In the Walmart shop in New Jersey, a worker puts the last touches on a cake with a edible ink sponge on top. A college creates a butter rosette edge for a different cake, while another co -worker shot a level of a triple roof dessert.
It is the graduation season, the most busy time of the year for the 6,200 employees, the largest retailer in the country formed by hand cakes by customer orders. The same cakes come, pre-elaborated, frozen and in various forms and sizes, from suppliers, not from bakeries to the Walmart shop.
But there is no sugar coating the importance of the company in its custom cake business. Its army of craftsmen with ice are the best paid time workers in a typical United States Walmart, excluding managers. The cake decorators win an average of $ 19.25 per hour, compared to $ 18.25 for all non -management store workers, a company spokesman said.
Melissa Fernandez, 36, started working in the electronics area and then in the Walmart Wireless Services Department in North Bergen, New Jersey, before moving to the DELI area in search of a better salary. But Fernández had his eyes on a cake decoration job, and after two months when he was formed by a colleague from the store, he collected a full-time bag of pipes in 2021.
“I love to cook at home. I love painting,” said Fernández. “I love to do anything artistic and always wanted to form -part.” After 11 years with Walmart, he said that about $ 24.40 per hour ago.
Despite their elite state in Walmart, the retail cake decorators have attracted detractors on social media. The company promotes its personalized baked products in Tiktok and encourages workers behind these creations to do the same. Critics have accused Walmart’s decorators of stealing ideas and emphasizing the work of professional cake artists with their low -price products.
After Tiktok’s videos praise the Walmart’s heart -shaped cakes with borders that resemble vintage fitting that were cut before this year’s Valentine’s Day, a few ovens produced their own videos, explaining why their cakes cost much more and criticizing those of Walmart.
The debates took place in the comments sections on whether Walmart represented evils of capitalism or met the needs of the masses.
A personalized sheet cake that can be cut to serve 96 people costs $ 59 in Walmart, about a third at half the price that a national sample of independent online bakeries for similar size cakes. For $ 5.20 more, Walmart customers can add strawberry or “Bavarian cream” fillings, which, like naked cakes, supply vendors.
The slice of the Walmart Holds Celebration Cake Market seems wide based on the figures provided by the company. One of the four cakes sold in the United States comes from Walmart and its employees will collectively decorate more than one million cakes during May and June, according to a company spokesman.
The number of cakes decorated every day at the location where Fernández works almost doubles to 50-60 when school graduations are presented, compared to 30-35 a day for the rest of the year, said Michael Demarco, the manager of the store’s fresh food department. It credits the talent and promotional efforts of the decorators in Tiktok.
“We are receiving many repeated customers. We are doing much more business because of viral sensations,” said Demarco.
A Tiktok video showing Fernandez designing a $ 24 version of a personalized bouque cake (12 individually decorated cupcakes and willing to look like a lot of flowers) received almost half a million views. Rams design was one of the most popular cakes in the North Bergen shop last month, said a company spokesman.
He said that heart -shaped cakes, as well as cakes that resemble meals such as sushi or a pile of spaghetti and meatballs. Fernández has also created “Burn Away” cakes: an ice cream cake finished off with a paper printed image, which is established to reveal a different image below.
“Tiktok helps me to be up to date,” he said. “Many tendencies I see there, within this week or within this month, customers will be asking about it. And we are also very updated.”
He said that making a hand cake requires a skill, whether or not someone did the cooking, he said. Funneling Buttercream that is frozen through a bag and several sizes to produce the desired design without out of place is not the same as drawing or painting, Fernández explained.
“There are many pressure points that you have to practice so that the borders are correct and the appropriate thickness or the right texture,” he said.
Tiffany Witzke, a Walmart cake decorator since July 2016, has been working in a Springfield store, Missouri, has more than 912,000 followers in Tiktok. The job attracts people who “can be extremely skilled and talented,” said Witzke, who added that customers want more and more complicated designs.
“When I first started, it was basically the borders and the writing,” he said. “Now, everyone wants more and more their cake.”
Liz Berman, owner of Sleepy Baker, in Natick, Massachusetts, said he is not worried about losing customers in Walmart for his attention to detail and the premium ingredients he uses.
She charges $ 205 and for a medium -sized sheet cake, bouquets consisting of two dozen miniature muffins cost $ 110. All the cakes are made from scratch and Berman said he designs all herself.
“It’s just a totally different business model,” he said. “Everything I do is custom.”
For Walmart, the cake decoration business offers higher profit margins than other areas, such as groceries and electronics, according to Marshal Cohen, a head of retail chief of sale of the Circana Market Research Firm. But he also resonates with buyers who are looking for affordable luxuries.
“We have entered a period when the consumer says,” This is good enough, “said Cohen.
Customers interviewed at the North Bergen store a recent day on weekdays seemed to be satisfied. George Arango, 34, collected two personalized cakes, one to celebrate the retirement of a co -worker and the other for a colleague achieving another job. After investigating prices on various store websites, he decided to try Walmart.
“The price is fantastic,” he said. “I’m coming out with two cakes for $ 40.”
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Image Source : nypost.com