Old inspirations from Daniel: The value and economics of employing a pastry chef/Understanding the differences between savory and pastry cooks.

Sarah was reading Daniel Boulud’s Letters to a Young Chef the other day, and pointed out a chapter entitled “Wine and Pastry” she especially liked. It’d been some time since I had read the book, so I re-read the chapter. I completely forgot that these few pages were some the initial words of support I needed as I first started to make my way from the line into the pastry kitchen.

Reading these words now, I see how the ethos of pastry work in general has become much of my work demeanor – for better or worse, and to my benefit and fault.

Daniel talks about how profits for dessert can run quite high; as low cost of ingredients keep food cost low… Though often labor costs can run high, especially when you consider time spent versus end result. He also notes how the dessert course can be as much as twice and profitable than your starters and main courses… but the have to be marketed well.

Few seem to understand the relative economics of this.

(bear with me here, this part could be especially boring to most…Skip past all the numbers and percentages if you want… I’m just trying to make a point.)

Consider this:

A server could push to sell two $13 apps to a table running 30-40% at cost, sell two main courses at $32 at 30-40% cost, or sell two $10 dessert running 5-10% cost.

Here’s a cost analysis of the base revenue from the table with $26 in apps, versus the table with $64 in main courses, of the one with $20 in desserts – with the theoretical food costs mentioned above:

$26 in apps at 30%, cost is $7.80, with a profit of $18.20. At 40%, cost is $10.40 with a profit of $15.60.

$64 in mains at 30%, cost is $19.20, with a profit of $44.08. At 40%, cost is $25.6 with a profit of $38.40.

With the desserts, $20 at 5% costs $1.00 to make, with a profit of $19.00, at 10% cost is $2.00, with a profit of $18.00.

The argument is especially compelling when you compare the apps versus desserts, since they’re at a much closer price-point, the total check average difference is less varied: from an economic standpoint, is most situations, it is more financially sound for a restaurant to encourage it’s waitstaff to push for dessert sales rather than apps, to benefit the restaurants bottom line and profits margins.

But then I’m left with my continued quandary:

Why pay to outsource dessert products, upwards of 40-50% at cost, instead of justifying the need for a dedicated pastry chef?

Sad, sad, sad.

The argument still remains: “well, people just aren’t as likely to order dessert…” While this is very much true in some respects, it also suffers from that same negative attitude that most chefs/operators (with no pastry background) have when it comes to the pastry chef, pastry program and desserts in general… It’s simply an afterthought. It’s sub-standard, not worth the effort, or just not as important to the meal, dining experience/whatever as the savory food is. So there is no push for the staff to sell. Simply looking at the bill, a server sees $26 on the bill for 2 apps, versus $20 for 2 desserts. And as the restaurant business is… most FOH staff is largely coming and going. Few intend to be career-servers, so little look at the long term benefits for both themselves and their restaurant. Simply live in the moment and make as much cash as you can each night. From a purely monetary, cash in MY pocket perspective… I can’t say I blame them. Though from an operator’s standpoint, I’m shocked that few don’t realize or even care about the reality of the economics behind this. The profit margins on desserts rivals that of wine and spirits and Daniel does a wonderful jobs of putting it into terms even the most inept could understand. (And does it in a manner far less complicated and wordy that I have in this entry… but, “Hey, making pastries is what I do for a living and is something I’m passionate about… so yeah, I’m likely to sound a little irritated and ramble on.”

Fortunately for me, I have been employed by some chefs who truly see the value of having a dedicated pastry chef. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t be where I am today if I wasn’t given a long leash, free reign, and a lot of trust and time to find my own voice. Biggest thanks go to Todd and Duane for teaching, trusting and pushing me to go further and be better.

I am the first to acknowledge that I not the world’s best pastry chef, and there are plenty far more knowledgeable and talented than myself. Being self taught and from a savory background… I never got the traditional training, nor was it well rounded, nor did I have a mentor in pastry. I continue to draw my inspiration from the savory kitchen and am completely honest when I get questions about baking bread, wedding cakes, classic French pastry, and the like… I could fumble my way through it with a recipe… but I’m by no means an expert and do have my shortcomings. That is a big part of my pastry inability. On the other hand, I can blend flavors, marry flavors, and taste in my head like no other. My savory background makes me a little more fearless than those with only classic pastry training, and I’m just as likely to be found incorporating soy sauce, truffle oil or olives in my desserts as I would chocolate or vanilla. Modern/progressive cookery is also more applicable to the pastry kitchen than to the savory side (Wylie at WD~50 would beg to differ), and not having the traditional training, I’ve got now problem “breaking the rules” of classic pastry… since frankly, I never got the memo and told what the rules were. So I’ve taken the opportunity to be a bit of a pastry loose-cannon, and continually learning as much as I can about food gums, hydrocolloids, food starches, etc. and applications for them, all the while incorporating them and traditional savory techniques into my pastry program… In addition, I also use this knowledge to enhance elements of our savory cuisine for the restaurant.

My whole initial intention with following this path into pastry wasn’t to stick solely to it. I wanted to be better, more well rounded and shaped than a lot of chefs out there who only know how to grill, sear, roast and toss a salad. I’ve spent 10 years in kitchens, of that I’ve spent 6 years doing pastry – 3 years almost exclusively. I’ve also worked in a wine and spirits store deliberately to expand my beverage knowledge and to gain valued experience in guest service skills… And at this point, I feel like I’ve gotten a lot out of the whole “restaurant experience”… A little of this, a lot of that, some of this, some more of that…

At this point I’ve been typing for so long, I’m starting to move away from my initial point of this entry, so I’ll try to bring it full circle with a quote from Daniel from Letters to a Young Chef:

“Cooking is all about speed and creativity in technique. It is also about the ability to improvise, to accommodate variations in ingredients, while maintaining consistency in the finished product. Pastry is the opposite. It is less about spontaneous creativity and more about precision and measuring. Instead of speed it is about waiting. Pastry ingredients–flour, sugar, butter, sometimes chocolate–are much more uniform than the basic ingredients in appetizers and main courses. In a way, pastry is more like chemistry, whereas the rest of cooking is rather like music. Both have a written-out plan, but in baking you rarely deviate and in cooking you must change and adapt. Classical versus jazz, if you will.”

I now truly see how I have embodied this and how the rhythm and movement needed for a pastry chef has changed my rhythm in the kitchen. I one was frantic, fast and hurried. Now I am fluid, constant, measured and calm. It has it’s pros and cons. It really does… And few of my fellow cooks (past and present) can truly understand it. And I know it has to aggravate them as much as it aggravates me that I can’t just reprogram my brain over night to re-adjust to working “the other side”…

Things that being a pastry chef will do to you/make you realize/most cooks without pastry experience don’t understand about pastry chefs:

The OCD need to measure everything to the exact gram or fraction of a gram; The need to have everything labeled, clean, neat and in the same spot every time (often alphabetized); the methodical slow, precise movements and measures; Having recipes that I do not deviate from/or do so cautiously, or hell – the notion of having recipes anyway – that shit rarely exists in the savory kitchen. For every moment it takes to cook and plate a hot app or entree, there is just as much time spent beforehand and during service plating a dessert. It may take you 1-2 minutes to plate a dish, and me 2-3 for a dessert… but how long did you spend prepping and cooking it a la minute, versus all the pre-prep devoted to the pastry kitchen… It’s all relative, but in a differant way, and hard to see unless you’ve worked both sides. (the argument of working both sides is equally true when comparing the FOH and BOH… few rarely understand both perspectives.)

I haven’t wrote in a few months, so this entry is long overdue, and has been building for a while. Thanks go to Daniel’s words for inspiring me to sit down and write again. It feels good.

~ by theironicchef on September 26, 2009.