KANSAS CITY, MO — Hiring, training and retaining employees has never been easy for bakery owners. Post-pandemic, the talent pool shrank significantly, resulting in an industry-wide workforce shortage that isn’t expected to recover anytime soon. In fact, recent research from the American Bakers Association predicts that by 2030, more than 53,000 positions will go unfilled.
Bakery owners and industry organizations have been hard at work developing solutions that range from raising wages and expanding benefits to increasing awareness of baking career options among younger generations.
One possible solution that’s gaining traction is open hiring, a practice that removes common barriers to employment, which include lack of experience, a criminal background and housing instability.
Open hiring isn’t a new concept. Janie’s Life Changing Baked Goods in New York, Bridge Bread Bakery in St. Louis, and Burlington, VT-based Rhino Foods, which manufactures frozen ready-to-eat cookie dough and bakery-style inclusions, are just a few companies that have practiced open hiring for years.
“We’ve had formerly incarcerated people and unhoused people working in our stores,” said Janie Deegan, owner of Janie’s Life Changing Baked Goods, “but the biggest impact we’ve made recently is in hiring people who want to work in a bakery but can’t get a job because they don’t have any experience. It’s a Catch-22: They can’t get a job without experience, and they can’t get experience without having a job.”
Open hiring isn’t as simple as it may sound. There can be a steep learning curve for bakery owners who are comfortable with conventional hiring practices. Expanding into open hiring often requires a significant shift in recruitment, training and retention strategies, and, sometimes, culture.
“First, you have to decide what ‘open hiring’ means to your company,” said Ted Castle, founder of Rhino Foods. “Are you going to hire only people with a certain level of education or experience? Refugees who may not speak English? Previously incarcerated people? Are you going to run background checks? The more time you spend thinking about the challenges you’re going to have and what you’re going to do about them, the better the opportunity you’ll have for success.”
A common trait among bakeries with successful open hiring programs is their initial screening process. Both Rhino Foods and Janie’s have intensive onboarding programs designed to identify potential employees.
“Our hiring practices are dedicated to making sure Rhino is the right fit for the person, which often-times weeds people out faster and earlier,” Castle said. “We provide a three-day paid orientation that gives them an idea of what it’s like to work at Rhino Foods. We tell them, ‘Show up on time, treat people with respect and be willing to learn, and you’ll have a job.’ We may start with 10 people, and after three days, five remain. We used to spend a lot of time trying to keep people out. Now we spend less time on that, and more time on keeping people in.”
Onboarding at Janie’s Life Changing Baked Goods includes working a trial shift.
“I have people tell me they are really into baking, but that doesn’t mean they know how to navigate a commercial kitchen,” Deegan said. “It’s a very different atmosphere. We share what it actually means to work in a high-volume commercial kitchen that has a lot of repetitive tasks.”
This story has been adapted from the December | Q4 2024 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the full story in the digital issue here.
