Should a store manager ever tell a bakery department to refuse orders?
I've been told to refuse orders if we get "too many" since we're spending "too much time on orders" and then we have holes on the shelves. I don't mean like 10 orders a day, i mean like anything over 3-4 she says is too many.
Keep in mind this is a really small store so we usually have 2 people scheduled a day, a morning person and an evening person.
But i've always understood that cakes are one of the biggest ways to get elms hours, so if we get hours, then we can get more help, to actually have people there to fill the holes on the shelves!
Everyone i talk to says that NO she should not be ordering this to happen at all.
That's odd. Usually they say never turn down an order. We'll turn down orders though if someone calls and wants something that day. In that case we tell them they can come in and pick something out of the case and we'll write on it for them. You must have a really small bakery if you only need two people to bake and bag all the bread, fill the cake cases, fill the orders, bake the pies, cookies etc and package them and put them out, and fill all the pre-pack stuff like Hawaiian rolls.
I would have normally said that wouldn't sound too bad of an idea, if the manager had seen there was too many orders coming in and it was like a really large amount. BUT, it sounds like it is only a few that are coming in and it sounds like the manager is flat out trying to micro-manage things to the point of compromising what is good for your bakery.
I know I'm still relatively new to the Kroger way of doing things. And I know in huddles they usually talk about how much money was made and how best to bring customers in. But is there no way to talk to the manager about maybe shooting for a goal of doing X amount of cakes, so that you guys can get more help in the next few months?
Cause truly til you guys get more help and do things to get you to that goal, then your manager doesn't sound like they are being all that effective and doing the best for all concerned.
It is a really small store, thats why. But the bakery... while we're the smallest in sales (due to the size of the store) we still have most of the products as any other store.. meaning we still have to bake the bread, pies, cookies, donuts, etc every day and fill the prepack stuff like the King's Hawaiian, muffins, loaf cakes, etc.
It sounds like to me your store manager is more concerned with your department having sufficient bread, cookies, pies and whatnot out for customers that are in the store and will be in the store later that day rather than a handful of customers that may come in, just pick up a cake they ordered, and leave. Your store manager may feel like there is more money to be made this way. If you take ten cake orders a day, with your limited manpower, the sales floor is going to look wrecked, meaning customers that intended to buy bakery fresh bread, cookies, pies and stuff may leave the bakery empty-handed, and that constitutes a loss in sales.
Because Kroger is so caught up in numbers and algorithms to calculate hours per department, you're basically stuck. If Kroger would do the sensible thing and stop bring so stingy with investing in its stores/people and so greedy when it comes to salaries/bonuses, you would have the help you need to pack out your department and never have to turn a customer down who wants to place an order, which in turn would likely benefit your department down the road (meaning an increase in sales), but that's not going to happen... so all you can do is abide by what your store manager says.
