The Decline of The Modern-Day Bakery

Retail bakeries are becoming extinct. I’m not talking about the generic in-store bakeries found in most supermarkets. I’m talking about the kind of bakery where flour, butter, sugar, and eggs arrive at the back door and leave through the front door as pound cakes, cookies, and breads. According to the Retail Bakers of America, forty years ago, there were 30,000 bakeries in the United States. Today, there are just 6,000. (By contrast, the city of Paris alone boasts 2,000 bakeries.) If you can believe it, Wal-Mart leads the way in American bakery sales while Costco trumps in cake sales. That might explain why it’s challenging to find a cake unadulterated by the taint of shortening, artificial flavoring and absurd amounts of sugar. Brioche is often no better than generic sandwich bread and croissants are more doughy than flaky.

Convenience. As a culture, we’ve become accustomed to getting what we want when we want it.  We expect cherry pies in April and strawberry shortcake in December. We expect birthday cakes to be churned out in the time that it takes to pick up the phone and place the order.  Gone are the days when we browsed the bakery display to tantalize our taste buds. We now expect the bakery to satisfy our cravings, most of which are sadly dictated by media trends and food fads. (Cupcakes and cake pops anyone?) All of this and we expect bakeries to make breads, pastries, and desserts that are “handmade” and made “fresh daily”. But pastry is largely about planning. To meet the demand for convenience and get around the long wait times called for in fermenting doughs or chilling custards, modern-day bakers are using custard powders, ice cream bases, food coloring, dough conditioners and flavor extracts. And for the ultimate in convenience, you can now shop at the bakery while you wait for your photos to be developed and pick up your new flatscreen TV in the electronics department—even if it’s 2 am.

Price. With a check average ranging from $3 to $8, you need to sell a lot of bread and pastry to pay the rent. But people will only pay so much for a muffin or a loaf of bread, no matter how good they are.  They may pay $30, $75 or even $150 for a hamburger but historically, when high grain prices lead to high bakery prices, food riots erupt. Just ask the French.

Economies of Scale. In the marketplace, the more you buy (and sell), the cheaper the price; hence, the popularity of sales that boast “10/$10 or $1.12 each”.  In economic theory, this phenomenon is referred to as economies of scale, in which operational efficiencies allow one to lower costs while increasing output. Bakeries rarely follow economies of scale with success. To lower their production costs and keep up with demand, bakeries automate. However, bakeries also have to re-formulate their recipes as traditional doughs and batters do not hold up to the rigors of automated production. Only shortening-based pie dough can hold up to the high heat of a pie machine. In chocolate products, the cocoa butter is often replaced with cheaper oils to make the chocolate cheaper to produce and less susceptible to temperature fluctuations. So, one can churn out many more pies with a pie molder but they will never taste as good as a butter-crust pie. Nor will the chocolate-flavored confection ever taste as good as chocolate. This is why quality often succumbs as bakeries automate their operation in order to meet higher demand.  Also, this machinery is expensive—a cookie depositor can save labor by portioning and depositing cookie dough but these machines cost between $10,000, for a used model and $45,000 for a fully automated model. If you sell cookies for $1.50, you’d have to sell 6,700 to 30,000 cookies just to cover the cost of this machine…and that’s assuming that you’re not paying interest on the equipment.

Mediocrity. Bakeries have not been at the center of American culinary traditions as they have in European and Asian cities. And in these modern times, consumers have forgotten what ‘good bread’ tastes like. (Given that America has not had a long-standing tradition of baking, some would argue that we never knew what ‘good bread’ tastes like.) We’ve become so used to ‘one-stop shopping’ that we prefer to settle for a mediocre imitation of a baguette rather than make a separate trip to a bakery in search of the real thing. In other words, we’re fine with Wonder Bread.

Shelf Life. As anyone who’s tasted a day-old whipped cream cake can attest, desserts and pastries rarely stay “fresh” for longer than a few days. And for the modern-day baker who’s competing with the convenience of supermarket bakeries and already squeezed by increasingly slim profit margins, having to start from scratch every day is hardly an option. The bakery industry has responded with an arsenal of weapons to combat the traditionally short shelf life of products:

• Whip cream stabilizers that prevent whipped cream from weeping and turning yellow
• Non-dairy substitutes that replace dairy with vegetable/soy oil and sugar. (Labeling a product as “creme” is a dead giveaway that the pastry has a dairy substitute.)
• Ultra-pasteurized dairy products that will last at least a week once opened.
• Emulsifying aids, such as hi-ratio cake shortening, that allow batters to absorb more moisture and stay ‘fresh’ longer.
• Eggs that can be purchased in shelf-stable, user-friendly forms: pasteurized egg yolks, frozen eggs, or dried egg whites.
• Mold inhibitors, such as raisin-juice concentrate, that extend the shelf life of bread.

Deskilling of labor. When compared to the-meat-and-vegetable inventory of the savory kitchen, bakery ingredients are relatively cheap and shelf-stable. However, the work required to transform flour, sugar, eggs, and butter into brioche, dinner rolls or fruit tarts is labor intensive. And labor is both expensive and variable. As such, bakery (convenience) products are not designed for taste, but to save labor. Even in France, long considered the holy grail of fine bread and pastry, most boulangeries and patisseries purchase mass-produced doughs and bake them in their stores. Cooked pie fillings, canned and frozen fruit, baked tart shells, pre-made sugar flowers, cake mixes, pre-portioned cookie dough, truffle shells, colored icing and chocolate decorations are a handful of the convenience products available to the modern-day baker. Bakeries can even purchase cakes already filled, iced and decorated. With these convenient options, you could {theoretically} open a bakery without ever buying a mixer, an oven or hiring a trained staff. These labor-saving products cater to the bottom line but where does that leave bakery employees—many of whom get fed up with the poorly paid, monotonous work and eventually leave the industry? Efficiency through standardization may have led to consistency, but the systematic dismantling of bakery work into simple, repetitive tasks has also produced a generation of bakers who don’t bake.

Lifestyle. It takes a unique person of horse-like stamina to start a physically demanding workday when most people are just retiring to bed.  On an average day, I arrived at work between 2am and 4am. By 9am, when most people are on to their second mug of coffee, I was salivating for a chicken Caesar wrap. Dinner was on the table by 4pm and if I was tired enough, I would be sleeping by 6pm—no easy feat when the sun is still blazing and every other block is hosting a street fair during the summer months. I worked the graveyard shift for almost ten years before deciding to return to the land of the living. Indeed, it’s a lonely existence and one that’s taken for granted by people who never see you at work.

Indeed, with rising rents, increasing labor costs, and a price-sensitive consumer base, it’s tough to make a profitable go at being a bakery. “Quantity, not quality” has become the new mantra for success. Throw in the competition from low-priced nearby supermarkets and convenience stores and the future for bakeries looks bleak. Even with this trend towards the industrial and mass-produced bakery, there continues to be a movement towards the artisan and traditional approach. Bread Alone, in business since 1983, continues to specialize in organic, naturally leavened bread and bakes its cakes and pastries without the use of preservatives or additives.  Similarly, Amy’s Bread, with three retail locations in New York city, has continued to use traditional bread-making methods and recently moved to a larger production space in Long Island City. There is still hope yet, for bakeries who bake.