Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-06-09
BAKING REQUIRES
CARE OF DETAILS
Scaling of Loaves, Accounting
For Them, Cost System and
Settling With Drivers
BY j. G. Alpine.

'iSehiiy uSSlSSSt III OIneT WOTuS, as SOON
as any one gets a swelled head and
indicates by it that he knows all there
is to be known in his line, or in his
sphere of business, or on any one
subject, he is in a very bad state. The
only respectable way to treat him is
to get a club and hit him hard, for
no one knows it all on any subject.
This is day of specialties. When
you have a sick horse, you send for
the veterinary, when you put in a new
oven you send for the practical oven
builder, when you put in a new ma
chine, the expert machinists are at
your place installing the shafting and
gearing, so that when it is started, 1t
will run properly. Then why should
you neglect the financial and account
ing end of your business. Not one in
a hundred bakers is a bookkeeper, no
matter how expert he may be in max
ing bread and cake, then why should
it be any reflection on his business
ability (to run his business properly
that he should call in an accountant
or cost systematizer to put his bust
ness in proper shape and Up-to-date;
in fact, to a great many men it would
show your alertness and ability to
adapt yourself to changing business
conditions, to have your business
properly systematized, so that you
could get the results of costs, etc.,
without doing the work yourself.
To make a cost system is just COM
mon logic and pure common sense;
in fact, reduce your cost methods and
your accounting to as near common
sense as possible, and you have the
best system. A number of men often
say to me that if they put in a cost
system and accounting methods in
their place, it would necessitate know
mig exactly what they draw from the
business, what it costs for them to
live at the house, and what their run
ming around expenses would be; eX-
actly. that is what it would do, and it
would be one of the best things that
could happen you, to know just how
much you spend foolishly. Be honest
with yourself the easiest man in the
world to fool is yourself.
In this proposition of cost work in
bakeries and milk plants, or in any
other sort of a manufacturing plant,
| work on one basis only, that of get
ting the results from the raw mate
rials, and l believe that any cost
method that does not treat with the
proposition in this way is wrong. In
other words, we start a bakery with
so many pounds of flour, sugar, lard,
yeast, etc, and ask for the product of
so many loaves of bread (Which is
fair). Why do we ask for this? In
order to prove to you that your mate
rial has not been recklessly used,
stolen, or removed from the bakery,
and that no loaves of bread have been
burned, damaged or disposed Of
You all know that man that does
not care to meddle with details and
small things should not be baker, as
all of his profits through his entire
business are made on that little one
tenth of a cent per count, and 1t is
where his whole profit lies. The
baking business is hard work; it is
| long hours, and continual application.
Methods of manufacturing are chang
ing almost hourly, and man must
be abreast of the times to keep up
with his competitors; in fact, I think
if Capt. Hobson's ideea of some things
is correct, 1 believe all bakers would
go to heaven. Some time ago 1 heard
him lecture, and he said that prayer
alone would bring nobody to heaven,
but he belived that work, action and
results were the acts that would
bring any one to heaven. If it is
work and long hours that will bring
us to that final resting place, 1 believe
that 95 per cent of the bakers will
have seats in the front row.
There are many nard and difficult
propositions to work out properly to
the satisfaction of owners, drivers and
customers in the baking business, and
IN, 1,aI I
ticed that the settlement with the
drivers for the day seems absolutely
correct, but this does not cover the
whole situation properly. If you
should have any crooked driver, dis
honest in any way, or dishonest Gus
toners, they could take advantage of
you, and often do. The method of
settling with the drivers is to charge
them with all they take out, whether
it is bread, pie, cake, tickets, or any
thing else. This constitutes their en-
tire load, and they, in turn, return to
your bakery cash, certain open ac-
counts, tickets, and possibly butter and
eggs. This settlement for the day
looks all right, but it must be car
ried out for the week and month for
each individual and for all drivers, in
order to prove that all parties con-
cerned in the transaction have been
doing their work correctly and hon
estly.
Another point that is exceedingly
weak in the bake houses is the fact
/ that they do not scale their loaves
properly, nor do they account for all
! the loaves made. They make posi-
| bly, from 5000 to $4,000 loaves per
| day, but to save their lives, they can
not tell where they have gone, how
much went to the store, how much to
| the drivers, and how much was ship
ped. The only true way is to have
| a proper cost to work on, to know ex-
actly how many pounds of flour and
other ingredients went into each batch
of bread, and how many loaves were
produced from each batch, to know
the cost of operating, the cost for 9TH
er expenses as advertising, insurance,
etc, per loaf, the cost to the doors of
| your bakeshop, what it costs for de-
| livery expenses, including stable,
horses, wagons and harness, repairs
and your drivers and route foreman
wages. This can only be done prop
erly by getting the proper proportion
of taxes, water rent, ETC., that belongs
to the period you are handling. It
would not be at all fair to charge off
all of your insurance as you happen
to pay it, for instance, If your insur-
ance costs you $500 per year. you
should charge off one-tenth of this
amount for a bakery period of five