My friend Elena Miller is a very talented cake baker. She started baking cakes in high school as a hobby and people saw potential in her and encouraged her to take it serious. So she decided to work for a bakery, and in less than a year she became very well-known in Chicago area and had many other offers. A couple years after graduating high school she moved to Austin Texas and opened her shop there. She currently makes customized cakes; she pretty much can make anything from realistic looking pets, car models, favorite alcoholic drink, and castles anything you can think of upon request.
A very hard working woman she works about 70 hours per week and has a staff of three other talented bakers all this is excluding client meetings and other industry related obligations. I decided to observe her operations the flow structure of the process used to make, and deliver of her cakes in timely manner, facility lay out and other work methods. Broadly characterized her operation can be classified as job shop. A job shop process uses general purpose resources and is highly flexible.
Layout: In the job shop, similar equipment or functions are grouped together. In her shop the rack oven, deck oven and proofer are at the entrance of the kitchen while the cooler and other dry martial inventory storage is at the other opposite end. Working “clean” area is in the middle with different size tables, slicers, and molders.
Employees: In a job shop employees are typically highly skilled craft employees who can operate several different classes of machinery. These workers are paid higher wages for their skill levels. Due to their high skill level, job shop employees need less supervision. Everyone at the shop is very responsible and accountable for each task. All of them know how to operate the heavy duty ovens. The key activity in a job shop is processing information.
Information: Information is the most critical aspect of a job shop. Information is needed to quote a price, bid on a job, route an order through the shop, and specify the exact work to be done she gets lots of customer’s word of mouth has tremendously helped her business. Here is the basic procedure, clients come in and order their specific cake. Then she gives them a quote after that she creates a blue print. This is where she allocates the cost of production i.e labor and raw material.
My final analysis in correspondence with process strategy is that in her operation flexibility is high as they make very detailed and highly customized cakes that take lots of hours. Volume is low labor content and skill are very high and finally capital investment is low.
http://www.netmba.com/operations/process/structure/
http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/7117/7288732/krm9e_SuppJ.pdf
https://www.facebook.com/elena.miller3
This is amazing! Your friend has great talent!
I would imagine that her having only three other employees can be difficult and may at times cause some challenges. This most likely means she would have to turn down some offers from being overbooked. But I’m not familiar with the baking industry so maybe three is enough? It seems like since they’re high paid and highly skilled it would be about the same, if not less, than having more less-skilled, low paid workers.
Its crazy that your friend has been able to be so successful straight out of high school, I can see she is super talented. Did she have to get funding from investors. Also does she run into any difficulty with having such a short staff? It seems like she does have a great system going if she has been able to stay a float. I am not particularly family with the cake business but as a job shop type of business, specific demand from customers must still be overwhelming at times.
Wow! I am always amazed with people who are very artistic. This is even more impressive because she is doing it with cakes. On top of that you mentioned that she started getting noticed after high school and was able to start her business shortly after that? Wow! Many people are not that lucky, they could be talented but they are usually making someone else rich. How was she able to start her business? Did she obtain capital from bank or she was able to fund it on her own? Someone mentioned that she must have high demand, and this is usually true for job shops. This is very inspiring and I hope that one day own my own business and expand it to Europe.
It’s always nice to hear stories about people who are able to work a job they truly enjoy. When opening up a business it’s important to have a very trustworthy staff that you don’t need to constantly monitor. Your friend is very talented and is lucky to be surrounded by employees who she can trust to represent her.
Yeah you guys are right I am lucky to have such an artistic and talented friend. It gets even better especially on birthday the surmising cakes that she bakes for me I never want to eat. You guys bring up good points with increased clients and other recommendations she gets an overwhelming demand. I guess that is a good problem to have. The issue is to get skilled employees to meet her quality and expectation. But I recently suggested to her that she should set up an apprentice program where she trains students who graduated from culinary institutes. The future looks very bright for her.
First off, your friend has amazing skills. I don’t think I could even bring myself to eat one of the cakes. I’d probably just put it in the freezer or something so it wouldn’t get ruined. (for all I know, that would ruin it.)The fact that she is so young, and has already achieved this level of success is great. She is very lucky to have found her calling so early on.
That truly is amazing! I defniately could not eat one of those. This was an excellent example of job shop – type labor. This almost reminds me of that wedding cake show. Maybe your friend could end up with her own show…
Wow some of those cakes look awesome! It is really interesting to see how people really focus in on a certain niche and how they have to manage their business. It is definitely a job shop mentality which delivers extremely focused cakes to clients. It’s great to see someone utilize their talents passion and channel them into a business
I have a friend who has a similar bakery and it is incredible the amount of time and energy they put into their business. Job shops are very niche that not just anyone can work there, making hiring very difficult. With such a small staff and limited capital, everyone needs to make sure they pay attention to every detail to execute flawlessly. Your friend definitely is an example of doing what you love instead of what is easiest or most profitable.