boulanger-pâtissier

baker

gérant de commerce de détail

surveillant du service alimentaire

vendeur en boulangerie

COBS Bread

I’ve worked at two Cobs locations. The first was one was alright. I was a pastry student and took on a full-time job as a junior baker for my summer in between semesters. It was my first baking job so I was very excited. I’m very passionate about bread but Cobs Bread never taught me anything except that  more is better. There is no value in quality, just quantity and how much and fast the products sell. Owners of the bakeries jam pack 16 hours worth of work and expect you to be done in 8 hours. A lot of bakeries do wholesale-which is fine- but sometimes owners take huge orders with less than 24 hours notice and don’t change schedules accordingly. The first location wouldn’t let us take breaks. If we were hungry we’d have to crouch down so customers wouldn’t see us eat a croissant. I was paid minimum wage for a job that physically burnt me out and on top of that, my schedule was always Fridays through Tuesdays so I would t be able to do a single thing on the weekend. I don’t mind the early mornings, but seeing bakers that started after me get Friday’s and Saturday’s off? That hurts.

After baking school I returned to a different location hoping it would be better. This location offered me better pay, a break and benefits just after 3 months. I was promised a pay raise after my 2nd month or whenever I was done training on the mixing bowl and ovens. Flash forward 4 months, fully trained,  
and I’m still working barely over minimum wage. Not only that but the breaks at this place are so unorganized. Bakers will go on break at the most inconvenient times and if you’re alone, you’re screwed. New bakers are usually the closers at any location, meaning you’re left doing work that earlier bakers should have finished hours before you. There were times where I’ve had to stay on ovens 30 minutes before my shift, cover a sales break, mix doughs for the following day, and do 2-3 hours worth of cleanup. It’s absolutely bananas. Bakers with seniority are often bullies and leave exactly when their shift ends- even if it means the new bakers have to spend 1-2 hours playing catch up for the work that should have been done by the earlier bakers. Management gets crossed if you stay past your shift end but the bakers get mad if everything isn’t done. I can’t please everyone! Oh and the worst? If you apply to Cobs and hired as the closing baker, expect sales people to demand fresh croissants and a batch of scones 20 minutes before your shift ends. NEVER FUN!

Cobs has unrealistic demands for people they hire. Job listings often require people with a culinary/baking background (1+ years experience) and some even request a diploma in baking and pastry arts. But they’ll pay you minimum wage or a dollar or two just over that. For the amount of physical and mental work that goes into being a baker at Cobs, nothing less than. $20/hr should cut it. Considering this is a multi-million dollar company, corporate should appreciate their bakers a lot more. Not sure about you guys, but I didn’t go to school to be paid that kind of wage.

While I worked here I had a great time at the start. I always liked my co workers and it was always fun to work with them. I do have a few issues with this location which include; management, being able to work our way up the chain, and life and work balance. 

Management were nice people, all of them are nice enough as people especially the 1 of the 2 owners of the establishment. However, the manager and the main owner at the location needs to work on building moral and praising their workers more. When I worked here it really affected my mental health as i was always told what i did wrong but never praised for what I did right. I was compared to other coworkers to my face "well blank did this in this amount of time so why cant you?" but then also telling me that its okay i cant go as fast. very head winding and no manager should be comparing coworkers against each other as this can make coworkers rival against each other in a negative way. Having a balance of praise for things people do right or even a " good work today everyone!" as the manager leaves for the day really does to wonders for the moral of a workplace. I will state that when the other owner did come in he praised work he say immediately and it feels good and makes you want to work harder. Without this moral co-workers often complained at work of feeling burnt out and tired and felt upset their work wasn't represented. 

There were limited ways to move up in the bakery. After out supervisor left why wanted no other supervisor role but appointed someone with more tasks that and the same pay to my knowledge and that is not fair. if you are doing more work you should be getting more pay. Not having the opportunity to rise is very upsetting and further drains moral and makes workers not want to "rise above the bar" They also had co-workers have a certain amount of sales with promise of prizes but none came from it and if it did i have no knowledge of it. 

Lastly, there is the life and work balance issue. Because there are limited people trained on needed tasks like cash or afternoon bake it puts pressure on the 3 of 10 front people. This leads to them having to work more but of the people trained they are all students. This lead to frustration and burnt out. Students who work part time are expected to work way more than they originally agreed to and are often asked to come in regardless of them marking themselves as unavailable on the scheduling app. 

Can be a great experience if you have a good franchisee, but it can be a nightmare if you don't, or are at a corporate store. Unfortunately most bakeries fall into the latter category.

Expect a lot of lifting... You'll be putting away about 800 kilograms of flour and scone mix by yourself twice a week. Without any scheduled extra help or a break from baking stuff. Carrying them down stairs too in a couple locations.

Corporate pushes for around a 15% increase in sales and baked product over last year every single promotion. But you're not given 15% more storage space or baking equipment... not given 15% more time in the day to get things done... not given 15% more staff to do things with (on the contrary, head office constantly wants staffing hours slashed, and the high turnover rates mean you never have a fully experienced team)... and certainly not given a 15% raise each year. If you don't have a franchisee willing to help, make sure you're staffed properly, or set realistic goals, your work day just gets longer and longer. Several locations I've worked at have treated "9-10 hours with no breaks" as a standard day for bakers. Or if you're "suppose to" take breaks there's no infrastructure for it. No one to cover for you before ovens are ready to unload, or you're alone most of the night and can't leave production unattended, or you try to take a break near the end of your shift after cleaning equipment just to get yelled at to go back in to make more scones because the front is running low again. It leads to a very high turnover rate. I saw 12 bakers quit in one year once. Which just means covering more extra shifts and training new people.

There isn't any respect for bakers in the company. You are constantly talked down to. Even working there for four years, I never once felt respected, heard, and was constantly "cobs-'splained" to by every new owner, production manager, regional manager, etc. The job requires a lot of skills and reliability, the willingness to travel from work from midnight to 3am, and yet most bakeries only offer minimum wage or just over it. In the second most expensive city in Canada. And then management complains when people constantly quit. During the holiday weekends I've been scheduled or asked to stay for 12 hour shifts, yelled at constantly about needing more product/having too much product (sometimes both at the same time...), and not given any thanks despite apparently smashing previous years sales records. Being a baker for cobs is thankless.

Interview process is extremely easy. You go in, the interviewer might comment on how overdressed you are, and you are granted an opportunity for a working interview. If you are a sales assistant and show up in uniform, you will most likely be offered a job the next day. Your wage is not negotiated upon initial interview and minimum wage may be in your contract depending on your location. I did not receive an employment contract. In fact, I did not receive one until 2 months into my employment because the store manager had “forgotten about it”. You will begin doing extremely mundane daily tasks such as scrubbing dirt off the floor while customers step over you, and probably expect responsibilities to eventually become less trivial the longer you work here. However, they do not. This is what the job is. You slice bread, heat things up, make the product look nice, and if you have nothing to do, management comes over like a leech and says, “don’t just stand there, do something!” Besides entertaining management, the customers and the product are actually the best part about this job. My location happened to have some awesome regulars and phenomenal product, so it’s a shame I had to write this. The environment was decent until there was a turnover of half the staff, at which point I began to appreciate what I did here much less. Near the end of my employment, I was being watched like a hawk for every mundane task they told me to do. I didn’t expect questions to be encouraged any longer. When they were understaffed, my scheduling manager said, “don’t ask questions, you’ve been here long enough to know!” despite the thing in question being completely new information. I was handed a sheet containing the job description and sales staff expectations on my first day and I still keep it around; two point that stand out to me are, “adapts to changing circumstances,” and, “maintaining a good attitude”. Maybe the management should take their own advice. After I left, they threatened to withhold my last paycheque. The only decent thing they did after my last week was quickly backtrack on this statement, and I was paid.

I found this job to be very overwhelming and physically and mentally taxing. You never receive praise for a job well done even when you are giving it your all, and you are micromanaged constantly. You receive minimum wage and minimum break time although the job requires so much out of you. you will be constantly speaking to customers and fulfilling their orders in a very tight space with up to 8 other workers. Everyone is constantly slamming into each other and the size of the bakery and number of tills is totally unable to meet customer demand, which makes it very stressful for the employees to attempt to assist the amount of customers coming in. I would cash people out for 8 hours straight the entire day most days. Whenever I tried to do work at the back for a couple minutes to give myself a break they would tell me to have another coworker do the job and to go back to the front. I feel like this is a poor way of operating and the people up front should be rotated as it can be a stressful and overwhelming part of the job. I dealt with lots of rude customers and would quickly run out of a social battery. They allowed my other coworkers to switch out and work the back throughout the day. At first I thought it was because I was newer but even after I had been working there for a while I was never switched out. It might not sound that bad but with the insanely high and constant turnover rate I was always having to help new workers with what they were doing while helping customers myself and the extremely fast pace made it super overwhelming as well as physically and mentally taxing. I would often wake up the day after a shift with a migraine and a couple times I would even be puking. The job put a lot of stress on my brain and body and I would dread going to work so bad I would be stressed for days leading up to a shift. Some of my coworkers were judgemental and very micromanagey whether they were above me or not. The environment felt hostile and unwelcoming and I don’t think anyone enjoys working there. I don’t recommend working at Cobs.


I worked at the Cobs in Vernon, BC and from the get go it was one of the most stressful jobs that I have ever had because of the awful management. I'm sure there's some good Cobs out there, but mine was not. While the New Zealand based company that heads Cobs, Baker's Delight, has a strict 'no bullying' policy, the management at my location were verbally abusive and frequently lied. Several times they changed the schedule without informing me (or anyone else,) so that I came into work when I was not supposed to, or almost missed shifts when I was. I found this highly irritating and unfair, as it was setting me up for failure. The management also frequently left passive aggressive notes around the establishment rather than kindly and respectfully approach us on matters that needed improvement. I found the manager to be a very threatening person and towards the end of my stint working at Cobs I could hardly bear to be in her presence without nearly breaking out into tears. For the good parts of the job, I got free food (the perishables that we couldn't donate at day's end such as the foccacia rounds we could take home and we were also given a $10 allowance so that we could take home whatever we wanted within the $10 so I never ran out of bread while I worked there,) I had some nice coworkers and the customers were absolutely wonderful, many of them very loyal patrons of the store. I think this job would have been great, had the management been a lot better. As it is, I cannot recommend this location to anybody as a workplace. There was also a highly annoying online training program which you had to undertake - that's right, homework that you were expected to undergo on your free time. Not cool.

I would happily recommend a Cobs with good management personnel though! :)

This company would have had so much potential if it were run by someone more professional. As a Franchise, the products are amazing, and the job itself can be fun with the right people. 

Unfortunately, my experience working for these owners was enough to stop me from supporting this company within Nova Scotia.. 

I genuinely enjoyed my coworkers! I enjoyed going to work most days in the beginning… that shifted when days off were being scheduled inconsistently.. you’d get called in all the time, it’s not staffed properly. If one person is out sick, it makes for a very stressful shift. I believe it is understaffed.. I think the owners care more about making money than they do about the people who make them that money… the salary may sound ok going into it, but they cut hours multiple times a year, and you can’t work part time for another company that could be seen as a competitor.. if you have bills to pay I don’t recommend working here. 

If you like spending time with your family or friends around the holidays, this may not be the job for you.  They will not accept time off requests during the holidays, even if your family is out of town. 

They promise a lot, and let you down as employers. It’s a pretty dramatic work environment.. I might even say toxic. The boss talks poorly of her staff, to the liked staff, and the favouritism here is driving bakers out. Toxic people get promoted and can get away with abusing their staff verbally with no repercussions. 

They say they’re local and ask for local support.. but this business is a franchise.. run by the rich for the rich.  But at least they donate to local food banks at the end of the night right? Because the franchise requires them to.  But then they also get angry at their staff about food costs and waste.. 

My money will be going to an actual local bread business from now on. 

It's a go-go-go environment(at least for me) - teamwork is very crucial coz if one team member slacks, another one should pick up and the chain reaction goes till the last person on shift.  Lots of stuff to learn and must always on your toes - different problems occur daily and encounter different customers so we must be very diligent and be tactful on resolving issues as they arise.  Management was very poor-never see the good qualities of honest, trustworthy, loyal, reliable, dependable & responsible staff and notices more from staff who bluffs, gossips, takes credit for other peoples' work, lazy but shows off when owner/manager was around.  Asks staff to do way too much work hence staff are very exhausted especially those who tries to get things done everytime due to other staff slacking.  Gossiping became like a contagious disease at one point to the extent of damaging another staff deliberately and management didn't do anything to resolve it.  Very disappointing.  Hardest part of the job is trying to maintain the pace at work to get all stuff done which always require covering up for someone elses' slack otherwise, there's really nothing hard about the job.  I enjoyed working here even there's a lot of stuff to deal with like uncooperative manager who is not at all concerned on giving 100 % customer satisfaction, rude staff members, chronic absentees, complainers, etc.
The most enjoyable part of the job was meeting and talking with daily customers and being able to deal with difficult customers and knowing you were able to resolve the issue and gave them satisfaction.

To be quite honest, I believe that I did my job to the best of my ability. However, there is always high turnover, and the inability to keep staff long term is very indicative of a larger problem. There is no real advantage when you are a baker you may start slightly above minimum wage but the hours you work may send your personal life awry. I personally enjoyed the hours but it was very clear that most people did not enjoy it. It was very obvious that once you gave your all you were held to a completely different standard until more and more things were piled on you. While others were lacking if you did a good job you would most definitely be doing most of the work. If you worked sales, you would be expected to do some bakers jobs without any added pay raise and  be blamed for anything that the bakers missed at the end of the day. The management have an inability to work together and lack cohesiveness as a whole, they seem to sometimes pick single people out and have them carry loads on their shoulders that are simply too much. New employees beware, this is a great job for a high schooler but also a job where your time can be taken advantage of as they will not hesitate to schedule you during an exam or during another job. Managers also have unrealistic expectations of at work duties and an inability to properly train newcomers to be able to perform adequately. It can be incredibly stressful as absences are not filled so you may either have to work late or be expected to fulfill two positions to make up for the bare minimum. Breaks were also very difficult to get and the production manager often did not facilitate very well. I think that it contributed poorly to my mental health and aided greatly a bitter negative mood that permeated the bakery at times. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Each shift you can take an item or two home with you. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Expectations way too high for the pay. Usually understaffed. Opening is a disproportionately more difficult shift. Prices of items keep going up and customers take it out on staff. Since everything is donated at the end of the day, I find these stores all struggle financially and managers cut a lot of corners with their staff. Lots of unpaid breaks/overtime happened while I worked here. Sales staff also get blamed for everything (regardless of if it’s in their control) and deal with monthly secret shoppers. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Sales staff got along really well with each other for the most part. Apart from that, though, the environment was usually high stress as even small mistakes could result in being yelled at in front of customers. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Opening shift: Organize all the items, decorate any of the items that have anything on top of them (have to be precise), create samples, put opening stock numbers into the system, prepare huge restaurant orders (20-40 loaves), manage food delivery app orders, all while working alone and also helping customers as soon as you get in. Mid shift is focused on sales and restocking. Closing shift is cleaning, checking to ensure all required daily tasks are completed, counting closing stock, and making sure the charity gets everything. During the later shifts you may make extras of certain items if they run out.

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