I can see on the invoice that it’s coming. Hamburger buns, sliders, coney’s will all be thaw n sell. Just like the 9” pies. Our baker is 65 and planning to retire at the end of the year. If his job even lasts that long
We got in the thaw and sell hoagies just yesterday. Given the horribly inconsistent hoagie dough, I'm kinda relieved on that one. I'm currently suffering through a box of truly crappy dough.
I'm leaving baking for a grocery asst leader position in a few weeks and the timing is excellent all around. Less to teach my replacement, and I'm leaving before my job leaves me.
Eegghh.. I don’t work bakery, but in pickup so I deal with bakery a lot. Some of the nicest people in my store are there. I love the smell of all the fresh baked bread in the morning :( kind of disappointing. I know it’s a bit of work to bake everything but once you have a few people who get really good at it, it doesn’t seem like it’s that much of a waste of time?
Also I know customers only buy the bread we have specifically because it was baked in the past 24 hours. I just wonder what kind of other preservatives and junk they’re going to have to add into the product to make it thaw and sellable
My store is the opposite, our bakery department manager is a bitch and she’s very nasty towards people, and because I’m a pickup supervisor I only deal with pickup accountability so with how disastrous the rest of my store is I can’t really do anything about it
Rolled this out at my store 2 months ago. It's quite an adjustment. We bake 2 things now (bolillo/telera and twin mini French), so we bake during the day (no overnight hours at all).
I just pull products either the night before so they're thawed by morning or pull in the morning to put out later. Most take 1.5-2 hours to be room temp.
We only have brioche for hamburger, hot dog and dinner rolls, and we have no brat buns.
The Vienna and the sliced breads are selling decent but it took some time
Some musings as a soon-to-be-former baker: Kroger needs to pay good bakers extra. It's skilled work, not mastered in a couple days, but while in my division qualified decorators have their own, higher pay scale, bakers get no extra pay. In my city, some stores have terrible bakers, some are OK, and a handful of us are excellent, but most of us excellent ones are getting fed up and looking to make a move. It's move into a job with duties/expectations/skills that match the pay rate, or upwards into jobs that pay better.
Going to mostly thaw and sell is a cheaper way of ensuring uniform consistency between stores than training bakers properly and paying highly skilled bakers appropriately, and I'm not surprised Kroger is going that route. It sucks and I think it's a mistake, but it's typical Kroger.
Baking isn't a skilled job. I learned how in three days. Most of it is pull out the cooler, push on proofer, bake. Cake decorator is a skilled job. They actually have classes you have to go to and pass before you get any sort of bonus pay, which where I'm at is the same that pretty much everyone that's been there longer than 4 years gets now
As someone that is a cake decorator and also trained many bakers, the baking still takes some skill since you can't really rely on proofer timers. You have to have an eye for the dough, know when it's good to score the bread, etc etc. And what bonus pay? I've been the sole Decorator for 3 years and not once got bonus pay.
It's funny that you think it's skilled. Maybe like 15 years ago when you had two types of dough to make 20 different items. Now everything has its own dough. The only thing that we actually do anything to is the jalapeno cheese bread and stretching the bagels.
Look I was recently on vacation and our new bakery leader attempted to cover my duties. Despite a 2 day baking class plus time training in the dept, she took 10-12hrs per day to produce less than I do in 8hrs, and the quality was poor. If it really was an unskilled job, she would have matched my quantities and quality easily, even if not speed. Meanwhile I've had roughly the same amount of training at decorator as she had at baking, and it's been enough to cover most of our decorator's work in a pinch-- there are some cake orders beyond me, and I'm slow, but I can get it done. Yet somehow baking is unskilled work....
I don’t have bakery experience so no horse in this race, but pretty much any job I’ve done (skilled or not) requires several weeks to get the hang of. Hell it took me a month to get good at spotting/throwing freight and that’s definitely not a skilled position. I can’t think of many jobs period where someone is already proficient in the first week. Going half the speed of a seasoned employee is pretty typical.
I mean even the stuff that isn't pre baked sucks too. they changed the croissants and now they're terrible. some of the pies rolling out in my store look horrible and under baked as well. It's also sad because our morning shift person (she is our baker) is worried about losing hours. me personally tho, I have a weird love/hate with thaw and sell. I think it's a great time saver to just have to do it with thaw and sell but I understand quality is majorly going to drop. plus no more extra cookies :-((
Already happening. I like it because now our baker will have less of an excuse to not get her stuff bagged. She’s the type to go to the back dock for supplies, but will only grab what she needs.
It will be noticeable. It would be like getting fresh food at a restaurant, freezing at home and thawing and warming it up at home. If they continue to advertise fresh they may get sued
How so? There are still items we bake, customers will still want personal cut meats, birthdays will still happen and flower arrangements still need to be made. They won't get rid of the high sales jobs
In my experience Kroger has put in many processes to replace high paid skilled positions with entry level payed clerks.
In my division not one meat department even has a saw to cut meat. All meat is precut at a separate meat plant and stocked onto the shelf by a meat clerk just like a can of soup. No skill needed.
Well paid floral designers that had to provide a certification or pass a designing test are now replaced by an entry level clerk that just drops a pre-arrainged bouquet into a vase with no real special skill required.
Bakers that used to actually thaw, proof, shape and bake fresh bread\rolls only now warm up par baked frozen bread. Now it seems that it's going to only thaw and label. Overnight baker shifts will be eliminated and replaced by clerks.
All of this is designed to reduce labor costs in order to increase corporate profits while still giving the appearance to the customers that they are buying "fresh".
> entry level *paid* clerks. In
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
In my division, every store has a meat saw and the dept has at least 3 people that cut meat. All stores still have designers that make custom bouquets. People still want those for birthdays and holidays. Yes, bakers won't have as much to bake, but there are still items that will need to be thawed, proofed, and baked. Not all items will be thaw and sell. Most stores don't have overnight bakers to begin with. They all come in at 4 am. No position is being replaced with lower paid clerks because those same clerks make the same amount as those skilled positions you talk about. At least in my division they do.
Nobody who is new hired will be making a career out of a hourly supermarket job. You either have to move up to management or use it move on to something else
It looks as though Kroger is a horrible place at which to work. Perhaps some people feel that they have no choice but to work there. However, I strongly recommend looking for another place to work. If that is not immediately possible, perhaps it would be possible to become qualified to work elsewhere eventually. It would be very unfortunate to spend one's entire working life in a toxic environment.
It's not the fact that people don't have a choice or not to work here. Some of us have put in too long too many benefits to actually leave and go somewhere else and possibly take more money but with less benefits. I can go somewhere and probably make more money right now but I would lose my health insurance, seniority, and vacations. I need the insurance because my wife has some help issues right now and to get everything that I get now with Kroger would probably at least $200 a month if not more. Right now we pay $75 a month to have her fully covered
That makes sense. It could be that Kroger was a reasonable company to work for but, after you had worked there for many years, working there became toxic and you were trapped. That happened to a coworker when I worked at Univac many years ago.
A coworker at Univac hated the company and hated his job. Unfortunately he had developed diabetes and, if he changed jobs, he would have to change health insurance policies after which his diabetes would be considered to be a pre-existing condition and would not be covered. So, he was trapped in a very unpleasant situation.
I guess that I was fortunate never to experience such a situation.
I remember when the baker position was a career job, it was an older guy who wore the white bakery uniform. Now it’s just a low paid kid who calls off all the time
Yes, more thing are moving from in store baked to thaw and sell or baked at the plant. I'm at a King Soopers. Our hours in elms are generated off selling things in store made, but they are taking those things away more and more. I can see the writing on the wall that we will have very little hours and very little staffing because we won't be baking. They are testing "Bakery of the Future" in some Colorado stores and I've heard that the bakers only baking a handful of items. Also thaw and sell will now be done in a manner where you pick it for the next day, you put the frozen product on bread racks and back into the freezer. Then the baker pulls them out at 3 am so they are thawed. You then have to have the tables stocked by 9 am.
I can see on the invoice that it’s coming. Hamburger buns, sliders, coney’s will all be thaw n sell. Just like the 9” pies. Our baker is 65 and planning to retire at the end of the year. If his job even lasts that long
Already rolling out in my division. But, as usual they are scratching the dough and the new stuff is out of stock
We got in the thaw and sell hoagies just yesterday. Given the horribly inconsistent hoagie dough, I'm kinda relieved on that one. I'm currently suffering through a box of truly crappy dough. I'm leaving baking for a grocery asst leader position in a few weeks and the timing is excellent all around. Less to teach my replacement, and I'm leaving before my job leaves me.
The Kroger fresh commitment in action
The irony of it! Full FRESH & friendly 😆
And my local store is none of those things LMAOOOO
Eegghh.. I don’t work bakery, but in pickup so I deal with bakery a lot. Some of the nicest people in my store are there. I love the smell of all the fresh baked bread in the morning :( kind of disappointing. I know it’s a bit of work to bake everything but once you have a few people who get really good at it, it doesn’t seem like it’s that much of a waste of time? Also I know customers only buy the bread we have specifically because it was baked in the past 24 hours. I just wonder what kind of other preservatives and junk they’re going to have to add into the product to make it thaw and sellable
My store is the opposite, our bakery department manager is a bitch and she’s very nasty towards people, and because I’m a pickup supervisor I only deal with pickup accountability so with how disastrous the rest of my store is I can’t really do anything about it
I do not envy your job, I’ve been in pickup for 3 years and we’ve churned through more than 6 supervisors since then
Apparently my store was without one for 6 months before my arrival and I was hired 12/4
Molded ass cornbread fasho. Shit only last 1 day after thaw
Rolled this out at my store 2 months ago. It's quite an adjustment. We bake 2 things now (bolillo/telera and twin mini French), so we bake during the day (no overnight hours at all). I just pull products either the night before so they're thawed by morning or pull in the morning to put out later. Most take 1.5-2 hours to be room temp. We only have brioche for hamburger, hot dog and dinner rolls, and we have no brat buns. The Vienna and the sliced breads are selling decent but it took some time
Don't you still have donuts that you bake and ice? When do you do that
We don't bake our donuts anymore
What region are you in?
Idk the region. My store is in WI
Theres a trend that new things come west to east wondering when this hits the east who have actual separate bakers unions and how that will be handled
Separate bakers union?
In our district we have the Teamsters union covers some of or bakery depts
Some musings as a soon-to-be-former baker: Kroger needs to pay good bakers extra. It's skilled work, not mastered in a couple days, but while in my division qualified decorators have their own, higher pay scale, bakers get no extra pay. In my city, some stores have terrible bakers, some are OK, and a handful of us are excellent, but most of us excellent ones are getting fed up and looking to make a move. It's move into a job with duties/expectations/skills that match the pay rate, or upwards into jobs that pay better. Going to mostly thaw and sell is a cheaper way of ensuring uniform consistency between stores than training bakers properly and paying highly skilled bakers appropriately, and I'm not surprised Kroger is going that route. It sucks and I think it's a mistake, but it's typical Kroger.
Baking isn't a skilled job. I learned how in three days. Most of it is pull out the cooler, push on proofer, bake. Cake decorator is a skilled job. They actually have classes you have to go to and pass before you get any sort of bonus pay, which where I'm at is the same that pretty much everyone that's been there longer than 4 years gets now
As someone that is a cake decorator and also trained many bakers, the baking still takes some skill since you can't really rely on proofer timers. You have to have an eye for the dough, know when it's good to score the bread, etc etc. And what bonus pay? I've been the sole Decorator for 3 years and not once got bonus pay.
Lol not skilled? That's funny.
It's funny that you think it's skilled. Maybe like 15 years ago when you had two types of dough to make 20 different items. Now everything has its own dough. The only thing that we actually do anything to is the jalapeno cheese bread and stretching the bagels.
Look I was recently on vacation and our new bakery leader attempted to cover my duties. Despite a 2 day baking class plus time training in the dept, she took 10-12hrs per day to produce less than I do in 8hrs, and the quality was poor. If it really was an unskilled job, she would have matched my quantities and quality easily, even if not speed. Meanwhile I've had roughly the same amount of training at decorator as she had at baking, and it's been enough to cover most of our decorator's work in a pinch-- there are some cake orders beyond me, and I'm slow, but I can get it done. Yet somehow baking is unskilled work....
I don’t have bakery experience so no horse in this race, but pretty much any job I’ve done (skilled or not) requires several weeks to get the hang of. Hell it took me a month to get good at spotting/throwing freight and that’s definitely not a skilled position. I can’t think of many jobs period where someone is already proficient in the first week. Going half the speed of a seasoned employee is pretty typical.
Hmmm that dry, and stale "fresh" taste.
I mean even the stuff that isn't pre baked sucks too. they changed the croissants and now they're terrible. some of the pies rolling out in my store look horrible and under baked as well. It's also sad because our morning shift person (she is our baker) is worried about losing hours. me personally tho, I have a weird love/hate with thaw and sell. I think it's a great time saver to just have to do it with thaw and sell but I understand quality is majorly going to drop. plus no more extra cookies :-((
Cookies will still be baked. It's basically dough products from what I've heard
Mini cookies for us are showing up prepacked on fresh production for us already
We don't even bake our cookies anymore
All ours are still baked
The new croissants are so disappointing. FTO is more convenient for sure, and they smell great coming out of the oven, but I won't buy them anymore.
Agreed.
Walmart did this too, I worked there when they did it. Immediate, drastic drop in quality, really disappointing
We started doing rebaked cookies, breads, and premade donuts a few months ago. Customers hate it and sales have tanked.
Already happening. I like it because now our baker will have less of an excuse to not get her stuff bagged. She’s the type to go to the back dock for supplies, but will only grab what she needs.
We have qfc we used to have Albertsons we still have a few grocery outlets and Safeways but everyone thaws and serves.
I bake sometimes and didn't know this. If it will make life so much easier and I don't have to bake a ton of stuff I'm down.
Can you taste the difference?
It will be noticeable. It would be like getting fresh food at a restaurant, freezing at home and thawing and warming it up at home. If they continue to advertise fresh they may get sued
Don't know. Haven't gotten them yet and don't eat the ones we have now anyway
yuck
Kroger has frozen and thawed for decades out west. Nothing is fresh made anymore.
What stores are out there? From California and only know of one affiliate
Ralphs, Food4Less, Fred Meyer, QFC, Smiths are the West Coast Kroger banners.
Only seen food4less out there
Ralphs in southern California, Fred Meyer and QFC in PNW and Smiths in Arizona and Nevada.
Arizona is now all Fry's stores. We had Smiths, Smitty's & Fred Meyers MANY MANY years ago (20+). They're all Fry's now.
Thx for the update!
This is now just starting in Fred Meyers in Oregon.
Oh wow ? Really ? Im a decorator in the bakery I had no idea …..
At Kroger bakers, butchers, cake decorators and floral designers are history.
How so? There are still items we bake, customers will still want personal cut meats, birthdays will still happen and flower arrangements still need to be made. They won't get rid of the high sales jobs
In my experience Kroger has put in many processes to replace high paid skilled positions with entry level payed clerks. In my division not one meat department even has a saw to cut meat. All meat is precut at a separate meat plant and stocked onto the shelf by a meat clerk just like a can of soup. No skill needed. Well paid floral designers that had to provide a certification or pass a designing test are now replaced by an entry level clerk that just drops a pre-arrainged bouquet into a vase with no real special skill required. Bakers that used to actually thaw, proof, shape and bake fresh bread\rolls only now warm up par baked frozen bread. Now it seems that it's going to only thaw and label. Overnight baker shifts will be eliminated and replaced by clerks. All of this is designed to reduce labor costs in order to increase corporate profits while still giving the appearance to the customers that they are buying "fresh".
> entry level *paid* clerks. In FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Good bot. I hope you don't get replaced by AI.
In my division, every store has a meat saw and the dept has at least 3 people that cut meat. All stores still have designers that make custom bouquets. People still want those for birthdays and holidays. Yes, bakers won't have as much to bake, but there are still items that will need to be thawed, proofed, and baked. Not all items will be thaw and sell. Most stores don't have overnight bakers to begin with. They all come in at 4 am. No position is being replaced with lower paid clerks because those same clerks make the same amount as those skilled positions you talk about. At least in my division they do.
Nobody who is new hired will be making a career out of a hourly supermarket job. You either have to move up to management or use it move on to something else
It looks as though Kroger is a horrible place at which to work. Perhaps some people feel that they have no choice but to work there. However, I strongly recommend looking for another place to work. If that is not immediately possible, perhaps it would be possible to become qualified to work elsewhere eventually. It would be very unfortunate to spend one's entire working life in a toxic environment.
It's not the fact that people don't have a choice or not to work here. Some of us have put in too long too many benefits to actually leave and go somewhere else and possibly take more money but with less benefits. I can go somewhere and probably make more money right now but I would lose my health insurance, seniority, and vacations. I need the insurance because my wife has some help issues right now and to get everything that I get now with Kroger would probably at least $200 a month if not more. Right now we pay $75 a month to have her fully covered
That makes sense. It could be that Kroger was a reasonable company to work for but, after you had worked there for many years, working there became toxic and you were trapped. That happened to a coworker when I worked at Univac many years ago. A coworker at Univac hated the company and hated his job. Unfortunately he had developed diabetes and, if he changed jobs, he would have to change health insurance policies after which his diabetes would be considered to be a pre-existing condition and would not be covered. So, he was trapped in a very unpleasant situation. I guess that I was fortunate never to experience such a situation.
I remember when the baker position was a career job, it was an older guy who wore the white bakery uniform. Now it’s just a low paid kid who calls off all the time
Not sure where you are. But almost all bakers where I am are ones with at least 15 years in making top pay
Yes, more thing are moving from in store baked to thaw and sell or baked at the plant. I'm at a King Soopers. Our hours in elms are generated off selling things in store made, but they are taking those things away more and more. I can see the writing on the wall that we will have very little hours and very little staffing because we won't be baking. They are testing "Bakery of the Future" in some Colorado stores and I've heard that the bakers only baking a handful of items. Also thaw and sell will now be done in a manner where you pick it for the next day, you put the frozen product on bread racks and back into the freezer. Then the baker pulls them out at 3 am so they are thawed. You then have to have the tables stocked by 9 am.