Main problem for small and medium bakery business
In most develop country we can see there are much small and medium type of bakery business running compare to big or large bakery production.Bakery business were grouped in food and beverage (f&b) industries.In present time, this economy catastrophe doesn't hurt much for f&b industries.It almost doesn't give any effect at all.Why?First of all when it comes to something about food or daily needs or services,government will try their best to keep it at low price so people still can get it.People do eat everyday,no matter how hard the economy be,they still need to eat.Can you imagine if one day when you go to the market and there is no bread or the price is too high that you can't afford to buy?This will cost unrest among the people and will causes much more problem to the government.
After being long time in this industries,i think the main problem for small and medium bakery business in Malaysia is not at the material cost or production cost,but its in man power source.For example in my country,employer can acquire cheap labour cost from foreign workers.Compare to local workers,their pay are much more higher than the foreign workers.There are pros and cons to this fact.In my experience,local workers were lack in disciplines and attitude.However,communication with them much more easier compare to foreign worker.I can trained and teach any new local workers how to make decent bread and make them understand how the entire production running in less than two weeks but for foreign workers that usually doesn't speak fluent English or Malays it can takes more than a month.
The problem with local workers is they're always doesn't give 100% commitment in their job.Or at least i can say,every workers should try to give their best at any job given.They should try to love their job instead of work just to get pay for it.When we enjoy our job,this can make our life more easier and cheerful.For examples,I'm actually graduate from computer networking degree but when i feel its hard for me to get decent job in this field,i think i should learn another different skills to add my value.Although this making bread & pastry skill doesn't related to each other,but i like to know how to make it.So i improved my skill and knowledge in this bakery industries until i can master it for myself.
I can say that i prefer working with foreign workers because they're actually come here to my country to earn money to feed their family back home.So they're more aware at their responsibilities and always work hard.But something that i don't like with foreign workers is they're too depend on each other.They're more likely to work in a group amongst them and this i can say "dangerous" for the company.Why is that?Let me give you one usual scenario:
Let say you manage or supervise medium bakery shop.You employ 3 foreign workers from Bangladesh.They're new to your country, doesn't speak fluent English,and know nothing about making bread or never work with its ingredients.First of all,you need to trained them to mix,shape and baked the bread.In the mean time,they need to learn memorise the name of the bread they make.They need to know exact ingredient and measurement for each type of bread and how to group them.Well like i said earlier,this learning process can take more than a month depend on their capability to adapt new knowledge.There are no problem if each of them work hard or show their effort to learn by any mean.But the problem occurs if one of them not given attention,or doesn't show interest to learn harder or in other word,lazy.When you try to fix this problem by acting straight in order to disciplined this worker,or the last result you fired the lazy one,there is 90% chances that another 2 of his friend will follow him to quit the job.When this happen,you now realise that all effort you give to teach and trained these 3 workers are useless.
This type of problem actually happen in most bakery shop in my country.The employer need to decide whether to employ locals or foreign worker.Both of them have pros and cons.The employer need to choose either low or high cost worker they need,but the stability in production is more critical for any business survival.Yes,what i can conclude here is having foreign worker will bring more stability in production but it'll need more patient and effort to make it successful choices.
Articles: Nourfadly80
Website: http://breadpastry.blogspot.com
