants - 24
Cheese Croissants -24
Apple Pockets - 12
Frozen Rolls and Breads:
Miami Onion Rolls - 60
Bagel Rolls - 36
Italian Bread - 90
French Sticks - 54
Scali Rolls - 32
Scali Bread - 44
Kaiser Rolls - 120
Seeded Kaiser Rolls - 24
Muffins:
Blueberry - 30
Double Dutch - 15
Pistachio - 15
Lemon - 15
Corn - 15
Mocha - 15
Banana Nut - 15
Cranberry Orange - 15
Butter Rum - 15
Cinnamon Chip - 15
Chocolate Chip - 30
Raisin Bran - 15
Low-Fat Bran - 15
Low-Fat Corn - 15
Low-Fat Blueberry - 15
Altogether this process takes approximately four hours. It is tedious in the fact that it is repetative motions for hours straight. After this I must sweep and wash the floor and then call it an evening. WHEW! Thankfully that day is over!
Thanks for reading...
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
Monday, September 27, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Creativity
September 23, 2010: Creativity
Now we come to my favorite part of the day. The product making and creation portion. This is the part where we get to make cakes, pies, and goodies of all sort for the greedy masses to consume for the unreasonable prices that we charge. This part of the day is kind of like painting time in kindergarten class: that break to the day to just express creativity.
The Breakdown:
Cakes - Cakes for the cake case are usually made on a general format: a few flowers, a few balloons, and a few strings around the edges. However, when we come into a new season or approach a holiday we get the opportunity to create new designs of cakes. Since we are getting toward fall it seems appropriate for fall colors to decorate the case. Cake case items generally come in three sizes: an 8” single layer round cake, an 8” double layer round cake, and a quarter of a sheet cake. Orange, brown, and yellow strings of frosting adorn the sides of the cake. Leaves are made with the leaf tip and rapid north to south motions with a quick pull at the end. They look great. The great thing about cakes, though, is when I make a mistake that cake becomes cake slices for $1.99 a piece. No waste. Isn’t it great?
Pies – There isn’t many variations on the pie. It is a crust and filling. Currently we offer 12 different kinds of pie.
Single Cupcakes and 6 Pack Cupcakes – An original idea by Stop & Shop were the single cupcake designs. We developed small cupcakes engulfed in frosting. We make some that look like Elmo, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, etc. from Sesame Street. We make rose gardens. We make…well…pretty much anything you can think of we can put on a cupcake. Then we have our generic 6 packs of colorful cupcakes for the customers to buy. Usually these come in premade, but we sometimes take the opportunity to make and decorate these ourselves. Some of these 6 packs are made in fall theme: sugar leaves are created on wax paper, fall colors are used, and small leaf shaped sprinkles are dusted over the sides just for a finishing touch.
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Cream Sandwiches – The perfect piece. Developed and priced by me in the Stop & Shop market these simple beauties have flourished. Giving us approximately $1,800 in sales per month these are so simple. Beginning in my store these cream sandwiches have flourished throughout the market. These are, pretty much, my babies. I was told by higher ups in the company that the idea was perfect, but they felt the price was not high enough. I took a stand on that and the prices remain the same..a 100% profit on each set. The design is simple. Two fresh baked chocolate chip cookies with a Bettercream™ layer in the middle. It is a light, moist flavor that creates a great combination with the two chewy chocolate chip cookies. That’s it…two cookies with cream in the middle and to add that fall flare I rolled them in multi-colored jimmies. Buon appetite!
This is what I was meant for at this job: to create, experiment, and enjoy the final products of my labor. This is truly the best part of the day.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Stay Sweet,
Lil’ Buddy
Managerial
September 23, 2010: Managerial
This portion of the day would not be possible had my manager not been on vacation. We have been over the bake and placement of sweet goods. Now comes when I must be the authority in bake shop. You would not think it, but there is a ton of paperwork that goes into running even a small portion of a supermarket.
Analyzing the paperwork is the beginning of the process. I am given numbers for sales from the past week (very good, $2,000 more than last year) and based on those I have to factor out the amount of hours available for scheduling. There are a whole bunch of new hires coming in so I have to give the proper amount of hours (minimum 15 for part time employees and 40 for full time employees). I create the next week's schedule and bring it up to the store manager's office for approval. Next I must look at the shrink numbers for the week. Shrink is the number of product movement that we have based on the number of products that we have in our stock. The lower the percentage of shrink the greater it is for our department. Our shrink currently is at a 3.77% which is an excellent number for us. Next I have to order the products to arrive the next evening. We order approximately 200 boxes of products per day.
The process overall takes about three hours to complete. No more paperwork UNTIL THE NEXT DAY! WOOHOO!
TO BE CONTINUED...
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
This portion of the day would not be possible had my manager not been on vacation. We have been over the bake and placement of sweet goods. Now comes when I must be the authority in bake shop. You would not think it, but there is a ton of paperwork that goes into running even a small portion of a supermarket.
Analyzing the paperwork is the beginning of the process. I am given numbers for sales from the past week (very good, $2,000 more than last year) and based on those I have to factor out the amount of hours available for scheduling. There are a whole bunch of new hires coming in so I have to give the proper amount of hours (minimum 15 for part time employees and 40 for full time employees). I create the next week's schedule and bring it up to the store manager's office for approval. Next I must look at the shrink numbers for the week. Shrink is the number of product movement that we have based on the number of products that we have in our stock. The lower the percentage of shrink the greater it is for our department. Our shrink currently is at a 3.77% which is an excellent number for us. Next I have to order the products to arrive the next evening. We order approximately 200 boxes of products per day.
The process overall takes about three hours to complete. No more paperwork UNTIL THE NEXT DAY! WOOHOO!
TO BE CONTINUED...
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
Sweet Goods
September 23, 2010: Sweet Goods
Part 2 of this several part series is the most critical portion of the day: loading the tables with our sweet goods. This process takes a while, but it does not take long to describe. Beginning at 8 A.M. we bring five u-boats (those funny, metal rolling tables you see all around the stores with products on them) from our very large, walk-in freezer and begin to pick and choose which products need to be filled for the day. Overall we have about 300 different products that we put out each day. None of these products need to be touched by bake shop workers. We just label them and put them out.
This helps us to not only fill our tables, but prepare the u-boats and freezer walls for the product load that will arrive later on in the evening.
This will not be a particularly long post. Overall this is just a process of repetition. Label the products, set up new table displays so that the items are promoted properly for all holidays, and make sure all old dates are pulled from the shelves. Overall this process takes about five hours and we finish up at about 1 o'clock P.M. Only ten more hours to go!
TO BE CONTINUED...
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
Part 2 of this several part series is the most critical portion of the day: loading the tables with our sweet goods. This process takes a while, but it does not take long to describe. Beginning at 8 A.M. we bring five u-boats (those funny, metal rolling tables you see all around the stores with products on them) from our very large, walk-in freezer and begin to pick and choose which products need to be filled for the day. Overall we have about 300 different products that we put out each day. None of these products need to be touched by bake shop workers. We just label them and put them out.
This helps us to not only fill our tables, but prepare the u-boats and freezer walls for the product load that will arrive later on in the evening.
This will not be a particularly long post. Overall this is just a process of repetition. Label the products, set up new table displays so that the items are promoted properly for all holidays, and make sure all old dates are pulled from the shelves. Overall this process takes about five hours and we finish up at about 1 o'clock P.M. Only ten more hours to go!
TO BE CONTINUED...
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
Long Day
September 23, 2010: Long Day
It certainly has been a few hectic weeks in the bakery. Our full time workers were shifted to other stores, we were without a full capacity of help for a period of time, and those of us left have had to step up and make the bake shop run properly. I have had to fill all roles during the week and one point or another. I was the cake decorator, I was the overnight worker, I was the department head, I was the grunt, and for a while I was running the show by myself.
It's no excuse for an absence from my readers, but these times have been hard. Still, even with the down economy and lack of workers, our bakery is up a couple thousand dollars from where it was at this point last year; a true success considering the fact that the rest of the departments in the store are down in sales. Today I am going to give you a little something different...this is the course of a 19 hour shift working completely by yourself in a Stop & Shop Bakery (times are not typical, but I had to rush due to the lack of assistance).
3 A.M.: Arriving at the bakery in the dead of the night when the rest of the world is sleeping is part of this process. The overnight job consists of baking everything off for the morning rush and breads for the day. My job during the overnight is to come in and start by setting up bakery racks with items that cook in similar ways (i.e. partially baked products, frozen bread products, frozen rolls, pastries, etc.)
3:20 A.M.: After the bakery products have all been separated and set aside the process of cooking them begins. First off come the items that need to go in the proofer. A proofer, for those who are unaware, is a large machine that is pretty much a sauna for breads. It hurries the process of bread dough growth. All the items, such as seeded scali breads, Italian breads, croissants, and other items needing to rise are placed into this large metal chamber. Inside there is steam heated to approximately 170 degrees that causes the dough to rise at a faster rate. All the items will be left in the proofer for approximately one hour.
3:35 A.M.: Next comes the baking process itself. In our bakery there are two large ovens capable of fitting a six-foot high rack inside. The first item needing to be cooked is the muffins. Muffins that we cook are pre-distributed. They are placed in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. In the second oven go the partially baked bagels. The bagels are the easiest part of the job. The go in the oven at 400 degrees for five minutes.
3:40 A.M.: Time to remove all the older product from the sales floor. Starting with the self-service cases (bagels, pastries, and rolls) we take all the products from the plastic bins and throw them into cardboard boxes to mark as "Yesterday's Bake" (discounted bakery products marked half the price that they were the day before).
3:45 A.M.: The bagels come out of the oven and are set aside in the back room to cool. Time for the partially baked breads to go in the oven. The large and small French breads are placed in the second oven at the same 400 degrees for 18 minutes.
3:50 A.M.: The old breads need to come off the wall. The necessary work now is to remove all of the older breads that the bake shop itself makes (large and small French breads, Italian bread, and scali bread). All of these will be removed from their plastic sleeves and placed in a refuse bin being sent to a local farm for pig feed. Luckily due to our large amount of sales we rarely have much bread left over.
4:03 A.M.: The French breads are finished and the final partially baked items (European rolls, Portuguese rolls, and grinder rolls) are placed in the oven for 4 minutes.
4:05 A.M.: All of the "Yesterday's Bake" items are moved to the rack for the discounted items.
4:07 A.M.: The rolls are finished! Time to begin putting out the baked products. Rolls will, obviously, be last considering that they just came out of the oven. Self-serve bagels are filled, French breads are bagged, labeled, and placed into their respective baskets. Finally, those rolls are placed in their specified glass case waiting for the day.
4:20 A.M.: The proofed items are taken from the proofer and moved to the floor. They will wait several minutes to dry off before going into the oven. The muffins are completed and then are moved on to the floor for cooling. The muffin oven is reset to 400 degrees for other items.
4:25 A.M.: Vendor items. The most tedious part of the job. Stop & Shop receives bread in the bake shop from two outside sources: Chabaso Baking Company and Gold Medal Bread Products. Hundreds of breads from each company arrive and it is my job to remove all the old bread from the day before and make note of how much didn't sell. The purpose of that is to change the amount of breads coming in as well as factor how much is left over for a crediting of our payments. From that point I must recognize and label each of those hundreds of breads and place them in their respective spots on the bread wall. Very annoying process.
5:00 A.M.: Time for the proofed items to go into the oven. The pastries go first. Several varieties of croissants, turnovers, cinnamon rolls, and butterfly pastries are placed in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Scali bread, scali rolls, and kaiser rolls are placed in the second oven for 20 minutes. For larger bread and rolls, though they have just been in a proofer meant to steam them, there is a steam knob on our ovens meant to help these breads raise just a bit more and crisp their outer crusts. We turn it on for these breads for approximately 60 seconds.
5:15 A.M.: Labels are printed for the breads that will be coming out. Time for the muffins to go out into the self-service case. The muffins have cooled enough by this point that they pop right out of their container without breaking. They are placed in their respective trays in the case. Currently Stop & Shop has 21 kinds of muffins and we bake approximately 30 of each. That is 630 muffins for one day!
5:35 A.M.: The first round of breads and pastries are finished. They are placed on the floor to cool. There are two full racks of Italian bread, 36 per rack, for a total of 72 breads. Over the course of a day we sell, on average, 176 Italian breads. To prepare an Italian bread you have to take a knife and drag it from right to left across the top (not too deep) so that the inner dough explodes out to create an artisan look. After slicing the breads the 2 racks are placed in the ovens at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Steam is applied again for 60 seconds.
5:45 A.M.: Every bag is labeled for the breads for the day.
5:55 A.M.: Hot fresh Italian bread fresh out of the oven!
6:00 A.M.: Another tedious process is the slicing of scali bread. Scali bread is the awkward, knot-shaped bread that you see on bakery walls. We have a bread slicer, but the thing is ancient (it was literally in the store before I was born in 1987..you do the math). Scali breads are one of our more popular sellers. We prepare about 100 per day. Slicing each one at a time is annoying.
6:45 A.M.: The scali breads are done and it's time to bag all the breads. This is a fairly easy process, but it takes a long time.
7:30 A.M.: All the breads are placed on the wall making sure labels are lined up and bags are neat. I do not know why we do this because honestly our customers wreck them like animals. Nevertheless, the department looks beautiful.
7:45 A.M.: The final step in this job process is to place the pastries in the self-service case. They smell good and look better.
By 8:00 A.M. the first phase of the job is completed. The overnight bake is done. Next I will tell you the next step of the process: Sweet Goods.
TO BE CONTINUED:
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
It certainly has been a few hectic weeks in the bakery. Our full time workers were shifted to other stores, we were without a full capacity of help for a period of time, and those of us left have had to step up and make the bake shop run properly. I have had to fill all roles during the week and one point or another. I was the cake decorator, I was the overnight worker, I was the department head, I was the grunt, and for a while I was running the show by myself.
It's no excuse for an absence from my readers, but these times have been hard. Still, even with the down economy and lack of workers, our bakery is up a couple thousand dollars from where it was at this point last year; a true success considering the fact that the rest of the departments in the store are down in sales. Today I am going to give you a little something different...this is the course of a 19 hour shift working completely by yourself in a Stop & Shop Bakery (times are not typical, but I had to rush due to the lack of assistance).
3 A.M.: Arriving at the bakery in the dead of the night when the rest of the world is sleeping is part of this process. The overnight job consists of baking everything off for the morning rush and breads for the day. My job during the overnight is to come in and start by setting up bakery racks with items that cook in similar ways (i.e. partially baked products, frozen bread products, frozen rolls, pastries, etc.)
3:20 A.M.: After the bakery products have all been separated and set aside the process of cooking them begins. First off come the items that need to go in the proofer. A proofer, for those who are unaware, is a large machine that is pretty much a sauna for breads. It hurries the process of bread dough growth. All the items, such as seeded scali breads, Italian breads, croissants, and other items needing to rise are placed into this large metal chamber. Inside there is steam heated to approximately 170 degrees that causes the dough to rise at a faster rate. All the items will be left in the proofer for approximately one hour.
3:35 A.M.: Next comes the baking process itself. In our bakery there are two large ovens capable of fitting a six-foot high rack inside. The first item needing to be cooked is the muffins. Muffins that we cook are pre-distributed. They are placed in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. In the second oven go the partially baked bagels. The bagels are the easiest part of the job. The go in the oven at 400 degrees for five minutes.
3:40 A.M.: Time to remove all the older product from the sales floor. Starting with the self-service cases (bagels, pastries, and rolls) we take all the products from the plastic bins and throw them into cardboard boxes to mark as "Yesterday's Bake" (discounted bakery products marked half the price that they were the day before).
3:45 A.M.: The bagels come out of the oven and are set aside in the back room to cool. Time for the partially baked breads to go in the oven. The large and small French breads are placed in the second oven at the same 400 degrees for 18 minutes.
3:50 A.M.: The old breads need to come off the wall. The necessary work now is to remove all of the older breads that the bake shop itself makes (large and small French breads, Italian bread, and scali bread). All of these will be removed from their plastic sleeves and placed in a refuse bin being sent to a local farm for pig feed. Luckily due to our large amount of sales we rarely have much bread left over.
4:03 A.M.: The French breads are finished and the final partially baked items (European rolls, Portuguese rolls, and grinder rolls) are placed in the oven for 4 minutes.
4:05 A.M.: All of the "Yesterday's Bake" items are moved to the rack for the discounted items.
4:07 A.M.: The rolls are finished! Time to begin putting out the baked products. Rolls will, obviously, be last considering that they just came out of the oven. Self-serve bagels are filled, French breads are bagged, labeled, and placed into their respective baskets. Finally, those rolls are placed in their specified glass case waiting for the day.
4:20 A.M.: The proofed items are taken from the proofer and moved to the floor. They will wait several minutes to dry off before going into the oven. The muffins are completed and then are moved on to the floor for cooling. The muffin oven is reset to 400 degrees for other items.
4:25 A.M.: Vendor items. The most tedious part of the job. Stop & Shop receives bread in the bake shop from two outside sources: Chabaso Baking Company and Gold Medal Bread Products. Hundreds of breads from each company arrive and it is my job to remove all the old bread from the day before and make note of how much didn't sell. The purpose of that is to change the amount of breads coming in as well as factor how much is left over for a crediting of our payments. From that point I must recognize and label each of those hundreds of breads and place them in their respective spots on the bread wall. Very annoying process.
5:00 A.M.: Time for the proofed items to go into the oven. The pastries go first. Several varieties of croissants, turnovers, cinnamon rolls, and butterfly pastries are placed in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Scali bread, scali rolls, and kaiser rolls are placed in the second oven for 20 minutes. For larger bread and rolls, though they have just been in a proofer meant to steam them, there is a steam knob on our ovens meant to help these breads raise just a bit more and crisp their outer crusts. We turn it on for these breads for approximately 60 seconds.
5:15 A.M.: Labels are printed for the breads that will be coming out. Time for the muffins to go out into the self-service case. The muffins have cooled enough by this point that they pop right out of their container without breaking. They are placed in their respective trays in the case. Currently Stop & Shop has 21 kinds of muffins and we bake approximately 30 of each. That is 630 muffins for one day!
5:35 A.M.: The first round of breads and pastries are finished. They are placed on the floor to cool. There are two full racks of Italian bread, 36 per rack, for a total of 72 breads. Over the course of a day we sell, on average, 176 Italian breads. To prepare an Italian bread you have to take a knife and drag it from right to left across the top (not too deep) so that the inner dough explodes out to create an artisan look. After slicing the breads the 2 racks are placed in the ovens at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Steam is applied again for 60 seconds.
5:45 A.M.: Every bag is labeled for the breads for the day.
5:55 A.M.: Hot fresh Italian bread fresh out of the oven!
6:00 A.M.: Another tedious process is the slicing of scali bread. Scali bread is the awkward, knot-shaped bread that you see on bakery walls. We have a bread slicer, but the thing is ancient (it was literally in the store before I was born in 1987..you do the math). Scali breads are one of our more popular sellers. We prepare about 100 per day. Slicing each one at a time is annoying.
6:45 A.M.: The scali breads are done and it's time to bag all the breads. This is a fairly easy process, but it takes a long time.
7:30 A.M.: All the breads are placed on the wall making sure labels are lined up and bags are neat. I do not know why we do this because honestly our customers wreck them like animals. Nevertheless, the department looks beautiful.
7:45 A.M.: The final step in this job process is to place the pastries in the self-service case. They smell good and look better.
By 8:00 A.M. the first phase of the job is completed. The overnight bake is done. Next I will tell you the next step of the process: Sweet Goods.
TO BE CONTINUED:
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Life's a Piece of Cake
Man, I tell you...ever since that show The Cake Boss premiered on TLC it's been an endless stream of the same lines. Day in and day out I hear, "Oh my god, do you know you look exactly like that guy on the show The Cake Boss?" and "Hey, you look like that guy Buddy from TV!" What can I say in response? The clich é, "Yeah, I get that a lot." At first I took it as kind of an insult. Who wants to be the fat Italian yelling all the time while making cakes? Then the more I thought about it the more it became somewhat of a compliment. This guy does some amazing work. So hey...if I can use the pick up line, "The Cake Boss is sweet on you" at a bar and get away with it I am all for it. Besides, I guess I can see the similarities...a hefty Italian who works in a bakery. Did I mention that? Guess it slipped my mind. I'm the guy behind the Stop & Shop counter making all those fattening creations for you at a whopping $1.99 a piece. Not as glitzy as the bakery on TV, but it's a living. This is my baking life and I am Lil' Buddy.
September 7, 2010:
The bakery has simmered down after the chaotic sales we had over Labor Day weekend. All the product is on the shelves. The Italian bread is in the oven crisping as I type. The other oven is set to 400 degrees for approximately 8 more minutes as the chocolate chip cookies brown. Cupcakes line the table. This is my favorite part of the job. Down time is the prime time for creativity. New products are developed that intrigue the masses and even more intriguing is the team of bake shop employees trying to plan how to price said products. Technically we aren't supposed to come up with new creations. We are a by-the-box fakery (sorry to ruin the Disney-esque magic kiddies, but most of the stuff from a supermarket bakery arrives frozen in boxes now from all over the country...a shame that we have been trying to hide). Yet, at this store I am allowed free range of creativity. In the past I have developed simple snacks, such as two cookies filled with Bettercream ™ (a lesser fat whipped cream substitute), that have flown off the shelves at an astonishing rate; a rate that immediately put them on the shelves of every other store.
Today's Project: Slider Cupcakes
Now I am sure many of you have seen the gigantic hamburger cakes that they have in most bakeries. We have those too. This was more of an intriguing idea that I developed for those who didn't want too much cake, but still have that same fun aspect.
A slider, for those who don't know, is a miniature hamburger. Some restaurants use them as appetizers, but for big guys like me they are more of a challenge...how many can you fit in your mouth at once? Anyways, back to the dessert. A regular hamburger cake is two yellow 8 inch round cakes with frosting overloaded in the middle to give the effect of a hamburger slathered with lettuce, mustard, ketchup, etc. A slider version is just that only smaller. We take some freshly made yellow cupcakes, slice them about half way in the middle, then proceed to fill them with either chocolate frosting or a vanilla frosting dyed brown. After the burger patty is made get some neon green frosting in a piping bag with a leaf tip. Proceed to make 3 small little crinkled leaves like lettuce. The messier the better. Fill two more piping bags with red and brilliant yellow frosting for the ketchup and mustard. Use a writing tip and slather them on as if it was a real burger. Pop on the top. Use a white writing tipped piping bag to make a few sesame seed dots and presto you have a slider cupcake.
On to the next. Because we are a very busy store we often have specialty cake orders that we have to do. Today is simple we just have one quarter of a sheet cake with multiple colored roses. Takes maybe a half an hour to do.
Man I wish this cake was for me instead of whatever schmuck is getting it.
The best part about slow days is creativity time. A lot of the time I work on my free-hand drawing abilities. I do silly designs and complex designs to work on my hand-eye coordination to make steadier lines when working on cakes. It's a good practice to take a piece of parchment paper and just make designs. From novice to expert everyone can use practice. These are what came out:
There are the days that are hectic and the days that are slow, but that's the case with any job. The only difference is my job is just playing with food all day.
Stay Sweet,
Lil' Buddy
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