The death of a bakery

This is a continuation to my post about starting a bakery from scratch, establishing it as one of, if not the best in the area, and the eventual sale upon my parent's retirement.

We had tried to explain during the selling process that the only way the business (grocery store and bakery) would make any money was if the most highly skilled (and therefore expensive!) jobs were done by family members, something that was going to be tricky as they had two young pre-school daughters and a baby son, requiring much of his wife's time and attention. He showed no interest in becoming the main baker, and immediately advertised for a "Bakery Manager", as well as promoting one of our former staff members (a 17 year old girl) to shop supervisor! Despite our warnings that this was folly as she had insufficient experience, and that hiring a "manager" for the bakery would be too expensive and take up too much of the profits he went ahead with this. Initially, though, production was handled by me, him and my nephew, who was doing a baking course at the local college and had started with us just before we sold.
Not long into this "transition" we had some extremely bad snowfalls, and one morning I was unable to get in to work, getting stuck along the way and only just managing to extricate my car and return home - I tried an alternative route but powerlines were down across the road and they were not allowing traffic through. As a result I called in and advised that due to the problems many people would not be able to get to the supermarkets so he should have a bumper day, and as my nephew was staying with him at the time the two of them should be able to manage - but should only make bread rolls and white loaves, to keep things simple and maximise output. Then I went back to bed. An hour later the phone rings - asking what they should be doing at this time, as they had just started the Harvestgrain dough! I asked why they were doing that as I had said to stick to loaves and rolls, and he replied that they were following the normal production run. I again said they should ignore that and concentrate on white loaves and rolls (rolls were extremely high profit margin and easy to make!), and returned to bed. 30 minutes later the phone rang again - they had now started on Wholewheat bread ..... in the end they followed our usual Monday schedule and ran out of bread by 10.00am! That afternoon I managed to drive in, spent the night on his sofa and we cracked on in the morning, producing a crazy amount of bread which all sold! The next day we had to drive to the mill to collect more flour as they were unable to deliver - fortunately he had a Range Rover by then, and managed to keep going till the snow cleared.
He also decided that he needed to do some extensive remodelling work on the residential part of the property, so the area also became a building site soon after he took ownership.
Part of my transition duties was also to help with shop stocking - so on Saturday afternoon I would return to "help" him do a walkround and decide what we needed to collect from Cash & Carry on Monday morning. However this soon became me alone doing the ordering as he had other things to do - though I never discovered what these were. It was a fairly simple task, something my family had managed to get down to a fine art - basically my sister and our other shop assistant would fill the shelves first and then make a list of items we were short of. We had a cellar where we stored surplus stock (it was also cool enough to keep some perishables fresh), so this was checked too as our shop shelves were fairly small so couldn't hold a lot of stock. Now, though it was supposed to be the new owner (with my help) going round to look for shortages.
On Monday morning when we finished baking for the day, usually around 9.00 am we headed out to Cash & Carry armed with our lists, which ran to several pages, and had details like 2 cases Heinz Beans size A4. Peter used to start with the cigarette and alcohol lists, and the perishables (butter, margarine, etc) while I started on the grocery lines. As we filled a trolley we would push it to the front of the warehouse and line it up with others - so I would look out for the other ones with our goods on them (generally we needed 4 or 5 trolleys in total each week). Because Peter never helped with the ordering process he was unfamiliar with the package sizes, so I used to go through his trolley removing all the "wrong" items - like A10 size, which is the size restaurants or businesses would use and would never be sold in a village grocery shop - or even the wrong products, like Curried Beans instead of Baked Beans. I would simply remove the offending item and place it by the trolley, and Peter would then go and exchange them when he returned to the trolley! It was a painfully time-consuming process, caused simply because he still didn't know what was on sale in the shop, something that would have been corrected easily had he bothered to help with the ordering process!
The bakery was now running fairly smoothly with the new "manager" in place, though I had concerns that the quality was not as good, and corners were being cut in inferior quality ingredients, but I suppose he felt he had to make savings somewhere! As the end of the 6 month transition approached it was agreed that I cut back my involvement in the "running" of things, in anticipation of when they would have to "go it alone" and even helped with some exterior decoration of the shop, until I finally finished and left them to it.
I started work at a local engineering firm, part of an international trailer manufacturing business, so had little contact with Peter or the bakery after that. That is until around 2 years later when he called me and invited me round "for a chat"! The "chat" was to offer me a job as bakery manager! He had been through several people since I left and, he said, they all robbed him blind and destroyed his business and reputation - the last one being a married man of 40 who was having an affair with a 16-year old who lived round the corner, and whose parents, apparently, approved of the relationship! His wife had a cake business a few miles away and he was stealing materials from the bakery to subsidise her business as well!
I initially told him I wasn't really interested as I was establishing myself in the machine shop of the engineering works, but then he started offering me silly money to work for him - ending up at 50% more than I was earning at the time, and as my daughter had recently arrived I must admit we needed the money! I was concerned whether the business could afford a single salary that high (OK, I know that this was his problem, not mine, but my intimate knowledge of the business still made me a little sceptical), but he told me he knew that I would help him turn things back round, and felt he had no option, other than close the business! So, I agreed to go back.
I had looked around the bakery which he had extended, and knew he was now wholesaling, something we had avoided for two reasons - one was capacity, and the other was a reluctance to give discount, and thus our profits, to someone else! He now had the capacity, though, but as his profit margins were much lower as all the bakery staff were employees and not family (profit sharers!) he was constantly chasing more customers to bring in more revenue. I tried explaining that offering 30% discount was not viable, but he kept saying that "turnover is key". At one stage he asked me about increasing our bread roll size - for one customer only - as they said ours were too small, but maintaining the same price. He went on that if this customer bought rolls from us it would increase their weekly purchases and gain them a 5% additional discount. Fortunately this never materialised - and he couldn't see that making a larger roll for one customer, but selling at the same price, and then giving them an extra 5% discount was hardly good business sense.
He still had the same mixers as before, but had extra ovens - and a daytime baker who produced confectionery and savoury lines. Because of the volume required we used to have to start at 10.00pm  (till around 6.00am) the first three days of the week, increasing to a 10-11 hour shift Friday night (no Sunday trading back then) - and he would go in about an hour before we did and turn the ovens on, and then bake off all the savoury lines, while we would bake off the confectionery lines in the morning while our last bread was baking. Occasionally we would arrive to a smell of burning as some sausage rolls had fallen off the back of a tray (I always placed the trays with the opening - three sided trays - to the front myself), and one day the smell was even worse - the confectioner had left 6 trays of meringues "cooking" in cooling ovens, but not left a note, so Peter came in switched the ovens on, baked off the savouries in one bank of ovens, blissfully unaware of the meringues blackening in the other oven bank!
The night I started I arrived to find it was just me and him working - he had dismissed all the other bakers prior to my arrival, so expected me to pick things up and cope with him alone. I had hoped to find out what system was being used to complete all the orders from the assistant baker, and now had to work everything out from scratch - as, of course, he hadn't a clue how they had done things!
It was a nightmare working with him! Every time we finished processing a batch of bread and there was a few minutes gap, he would disappear, and I had to go look for him every time so we could start the next batch - I had no idea what he was doing, but he said he had paperwork to attend to. This obviously was not going to work - I needed an assistant who had some idea what he was doing, and who would be there helping all the time. The confectioner on days had his wife helping him, and also another young woman part-time (I have no idea why he felt he needed three making confectionery and savouries, but only 2 bakers on nights doing everything else!!!), whose boyfriend had done some bakery work, so we took him on, and Peter stood down. He didn't know that much, but was a willing worker and we worked well together.
We also had an elderly guy who came in early in the morning to pack orders and then deliver them in a small minivan belonging to the business - there were two routes, one was rural which was done very early, and then a later one into Norwich, and on the early route the delivery man had to search around for bread baskets as well! We had around 50 of our own, with Logos, which should have been sufficient, but there never seemed to be enough to go round! Many small bakeries didn't have their own so used to "steal" from everywhere else, with Sunblest (the big factory bakers) being the main target, though they would take any that were available. So drivers used to go round to shopping precincts, back of supermarket, etc. collecting whatever was available! Sunblest regularly had amnesties, but would also send representatives around to small bakeries to look for "stolen" baskets and threaten legal action! Later on Peter used to go out every evening looking for baskets for us, returning with a variety of different firm's property as well as some of our own!
This assistant baker, however, didn't last very long - he found a daytime job back in his own profession (which I was think was bricklaying), but before he left he introduced us to another young man keen for a job, and interested in baking. Jim was another willing learner, and picked things up fast, and again we developed a good working relationship. The work was hard and very hot as we worked all the time just feet away from hot ovens - I used to lose 7 pounds in weight on a Friday night, but put it back on during the week, so it was probably mainly liquid loss!!
For a while all went smoothly, but then our delivery driver decided he wanted to cut his hours, so the early delivery became our responsibility! It was only around 30 minutes there and back - once the orders were packed - so Jim used to do that while I carried on alone with an easy dough. Then Jim decided he didn't want to work 6 nights a week - he was a young party animal! - so Peter managed to find someone to work Friday with me, Jack! Jack had a little prior bakery experience, but was a mechanic by trade - and used to run stock cars - and liked a beer or two! As the work was so hot Peter allowed us "free" drinks from the grocery shop - mine was water (from the tap!!) as I was replenishing lost fluids,  but Jack drank beer, and by the end of shift on Friday night was decidedly worse for wear! He used to then go out and do the local rural delivery in this state!
Around this time I spoke to Peter about taking a holiday, but instead he offered to pay me "cash in hand" to keep working as he didn't know how things would go if I wasn't there, but eventually a few weeks later I had to take a few days off to replace a rotten back door - so Jim and Jack worked together with Peter helping. When I got back Peter said he was so relieved as the other two didn't have much clue how to plan production - despite us working to a pretty standard timetable every day!
When I got back Jack was proving unreliable - he would arrive late, or not show up. On one occasion he called in to say he couldn't get a babysitter so had to stay home, yet Peter, on his basket run, had seen Jack's car outside his local pub - so he went back and called Jack from inside the pub, and just asked him to turn round, then told him he had 10 minutes to get to work!
By now I was working around 60 hours a week, though I must admit that Peter did keep giving me pay rises, which I still felt he couldn't afford! Peter kept telling me he had big plans for the business and would get me out of the bakery and earning some serious money with him, but nothing ever materialised. The hours I was working, overnight, meant I arrived home around 6.00 am every day (6 days a week) and then went to bed, was taking a toll on my marriage, and I was hardly getting to see my daughter - my (now ex-) wife was having to take her out of the house most days so I could have quiet to sleep! Even Saturdays were affected (no work till Sunday evening) as I was too tired to do anything, and then couldn't sleep Saturday night!
I had to speak to Peter about this - I had worked for him for almost 2 years and only had one week's holiday (to repair my back door!) and my marriage was suffering - so I told him I could not go on like this. He again offered me more money to stay, eventually double what I was earning, though I knew there was no way the business could afford that - but he simply said "I cannot afford not to pay you that much! I need you.", but I told him it was about much more than money at this stage. I gave him 4 week's notice on the spot, and he started crying and telling me I had just cost him the business, and what would he tell his wife and the children! I told him how unfair that was to try and put that all on me - his contribution to the "business" at that time was baking off the savouries, looking for bread baskets, and delivering newspapers (as he "couldn't find a paper boy"!). He was going to Cash & Carry every day, rather than once a week as we used to, as he didn't want too much money tied up in stock, but this meant almost empty shelves - and his pricing policy was to put 20% mark-up on everything that came through the door, so prices varied week-to-week, instead of only going up when there was a national price change. Grocery sales were plummeting as a result, but he could not see where the problem lay!
I drove past late one evening a few months later and saw a solitary worker in the bakery so stopped and went in. It was a young (17 year-old) lad who lived across the road, and who I had known for years - he was working on his own in the bakery, but had no bakery background and admitted he didn't really know what he was doing just working from my old recipes, and the bread quality was appalling (I found out later from Peter that this lad was spending hours on the shop phone calling up "chat lines" and running up enormous call charges!). Within a year he called me up to tell me he was closing the business, but wondered if I might be interested in buying the bakery side of it! He managed to get out before going bankrupt, unlike so many other small businesses. So in little over 5 years he had managed to turn our formerly very successful village bakery/grocery store into a closed business!