assistant manager

barista

bakery manager

kitchen team member

team leader

Gail's-Bakery

Gail's has this ability to really make you feel both appreciated and desired while really taking a toll on your mental state. I joined as an ABM after applying to be a Head Barista because they really urgently needed someone in that role and I had past experience. They expect a lot out of ABMs, and every manager, area manager, and individual from head office I interacted with wants you to act a certain way and really doesn't give you any indication of what that is. 

The best advice I can give is if you want to succeed in management at Gail's: you can't have a work/life balance and you already need to have a sales/KPIs/leadership head about you prior to joining. This is for people 30+ with at least 10 years experience in hospitality and years worked in multiple different environments. You will become the manager's scape-goat and be the bane of your team's existence but at least you get free food on shift and the Gail's Quarterly Awards. 

This is not an entry-level job. You cannot learn how things work while expecting to command this shift because no one will take the time to teach you. I recommend you build rapport with your area manager and learn everything they want from the shop, exist separately from your manager and run your store the best you can. The area manager/head office has all the real influence and the bakery manager has the same job as you just paid better. Have regular Coffee and Cake chats with your team and learn about what they want from this job, support but set expectations. When the team fails to deliver, that is on you more than your manager. Keep everything clean because in-house audits will ruin your store. Despite manic days, make sure your team stays educated on Gail's rhetoric and collateral, even if this means weekly meetings or updates. Auditors (kitchen, H&S, etc.) will show up randomly and expect perfection. Lean on other stores for supplies and always stay stocked and attentive. Get a journal and a office calendar, you will need to keep notes often as there is way too much to remember. You will need to be thinking about this job almost constantly and working 10-hour shifts 6 days a week to get it all done. If you're not forcing yourself into situations and different roles throughout the store, you'll never learn anything until you're covering that role on your own with no idea what to do.

Anyway, I don't recommend this job, but there are ways to succeed within it if you're a manic type-A individual. It's just unfortunate, that for most, you don't really learn how to until you're on your way out. 

Every bakery suffers from understaffing despite the massive amounts of money being made. This means you will be unprepared for any and every rush. 
In the three bakeries I’ve worked in, favouritism was very prevalent, as the closer you are to the manager, the easier a time you’ll have. I even worked at a bakery where the manager consistently paid his friends for favours outside of work, by paying them for hours they didn’t do at work. This was at a time where the whole shop was being given less than their contracted hours because of the insanely tight labour budgeting here. 
Abusive coworkers will not be punished and you will find no protections in HR. I had a coworker terrorise everyone at my first bakery, kept touching the girls hair, said slurs in within earshot of customers, had temper tantrums and made those around him feel unsafe (he was 7ft tall so his anger issues were genuinely terrifying) when my manager heard anyone talking about him to try to organise against him it was labelled gossip and we were banned from speaking about him. HR knew everything my coworker did and they never helped us. 
You will very likely not be paid for online training - again depends on your manager and if they like you. If you take longer than expected to close the store you may not be paid for your overtime. Managers will make you justify having taken longer and if they’re not satisfied, will not pay you for it. 
You will have to remember to check the soup temp every hour, wash your hands every 20 mins, clean the coffee machine every hour, check rotation every 5 minutes, do a travel path twice a day, do trail every hour, on top of normal service and coffees, whilst being audited on your ability to do all this several times a month. If you fail, your job feels very at risk. If you succeed, your boss gets a bonus and you get nothing. 

I've only been in the company a few months, but from my experience thus far, there are many issues. You sign a contract for specific hours, but you never get those full hours. You can't complain because of a clause in the contract that essentially makes the contract zero-hour one but in different words.
My specific shop is so often understaffed, and while the manager wants to put more people on, the ops manager for our specific region does not let our bakery manager do that. The ops manager has never worked themselves in a cafe, and it is clear by the way they run their region. They have unrealistic expectations because they do not know the day-to-day. The ops manager is also very rude to the staff at the cafe, both team members and managers. Often acting "above" everyone else because of their position.

Culture within the cafe is great, almost everyone I've worked with is lovely and we get on well. It's easy to make friends. Pay for Team Leader or Head Barista is okay, but if you are a Team Member it is difficult to make ends meet. Pay is higher than other competitors, which is the only driving motivation for many staff to stay, although I know most of my coworkers are looking for other jobs.

I will say, depending on the area, the customers can also be quite snooty and rude as the company tries to appeal to the more 'middle'/'upper' class customer with their prices. Quality of coffee is one of the best for a chain, food is okay. But there have been multiple issues with customers arguing and even fighting with staff over something ridiculous (customers were wrong in each case).

The job started out quite well. I was hired as a part-time barista, the team is (mostly) wonderful to me and helped me a lot on getting used to the job. However it's soon turned horrible when management decides to cut cost/hours, making each shifts harder and harder. The way they put people on shifts are incredibly stingy and the good people soon started leaving. They often put only 1 team leader, 1 team member and 1 barista on a shift, it only works fine when the shop is dead quiet. When it gets ever so slightly busier, imagine with all the daily admin/tasks, cleaning tables/toilets/dishes, throwing out rubbish, making coffees, restocking (CLOSING SHIFTS ARE A LOT OF WORK). Meanwhile management still expects fast and efficient customer service? I'm sorry but if you as a company don't want to put resources into actually hiring and building a team, then your customers are going to have to wait for their coffees for way more than 2 minutes. 

On top of that, the bakery I'm at has an outside area, where team leader/member are supposed to carry the HEAVY tables and chairs out in the morning and bring them back inside in the evening. While it's not in the job spec, as a barista you're expected to help with that. This particular task is extremely labour intensive and exhausting and the most inhumane part is that you will have to take the tables/chairs/banners/signs back and forth even when it's raining and snowing.

PS: Our area manager likes to come in at peak hours to check the shop and complain about the dishes being pile up in the kitchen. If this isn't bad management tell me what is. 

Was signed on as a full-time kitchen team member as I was told I would be working 35 hours per week (4 days a week 9 hour shifts starting (5:30am-6:00am and finshing at 3-3:30pm). For as long as I have worked there I did not do anywhere near this I was working 45 hour plus weeks (5 days a week 9-10 hour shifts even longer on weekends) Those in charge of Gails either haven't a cluse as to what is happening in stores or the just don't care. This policy of rapid expansion just not working! 
They are unable to recruit in areas where the cost of living is way more than the £9.80 an hour. Though they expect current store workers (store managers included) to fill the gap and do the work of two people. Laving workers stressed, burnt out and disillusioned.

Gails Upper Management are the biggest load of hypocritics one encounters. Telling us all how we are on big bread head family who value and respect each other but are deaf to the pleas of its store workers and stubbornly refuse to concede current policies and culture is just not working. They will keep doing this as their profits keep rising at the expense of employees and quality of work and the end product (food/coffees).
Upper management needs to sort itself out and provide the support and massive recruitment drive stores need. Before it is too late


I enjoy working when we have enough staff however sometimes it just gets too much. Recently our shop has been under-staffed quite a lot and I feel like we are too often one small issue away from a situation getting out of hand, for example orders running too late, an increased chance of mistakes being made and customers becoming unhappy. Over time I’ve found that I prefer weekend shifts because despite being busier, we have more staff. Whereas in the week you can get a sudden unexpected rush and it quickly becomes stressful because there aren’t the numbers to manage it properly. 

I absolutely love the people I work with, we help each other out and support each other as a team which is what pulls us through. Working with my fellow colleagues is by far the best thing for me. 

What I find disappointing is that the salary can not be a bit higher especially with the demands of living in London and the demands of the job which involves a lot of stress and rotational shift patterns/flexible hours. It also doesn’t make me feel very valued to know we get the absolute minimum time by law for a break. 20 minutes just isn’t enough. Not in a job where you are on your feet rushing around after customers for 8-9 hours. 

I believe the foods and drinks here are sensational. I go in on my days off sometimes to enjoy it! I can’t currently rate the treatment of staff as highly but it’s amazing how a few small changes could make my opinion on that very different.

I have worked in hospitality a long time, Back of House. I have found moving to GAILs a  positive experience.

This company stands out to me because of its commitment to training up all employees regardless of past experience. Training is accessible and everyone goes through the same program. It's done in person, online and at their academy. What this means is that people are hired based on their attitude. It really does seem to result in a very fair, open and collaborative work place. I have huge respect for my managers & turned down other job offers because I know I can trust this current workplace! I feel that I do not have to compete with colleagues but that I am there to help them move forward to. There is lots off communication from upper management and it is very clear the standards I am expected to meet and  frequent auditing means I feel that if I work well it will be acknowledged. I have been really impressed with the pay and the maternity and paternity packages (including grand parental leave). I have considered moving to a job where I have the chance to be more creative on a day to day basis, but have stayed with this company as I value the way people are treated there. I feel this job would be fantastic if you are wanting to enter the food industry, particularly BOH. 

Aspects of this job are hard! Extremely early starts (it's a bakery!) and breaks are limited. Rotas are not two weeks in advance and coffee and cake chats are not frequent.

Must be one of the poorest standards of hygiene,  customer experience, and teamwork I've ever encountered in my life. The theory doesn't match with the practice at all. None of these bakeries have a KP or a cleaning team, everyone from Team Member to Barista, Head Barista, Team Leader are washing toilets, deep cleaning them, and washing the front of house dishes and the kitchen equipment using a glasswasher, the main activity is CLEANING which creates fatigue and doesn't match up with the job description or the interview. Every single member of the team complains about this fact and nobody cares about the job, everyone is low motivated. The training it's just to prove they have measures in place, actually, most of the staff members have no clue about what they are doing there and it's a high risk to the customer health and their safety. The Management is inexperienced, not trained, they are literally useless as they have no leadership skills, nor knowledge of management. All the products are overcooked or undercooked, consistency 0, high prices for low product value, a huge volume of food going to bin every day, no sustainability or ethics. It's all a fake image from being an employee to being a customer. You get 20 minutes to break only, I've never had this short break in my life, and it's definitely the worst experience. PLEASE AVOID THIS JOB! 

This company is a complete mess. It is growing faster than it can keep up with itself, and all standards are being lost. The few good employees are doing the job for 3 people, working to the point of exhaustion. Therefore customer service standards are slipping, food quality is slipping, the whole company is slipping. 

Greed of expansion overtaking what they claim are their values “community, baking, each other, a job well done.”.None are being upheld. The wages are minimum wage, whilst the job is above and beyond that. Staff are running for the hills and so are customers. Quite rightly. It takes a long time to build a reputation and only seconds to lose it. 

Zero support from management, and staff left flailing. Yet blame placed on the staff and not the organisation if something is to ever go wrong. Money being invested into the rouse, so that’s gails can tick all the right boxes, so that to the outside world all appears to be good. It’s all a smoke screen. 

Hospitality is a tough industry, but there is usually a sense of being in a team and working together, warts and all. Not at Gail’s. Gail’s is a world of lies - lying to its customers, lying to its staff, lying about support and benefits when none is ever given. When you ask for help you are just told to “find a way,” and abandoned. 

A selfish, ungrateful, disgrace of a company.


I worked at Gail's Bakery and wanted to share my honest experience. Here's what stood out to me:

Pros:

The bakery's commitment to high-quality ingredients and fresh products is impressive. It’s nice to work for a company that values its craft.

The fast-paced work environment made shifts go by quickly.

Some colleagues were friendly and supportive, which made the challenges easier to handle.


Cons:

The bakery was almost always understaffed, leaving the team stretched thin and making peak hours extremely stressful.

Training wasn’t as clear as it should have been. While some instructions were provided, they often felt rushed or incomplete, leaving new employees to figure things out on their own.

Responsibilities included not just baking and customer service but also cleaning toilets and the entire bakery, which wasn’t clearly communicated during the hiring process.

We often felt pressured to run to complete tasks, adding unnecessary stress.

Communication from management was inconsistent, especially regarding scheduling and task expectations.


Conclusion:
Working at Gail's Bakery can be rewarding if you enjoy a fast-paced environment and don’t mind extra cleaning duties. However, unclear training, constant understaffing, and heavy workloads make the role more challenging than it needs to be.



Top Job Titles	Average salary
Assistant manager 52 salaries reported	£32,683 per year
Barista 376 salaries reported	£13.44 per hour
Bakery manager 42 salaries reported	£39,535 per year
Kitchen team member 266 salaries reported	£13.13 per hour
Team leader 156 salaries reported	£13.73 per hour

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