DF 7: Sample Student Persuasive Essays
MIMI206
Student.Essay.Example.StudentInvolvement3.rtfStudent Last Name 8
Student Name
Instructor Laura Kingston
English 102
June 10, 2010
Student Involvement
When I first became a Baking and Pastry Arts student at South Seattle Community College I believed having a pastry shop on campus would be quite beneficial to our education of the industry. Although Bernie’s Pastry Shop is almost on the other side of campus, I thought we would go down there frequently not just to deliver the pastries, but learn the ins and outs of running a shop. Now in my third quarter, I am beginning to realize that our only responsibility as students is to fill up the shop with product and nothing more. In the program we are also required to take courses on baking management; these too are skills that could be practiced by being more involved in the pastry shop. This is where I believe some improvements could be made. The pastry shop is staffed with people who have very little knowledge about the pastry products. This of course is not their fault, but without this knowledge it seems the products are not properly marketed and consequently not as successful. This success is very important because the money we make goes towards bettering our program. Therefore, to benefit the program financially and the students scholastically SSCC Baking and Pastry Arts students need to be more involved in Bernie’s Pastry Shop.
Wanting to be more involved and coincidently in need of employment, I began to work at Bernie’s Pastry Shop on campus. As an employee, I have frequently had problems with products that are not priced and as a student I have had equal problems obtaining the prices from either one of the chefs, as they are always busy. To determine the individual selling price of a product made from a standardized recipe the standard portion cost has to be found. This is simply done by finding the cost of each ingredient as it was purchased; dividing that cost by how much of each product is used in the standardized recipe, adding together each products recipe cost, and then divide this dollar amount by how many portions the recipe yields. Once you know the portion cost the last step is to multiply that number by the standard food cost percentage, leaving you with the individual selling price. Quite often a recipe cost card is a tool used to calculate the standard portion cost and then kept on hand, so the food cost is available whenever it is needed to determine selling price (Controlling Foodservice Cost 33-35, 44). The way the pastry program is currently set up, the prices have been determined in the past and the chefs hold on to them, or if the product is newer the cost is just estimated. It seems that it would be beneficial to provide students with recipe cost cards that give the necessary information to calculate the cost of each portion and then multiply it by a predetermined food cost percentage. Whether or not every student participated as directed, they would be at least given the opportunity to learn pricing techniques. Another more simple approach would be to place one binder housing this information at each station. As groups move to new stations the binder would stay, yet still be updated by the new group as necessary. Either way this would hopefully also serve as a reminder to price items before they are sent down to the pastry shop.
One of the most common reasons a price is left off a product is because the label was forgotten as well and that is where the price is written. As it stands now there are only two pastry students working down at the shop, including myself, out of 15 other employees. This leaves about an 87% chance that a curious customer and a non-pastry student employee won’t know what the potentially delicious unidentified pastry in front of them contains. According to a bakery management article by Eddie Tobey, proper signage is important because it’s a way for the customers to become more comfortable in the shop (n. pag.). It would then stand to reason that no signs or lack of descriptive labels would make customers uncomfortable and less willing to return. Although the reasoning for this may be different for each customer, I personally find myself more comfortable when signs are present because I don’t have to point and ask “What’s that?” constantly. Instead, the name can describe the item for you, or at least give you an idea of a more specified question to ask. As the current practice stands, once the finishing touches are put on a product it is placed on a “gold tray” (hopefully with a descriptive label), then put on a cart that goes down to the shop at a specific time of day. The student that takes down the cart’s only job is to hand over the pastries to the employees. If a simple rule was instated, requiring the products on the cart to be checked for labels before being sent down, it would be nearly impossible for the 87% chance that the customer and the employee won’t know what an unlabeled product is to occur. Even more near impossible if the cases holding the pastries were checked throughout the day.
Another problem that the students could address at the shop, that some employees may not understand, is the holding time on products. Something that South Seattle offers in both the pastries and the culinary food is all products are trans fat free. Writer for USA Today, Nanci Hellmich, wrote in an article about trans fats, “ The artery-clogging fat is formed during a manufacturing process called hydrogenation, which converts liquid oil to a solid fat . Partially hydrogenated oils are useful because they extend products' shelf life” (n. pag.). As our products do not use any of these hydrogenated oils, the shelf life is reduced. The fact that South Seattle Community College is a trans fat free school is advertised, but not widely. It is advertised so narrowly in fact that even some of the employees do not even know. This leaves them without the knowledge that the shelf life of our products has been reduced. Whether it is due to the reduction of shelf life or not, many products get left in the case way past their prime. On multiple occasions I’ve had customers ask me what was fresh, and not necessarily because they were craving something fresh out of the oven. They ask because in past visits they have received stale pastries, cookies, or some other product. It is one thing if a customer was accidently sold a semi-stale Pain au Chocolat or Apple Danish once in two or three quarters, but for this to happen on a regular occasion could chase off many potential customers. This perhaps could be something that gets added to the labels, an estimated holding time and date sent to the shop. Then, either the employees or the student that brings down the cart with the new product could check the old items to see if they are still fresh.
Another problem I find with the marketing is the presentation of the products. When talking to my friend Andrea she said, “The first thing I do when I walk into a pastry shop is look at the presentation of the product; it says a lot to me.” We then agreed that the presentation at Bernie’s is not all that it could be. When we send down our products, everyone places their different pastries on trays in a neat and appealing format. To get these products down to the shop efficiently we place all of them on the same cart. Then, at a certain time during the day the cart is wheeled down to the shop by just two people and at the end of the extremely bumpy journey on a not so stable cart, the sometimes very delicate products get rattled around. Although the students that bring down the cart try to make sure everything looks as it did before (replacing fallen garnishes and what not) this is not always accomplished because of time constraints (i.e. they have a cake in the oven) or they simply didn’t know how it looked before. It is then left to the employees of the shop to place the product in the display case and make sure it looks presentable. This usually does not happen though because they have no idea how it is supposed to look, nor do they care sometimes when customers are waiting. If the pastry students had more involvement, it could be part of our job to make sure the pastries are presentable not only in the kitchen, but all the way to the case in the shop.
In my mind the best way to solve these problems thoroughly is to add one more station that focuses specifically on the pastry shop. Although I’d like to believe this is just a quick fix, I understand it is not. The baking and pastry certificate already has a set curriculum and to add another station or requirement to it could really set things off balance. I say off balance because to receive an Associates of Applied Science- Transfer Degree in Pastry and Baking Arts you would need to complete a total of one hundred and forty eight credits where as completing an Associates of Science- Transfer Degree only requires a total of ninety credits. (“AA and AS Transfer…” n. pag.), (“South Seattle C…” n. pag.) The way the program is currently set up the quarter is split up into multiple two week stations and each station usually has two to three students at a time. By adding another station, the others may have to decrease in size causing an overload of work. Also, it would cause the whole program to be two weeks longer, unless it was to replace another station. Therefore, maybe instead of throwing in one whole new two week station and trying to make a huge change, we could start off with just one simple task. For example, we could improve our labeling techniques. After a period of time, if we see improvement in sales and/or customer comments we could then decide if it would be beneficial to add some more student involvement.
Although I do believe the improvements that need to be made at Bernie’s should be accomplished mainly by the pastry students, the employees at the shop would need to play an important part in these improvements. An article was written comparing high and low performing companies and their ideals on customer service. It simply started out by stating, “High-performing companies outshine low-performing ones in their focus on the customer” (Nancherla 24). Even though this information was not obtained by surveying small operations like Bernie’s, there’s no doubt that something like customer service has strong correlations no matter what business type it’s referencing. As I mentioned earlier nearly all the employees of Bernie’s are students at SSCC, but very few are pastry students. As nonemployees something that pastry students cannot manage is customer service. It is therefore left up to them to provide arguably one of the most important aspects of a business, customer service. This is something that could easily be obtained with proper training of employees.
Upon being hired at the shop this last February, I think it is fair to say that I was not trained. On my first day I was given a quick tour of different things behind the counter, hot dogs over there, nacho cheese here, coffee and cups in this area, and teas are at that end. Although it was nice to know where things were I had no idea what the serving protocol was for anything. Then, just as soon as I finished my tour I was released to the customers. Coffees were easy enough, as I must admit I have a small addition to Starbucks, so luckily I was familiar with the different espresso drinks, cup sizes, and coffee lingo. I believe it was when I reached the third or fourth customer that I came upon a nacho order. Although it sounded easy enough I quickly realized I had no idea where the proper nacho containers were. I then proceeded to ask a fellow employee, who surprisingly enough was only willing to disclose the information of what container to use and the rest was left to me to figure out. Nearly the whole first month continued the same way, learning mostly from watching and guessing. As I learned during this process, good customer service is a hard thing to achieve when you’re not only new, but also trying to train yourself. After working in the shop for nearly five months now I must say it’s not a hard craft to master, but some insightful training in the beginning would have made my start much smoother. This truly is a small problem that would only involve a quick fix. As a new employee is hired an on the job training day would be planned, where the new employee would simply shadow a current employee. Although this step does not involve the pastry students directly, properly trained staff would financially benefit the shop a great deal.
Although the solutions mentioned early involving pastry students getting behind the counter to maintain the product sound reasonable as a student, I find that as an employee others working at the Bernie’s might find transitioning into this new process difficult. As I mentioned earlier the shop is already lacking in employee training making it hectic behind the counter at times. Also, unlike other bakeries where the food is made ahead of time and production is slowed or stopped during the selling time, our program has its peak production happening as customers are streaming through. Therefore, instead of organizing and placing products in a specific order in the cases, things just go where they fit. To the employees trying to serve customers, pastry students wondering around behind the counter moving things around might seem like more of a hassle then it’s worth. I don’t think that is the case though. As an employee myself I find it hard to make time between customers to organize the shelves. To have someone do this for me would be a great help, even if they are just a bit in the way. Also, the improvements being made by the students would clearly work towards the goal of better marketing in the shop and of course teaching the students more about this marketing.
The unique thing about South Seattle Community College’s Pastry and Specialty Baking program is that we are a self-sufficient. This means that we are not funded by the government like other school programs. The money we use to buy the ingredients and equipment needed to produce the products we make is earned by selling those products at places like Bernie’s Pastry Shop. While talking to my chef instructors at school, he informed me that North Seattle Community College also used to have a self-sufficient culinary arts program, but after too much loss on the books, the program was shut down around 2005 (Harris n. pag.). Therefore, it is imperative that we use the best methods possible to make the most money possible. If this is not achieved and we can no longer support ourselves, the program could get cut and South Seattle would no longer have a pastry shop on campus. For this reason the pastry students must become more involved with the marketing and pastry inventory process at Bernie’s Pastry Shop.Works Cited
"AA and AS Transfer Degree Requirements." South Seattle Community College. N.p., 2009. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://www.southseattle.edu/programs/academ/ degree.htm>.
Drysdale, John A. Controlling Foodservice Costs. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.
Harris, Christopher. Personal interview. 20 May 2010.
Nancherla, Aparna. "Superior Customer Service Boosts Market Performance." T+D 64.6 (2010): 24. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 June 2010.
Nanci, Hellmich. "The scoop on trans fat: What it is, why it's .." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 May 2010.
"South Seattle Community College Catalog." Seattle Colleges. N.p., Summer 2010. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://www.seattlecolleges.com/DISTRICT/catalog/docs/PDF2010/10- 12_South.pdf>.
Tobey, Eddie "Bakery Management." Bakery Management. 16 Feb. 2006 EzineArticles.com. 3 May. 2010 <http://ezinearticles.com/?Bakery-Management&id=146460>.
