To try and put this back on its original thread..unless Alicia has got bored to death by now...

Alicia...did you find someone in London (thats London England folks just in case you good ol boys are confused )to help you learn about chocolate?

I was happily moving along staying somewhat on topic and actually opening myself, and my business practices, up to this forum. I was soundly and repeatedly slapped down as not understanding and, if I dare, of being wrong in my approach to training employees.

I will not allow people who are not chocolate professionals to continually try to tell me what is right or wrong with my business. That is why I deleted my posts in this discussion regarding it. I have spent the better part of my adult life in professional kicthens, I have never been handed a recipe book or an intruction manual in a new kitchen. I have been been taught everything i know about the culinary arts through trial and error. Most of it on the fly. Its just the way it is in the real world.

being called a bonehead is a minor offense at the very least. I am a big boy and get called worse by people who actually know me on a daily basis. I think this website has always had potential. It falls short on so many levels, mostly because of the lack of participation. Look at the number of "reads" to any particular thread compared to the number of posts and replies. Its abysmal.

I participate on several boards of various natures on a daily basis that have massive postings. I am talking hundreds of postings a day on dozens of threads. To come here, pour my heart out in a an honest way and then have people tell me I am wrong, or not getting the "nuances', is ridiculous. I am a chocolate professional who spends everyday covered in the stuff. I buy and sell by the ton......

I dont think you guys need a moderator, instead, take the filters off and allow people to flame and curse away at each other. It can get nasty but you can always scroll by posters who are abrasive.

2 cents. YMMV. Selah.

"Porcelana: The Holy Grail of Pure Criollos" (Maricel E. Presilla)

</humor>

I'm just saying that it would be better if we talked to each other with respect...thats all...chocolate is a distant second in importance to loving and respecting others.

Robert
http://www.chocolateguild.com

quote:

What did you expect when you make bonehead statements!

I'm done here.

"Life may be sweeter for this....."

quote:

I think there's still a nuance that you may have missed. Don't be mistaken, when I talked about systemising the process I was talking about at any scale of production. It's not just for industrial producers or those who seek to move to mass-production volumes. The same rules apply to the small-scale, artisanal chocolatier.

Why do you want to document the procedure in clear terms that anybody can understand? Because, at the outset, the simple level of communication is the only level even an experienced person *can* understand in talking to a new person, or about a new style: you have to reduce it to basics and step-by-step descriptions because to do otherwise is to rely on assumptions, on setps and methods you take as a given that somebody else can an will not: they will have *different* assumptions and sets of givens. So you have to do your best to explain everything including philosophy or what you intend is going to get garbled in what you say.

Why do you want to systemise the process? Because consistency is one of the basic underpinnings of quality. It is necessary, if you are to achieve genuinely first-rate chocolate (or anything else) to be able to repeat results reliably and get predictably good results as a starting point, before you try to push to the limits of quality. Otherwise you start out from a shaky base and end up with inconsistent results - some batches will be good, some bad, and worse still, *nobody will understand why*. So you won't be able to correct mistakes in production easily and your results will be wildly erratic; and the promising but inconsistent chocolatier must always be ranked one step down, just as the good but unpredictable chef is considered to have room for improvement. Consistent results are not synonymous with generic, medium-quality results!

Now, there is another alternative, but it's one where there can be no transfer of skills to anyone else. That alternative is to do things entirely intuitively. If you do so, yes, you can develop your own unique methods that work for you, but that's the key point: they work for *you*. Intuition is by its nature completely personal, thus, you can't train someone to develop your intuition; you can only give someone the space to develop *their own* intuition. Again this is fine, but from the new hire's perspective this is equivalent to saying they get no training to speak of and must learn everything themselves. If they're in an environment where this is allowed and encouraged, and where they are under absolutely no pressure to perform, then that might be OK, at the price of a longer learning time than had they received specific training, but if there is pressure to perform as well, it's going to be seen as demanding and unfair. Thus if you'd prefer people to learn completely intuitively, you *must* not put any pressure on them to perform.

To summarise, there is no absolute association between the approach (scientific/intuitive) and the production scale (small/large) or market position (mid-range/high-end/elite). But there are absolute tradeoffs on the expectations you can have of your staff and yourself in each case.

Alex Rast
Alex_Rast_Alternate@hushmail.com

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Alex,

You just wrote what I was thinking a few days ago while reading this thread, but at the time didn't want to take the time to write it or to get into a heated debate (if it lead to that). I think that "the chef" is a very talented guy and his expectation are very high. I do understand the high expectations, you can't fault any business owner for that, but sometimes they're a little to high for even a very talented apprentice. Anyway, very nice post and couldn't agree with you more.

quote:

My guess is that this may be a large part of why you're having difficulty finding and retaining an apprentice. Vague, intuitive instructions are *useless* to the trainee - especially if the expectation is that they'll get it right immediately. In a production environment, yes, you *do* have to get things right, but this then comes at the price of having to standardise the process so that you can give trainees exact and specific instructions, that they can follow and get good results with a minimum of additional input.

If, OTOH, you don't want to or can't spend the time to standardise and document the process in exacting detail then the price to be paid is that you can't expect consistent results from the beginner - beginners who at the outset can have no idea the exact results you are looking for. What training they have had may not even be relevant if the stylistic choices their trainers preferred are radically different from your own. This alternative choice means, therefore, if you choose to adopt it, that you can't have your new hires hit the ground running - they will have to spend some weeks or possibly even months mastering the specific style before they're ready for production work.

I think you can see the pattern - either approach requires an investment of time on your part. And there is no way of escaping that. To try to do so is to fall into the wishful-thinking trap of imagining you can hire your future employee today: "future" in the sense that the training and skills level that they have is that which they will possess after having been there a while. And you can't, not unless you possess both a time machine and some unusual way of circumventing laws of causality.

Finally, if you find your business margins are so tight you can't afford either option, then your problem is very basic indeed: you're undercapitalised. You need either to get a loan to cover the costs of growth (i.e. of hiring new people), or if this is impractical, simply wait to grow until your profitability improves. No easy cheap solutions here.

Alex Rast
Alex_Rast_Alternate@hushmail.com