Production Skills & Costs Chapter 10

Introduction This chapter will focus on BOH production area. Look at 3 ways to manage production Recognize why production schedules are a must have system!! Talk about work expansion- how to recognize what it is and what to do about it.

Also watch Cake Boss/ Carlo’s XMAS Eve

Production- Monkey Wrench Examples Beautiful Packages = Productivity! Muffin Madness You make a beautiful packaged gift. You’ve costed the ingredients and packaging and it is all in order. It takes you 4 minutes to pack the gift. It takes a new hire 10 minutes to pack the gift! You forgot about productivity! What do you do now?! You’ve advertised 18 muffin varieties a day. Each muffin has a unique garnish and you update the flavors daily. Your lead baker does not read English, he has to ask about the toppings each day. It’s 9:30 am and you are out of muffins again today! What do you do now?!

Production is the right mix of products at the right price at the right time. How do you measure ? Price of items are too low Materials are 25%, labor is 55% (target is 35%) Item is not creating enough profit and utilizing too much labor Your team could be spending time on a more profitable item and using your labor dollars more wisely. Feature items are in the same category Breakfast pizzas and cinnamon rolls are both on sale. They both utilize the same oven and production person. You need to rebake 1 hr into opening to fill demand, but you don’t have enough resources. You will miss on sales

Skill Levels How do you determine the skill level of a baker, sales staff, or decorator? If you do not know how to do those jobs, how do you know what is possible? Spend time in a functioning kitchen Spend time training Attend training courses Work at it from home, time yourself Sanitation Scaling Proofing Portioning Reading a formula Fundamental understanding of priducts Decorating Troubleshooting Ordering & inventory control Monitoring equipment Being a ‘baker’ in some jobs means opening a box and panning up products, know what you are hiring for!!

Tools for Measuring Productivity One way is by labor percentage Another way is dollars per labor hour If your sales are $1000 You spend $400 on wages You have 40% labor cost If you need to cut labor percent, do you cut the $15 per hour person and keep the $9 per hour person? Why or why not? If your sales are $1000 It took a total of 23 hrs of staff time You divide $1000/23 hrs= $43.48 in sales per labor hours worked Then take your wages as a percentage If your numbers are off & productivity is too low, you are selling things for too little, your product mix is bad, or you have too much labor scheduled. This does not target your experienced people

Work Expansion= stretching out a job longer than it should take. Theft of time How to combat Talking on the clock Taking breaks on the clock Taking longer to finish a job because you want to work a full shift and don’t want to get sent home early. See bakery X example pg 206 Have an active list of work to complete Interrupt these practices when you see them, get the team back on target Lead by example Assign specific work

Labor is your biggest expense… Scheduling tools Labor is your biggest expense… 1. Bar Graph It is also your biggest opportunity to create sales! How do you control it when it comes to scheduling? Do not let your schedule become fixed! You may want to use a mixture of these three at different times for different reasons Great to see peak ‘day parts’ Visibly scheduled breaks You can map out specific areas to cover FOH Cash register BOH/Cake/Bake, etc

Scheduling tools cont… 2. Operating Ratio (OR) 3. Wage Percentage Measures actual sales against projected sales. OR= actual sales / budgeted sales Great for new stores Stores given a list of ORs to hit- see page 212-214 Training hours budgeted Store set up hours Opening Week This gives you a way to bring labor under control and pairs it up against budgets The most commonly used scheduling tool. This is fine if all you are looking for is an end result. It is not as robust at OR or bar graphing: 1. It does not reflect inflation as a measure of productivity Wage percent tend to bring into focus the rate of individeuals Measures a result, but is not a management tool. Not a planning tool.

Summary Achieving productivity is: Part Science Part Experience Part Controls Prodctivity to workers means= more output, work harder  One of the single most difficult issues facing most bakeries Every year wages seems to rise, experienced retail organizations know how to tame this beast. You always want to measure and keep track of your systems and how they worked for you, especially holidays!