The Four Day Work Week
Judy Sarkozy: As many of you know, I am a product of the 60s and 70s. Thus I came out of college a freshly minted, totally naïve, “radical”. Not totally radical as it turns out. I opened a business trying to maintain the idealism as well as make a profit.
The goal was to create a workspace that would explore a new (at least to me) way of doing business. One which would see the employees as the essential focal point, not something that would balance the budget.
Alec Wells: And that ethos was the beginning of what we called the “32 Hour Experiment.” It was, essentially, our attempt at the four day work week, a concept that has been proven time and time again to not only create a better work life balance for employees, but create a more efficient work environment in general. We were eager to see how it worked in a production/service environment such as ours.
But we didn't want to make people work four 10 hour shifts and we didn't want people taking home less per week than they were before. So this meant that we had to give raises to everyone to equally compensate for the reduced hours. This was expensive. We were giving people more money to be here less.
And as far as our books were concerned, we couldn't afford it. And while this was nerve wracking ground for me, it wasn't unfamiliar territory for Judy! Years ago she was told she couldn't afford to provide health insurance for employees but went forward with it anyway. So we enacted our experiment, albeit a little more cautiously than Judy may have wanted.
Today we are happy to announce that the 32 Hour Experiment has been a success and we are making it the standard for all employees at Sarkozy Bakery! While it has been costly (and will be even more so going forward), we have seen those costs offset both directly and indirectly.
Bakers are more focused and energized from having an additional day off every week, reducing mistakes and increasing speed, quality, and efficiency. Employee longevity has shot through the roof, with the average being suspiciously close to the date we enacted our experiment. That means we save tons on not having to train replacements and it means our collective knowledge, skill, and experience in the bakery increases exponentially; resulting in even more quality, efficiency, speed, and even new products/avenues of growth!
And yes, I know I’m coming off somewhat calculating only caring about the numbers, but I want to demonstrate this as a viable option for other employers. Yes there are risks and costs, but there have been clear benefits that have made it work. One doesn’t have to choose between having ethical labor practices and a successful business, rather the former can be a direct pathway to the latter.
JS: Going to a 32 hour week with higher wages puts us closer (we're not where we want to be yet) to the original goals, providing jobs that honor physical AND intellectual labor, that allow time for family and civic duties, and that support a stable, if modest, middle class life. It took us most of our 48 years to get this far and we still have some distance to go.
I am thrilled to have Alec as a partner in this odyssey. He has very similar goals and methods and thought processes. With him, we are poised to make faster progress toward those goals.
Even though we now have to really push to make this change work, it makes me happy to have come this far, especially in these times.
I realize this email is starting to get a little long winded but we’ve got a lot of baking left to talk about, so I’ll try to be quick and to the point.
Pączki! It’s that time of year! We do our best to create an authentic version of this donut reminiscent of the “church basement” pączki made by babushki in places like Detroit and Hamtramck. W’ve inadvertently created our own tradition at the bakery we call “Pączki Practice Day” where we test out all of our methods, skills, and recipes to make sure that we’re properly ready for Fat Tuesday. And because we can’t guarantee a high quality (we’re practicing!) we discount them.
This year Pączki Practice Day is on Saturday, 2/7 and Fat Tuesday is on 2/17! Those are the only two days we will be taking orders. So flag down a baker next time you stop by or give us a call at 269.342.1952 and we’ll get an order together for you! And yes, we’ll have pączki each day at the bakery between Practice Day and Fat Tuesday, but because we won’t have every single flavor every single day (that’s a lot to ask!), we can’t take specific orders. So get your orders in for 2/7 and 2/17 and every day in between will be walk-in pączki only.
Not only that, but for the entire month of February we celebrate the bakery’s anniversary (2/25th is our 48th!) with buttercream donuts! These scratch made cake donuts with buttercream frosting are one of the first items every made and sold when the bakery opened in 1978. People hounded Judy to make them when we reopened after the fire but due to production and equipment restrictions, they’re somewhat of a chore to make, so the compromise is we make them all February long. Keep an eye out or order ahead if you’d like!
Finally, and this is the last thing we need to talk about, I promise, National Pizza Day is Monday, 2/9. And thanks to an incredibly generous donation from the Kalamazoo Community Foundation the first 100 pizza orders are free! KZCF is a charitable organization that pools donations from individuals, families, and businesses to support initiatives in Kalamazoo county to create a thriving community where people, resources, and expertise are mobilized to advance racial, social, and economic justice. Can you tell I pulled some of that language from their website? Bottom line, they’re a great organization that does big and little things to make Kalamazoo a better place to live. And whether you think free pizza qualifies as big or little is totally up to you! We certainly think it’s a big deal! Thank you Kalamazoo Community Foundation!
