City Cafe Bakery

[UrbanWaterloo]

City Cafe Bakery
175 West Avenue, Kitchener

Another Pay-as-You-Wish Success Story
By STEPHEN J. DUBNER - May 12, 2008, 10:11 am
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.co...success-story/

We’ve written before about pay-as-you-wish commerce, most significantly the case of a bagel man in the Washington, D.C., area, but also a coffee shop in Seattle and three instances of pay-as-you-wish download-able music: Radiohead, Jane Siberry, and SongSlide.

Now here’s another baked-goods pay-as-you-wish scheme that’s worth looking at, concerning a bakery in Kitchener, Ontario, called City Cafe Bakery. Below is a good description from an article by Karen Hall in Bakers Journal (the “Voice of the Canadian Baking Industry”).

There are a few things worth thinking about when you read any given pay-as-you-wish story.

On the plus side, there’s the opportunity cost of not having to hire someone to work the cash register.

On the minus side, there’s the issue of “survivorship bias” — i.e., if you’re reading an article about a pay-as-you-wish business, it is inevitably a business that has managed to survive and perhaps even prosper; but don’t forget all the articles you’re not reading about such schemes that failed miserably. The particular incentives in any particular pay-as-you-wish scheme are what determine success or failure.

Finally, as interesting as the pay-as-you-wish element of this bakery is, I was most interested in the line at the end about the don’t-answer-the-telephone rule. That’s something I’ve tried to adhere to for years, and which e-mail has only made easier.

“Everything is rounded off to the nearest quarter with taxes included where applicable,” he says. “So every dessert is $1.50 (tarts, brownies, and date squares), every pizza lunch is $5, every beverage is $1.25, every loaf of bread is $2.75 (Italian sourdough, multi-grain, and raisin bread on weekends), croissants are $1 each, and bagels are three for $2 (plain, sesame, and multi-grain).”

The bakery conducts audits every six months and [John] Bergen says only once did things come up short.

“Our theory is that two percent of our sales are being ripped off. ‘Ripped off’ in the sense that there are people who forget to pay or they make a mistake in paying, and then there are people who deliberately don’t pay. And every so often we have to kick somebody out that we know hasn’t been paying,” he says. “But at the same time we figure we’re being overpaid by three percent. Some people come in and want a $2.75 loaf of bread, but they see we’re busy so they throw $3 in and walk out. Or, although we discourage tips, some people still give them to us. But because the staff is paid well (the average wage is $15.50 an hour), the tips go into the general pot.”

The staff will make change if a customer needs it, but Bergen says they will ask the customer how much they want back because they don’t want to have to do the math.

Nor does staff answer the phone. There is a cell phone that suppliers can call, but the main phone does not get answered.
“When somebody phones, the (voice mail) message says the mailbox is full,” Bergen says. “We don’t answer it because the staff is here to produce and it disrupts us.”

[Spokes]

Café touts benefit of 'living wage'
Paying employees well a recipe for productive, happy workers, return customers, owner says

October 21, 2008
Frances Barrick
RECORD STAFF; THE RECORD

WATERLOO REGION - On a crisp fall morning, chef Ken Munson greets the steady stream of customers by name as they enter a popular Kitchener bakery.

Munson, 47, doesn't miss a beat as he chats, brews coffee, makes change and bakes 100 bagels an hour in the open ovens at City Café Bakery on West Avenue, at Victoria Street.

"You can't get that with a minimum-wage person," bakery owner John Bergen said yesterday.

While many people doing similar work in the food industry make Ontario's minimum wage of $8.75 an hour, Bergen pays his employees a starting rate of $15 an hour.

"The best way to make money is to pay higher wages and have good customers," he said.

The Region of Waterloo is considering implementing a living-wage policy that would set a minimum wage of $13.62 an hour -- about $26,000 a year -- for people working for the region, either on staff or on contract.

The principle behind a living wage is that workers should be paid enough to live on without the need of social assistance or food banks.

While 125 U.S. cities have some form of living-wage policy, no Canadian municipality has adopted one. Waterloo Region could be the first.

Today, councillors will consider a staff recommendation to spend $52,500 to hire consultants for a study of the implications for the region if a living wage is adopted. The consultants would also gather public opinion on the issue.

Bergen said a living wage is a good idea.

He needs skilled, smart and mature employees who quickly get to know customers by name, qualities the Ontario minimum wage can't attract, he said. Higher wages attract productive employees who don't quit.

Bergen has 15 employees at his bakeries in Kitchener and Cambridge.

He said Munson is three times more productive than a less-skilled, lower-paid employee who needs supervision.

"You get what you pay for," he said.

A living wage would also create a safer community, he said.

Studies have shown communities with a greater wage disparity have more crime, he said.

Bergen's bakeries generate $1.2 million a year, and the profit margin is at least 10 per cent. His goal is to open bakeries in Waterloo and Guelph.

His workers are so efficient, he said, he only needs to work two days a week. Last year he took eight weeks of holidays.

Serafino Burreci, 57, has been a chef at the bakery for three years. Being paid well makes him work harder, he said. "I love working here. This is the place to be. It's happening here."

fbarrick@therecord.com
http://news.therecord.com/article/432029

[Spokes]

A review of their Cambridge location:

Hot, casual and right in tune

September 06, 2007
ANDREW P. COPPOLINO For NightLife



The first thing you notice when you enter Cambridge City Cafe Bakery is a blast of wood-fragranced heat emanating from a sizable pizza oven that stands commandingly before you: owner and restaurant visionary John Bergen knows from kilns.

An Ontario College of Art graduate and former ceramics artist, Bergen's designs for Mikasa dishes from many years ago are apparently still kicking around. That background, and his experience with his City Cafe Bakery in downtown Kitchener's south end, has taught him how to heat things up in extremely hot ovens very well indeed.

His design training, sense of style, and his vision is one of simplicity and cooking up good quality food. It is a balance he has been able to maintain, both here and at the original Kitchener cafe, which was the template for the new Preston location.

The formula works well. Cambridge City Cafe Bakery offers only a few items, noted on hanging blackboards, is set in a casual and practical environment (it's an attractively renovated old gas station) with vibrant colours and the large rolling garage door as it prepares a higher-end quality of baked goods and thin-crust pizza.

Most intriguing about the Bergen vision is that it relies on folks' good nature and the honour system: customers drop their money into an old transit-bus fare-box, just like at the Kitchener location (they will make change upon request). The cooks will bring your sandwich or pizza to your table if you are eating in. If there is any uncertainly about how the whole process works, just ask the friendly staff.

A couple of countertops have all the accoutrements ready for when you want to bag your own sandwich or double-double your own coffee. Want a soda? Grab it from the cooler next to you. Just pay on your way out.

Bergen's pizza, cooked crispy in all of those hundreds of degrees pumped out by that wood-fired heat, qualifies as some of the best 'zza around because it emphasizes the toppings, not crust and gooey cheese.

An eggplant, caramelized onion and feta version comes sans tomato sauce, and it is a cracker, both in its goodness and its crispy crust. The eggplant has been treated properly so there is no bitterness and has excellent body. The quarter-pizza serving makes a nice light lunch for $5.50 (prices include tax). All beverages are $1.50.

Piping hot and packed with complex flavour, a roasted chicken and pesto pizza with a nicely acidic tomato sauce is simply superb (all whole pizzas are $15 take out or $17 eat in). There is also a portobello mushroom pizza and a pepperoni (the latter available only at lunch).

Cafe bakers also prepare daily breads such as Pugliese sour dough or a seven-grain loaf which you can buy for $3.25 or have as a tuna, chicken or ham melt or sandwich ($5.50).

A simple tuna sandwich on sour dough with a slice of cheese, tomato, and light dressing is held together by the very fresh bread possessed of a full-bodied crumb and a thick, chewy crust with the slight tang of the sour dough. A funky corn salad with mustard seed, a bit of cabbage and a nicely acidic vinaigrette is another perfect light lunch ($5.50).

Cambridge City Cafe Bakery staff also cook up croissant ($1.25 take out; $1.50 eat in), very good Montreal-style bagels, and baked goods like muffins, wonderful butter tarts, rhubarb tarts, gluten-free date squares, and brownies ($1.50). It all makes for a great vision -- and a great taste.

CAMBRIDGE CITY CAFE BAKERY 172 KING ST. E., CAMBRIDGE (NO PHONE)

Lunch of pizza slices and soft drinks for two is $15. No slices available after 3 p.m.

Tuesday to Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Cash only.

http://news.therecord.com/article/238008

[Spokes]

Their location at Charles and Ottawa is now open (looks like it at least, if not its close)

Great news about their new location, less great news about the redoing of that building there. Ahh stucco and metal paneling.

Here's the article:

Café to be housed in renovated factory

September 10, 2009

KITCHENER – The City Café and Bakery is opening a third shop in Waterloo Region, but this time the outlet won’t be located in a renovated gas station.

The café is moving into a section of the former Canada Cordage plant at Ottawa and Charles streets.

The company has leased 2,000 square feet of space and is renovating the premises for a December opening, said John Bergen, one of the firm’s two majority owners.

The new café will be slightly larger than the existing shops at Victoria Street South in Kitchener and King Street in Cambridge, but it will feature the same product mix, large wood-burning oven and self-payment system using an old transit-bus fare box.

The café will employ six people full-time.

http://news.therecord.com/article/595518

[UrbanWaterloo]

Yeah the building looks awful, at least the Charles Street side taken from the iXpress.

February 5, 2010

[Spokes]

The Ottawa Street side looks just as bad.

I wish they wouldn't have touched this and waited until LRT was underway and then built some sort of mixed use project here. Although you'll never hear me complain about another location for City Cafe.

[RangersFan]

You never know what the future may bring, maybe someday they will incorporate a city cafe in the lobby of small a LRT station at that corner, or do something similar to what 247 King st north is promising to do build a large development and then bring the existing retail tenants back to fill the base of the building.