Gideon's Bakehouse at Disney Springs temporarily closed

Jan 02, 2021 in "Gideon's Bakehouse "

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Posted: Saturday January 2, 2021 6:46pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

The recently opened Gideon's Bakehouse at Disney Springs has abruptly closed this evening, just a week after its opening.

Gideon's made the announcement on its Instagram account, and has not given a reason or when it will reopen. It does however state that the closure is temporary, and that its existing location outside of Walt Disney World remains open.

Gideon's opened on December 23 2020

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DobergeMay 24, 2024

I enjoyed Lou Mongelo's interview of him last year. His story is great. I've mostly given him the benefit of the doubt throughout but not everything he says makes sense. I guess we'll eventually see what "secret things" he's talking about.

MissingDisneyMay 24, 2024

Agree to disagree. 😉

_calebMay 24, 2024

Price increases are only inevitable if the business is not making a profit or if the owner/management are greedy.

LilofanMay 23, 2024

Entry level pay is a slippery slope. A cast member with no exp can start in parks and resorts at least at $18 per hour. The same rate is paid to a TSA employee at MCO to ensure you and I have a safe flight and a slip up can mean life or death. One role has a bit more responsibility and stress than the other role.

MissingDisneyMay 23, 2024

Raise wages for all-10, 20% across the board. More? Of course-raises all around. Then everyone is getting paid better. What inevitably follows-prices of goods and services go up in relation so....everyone is back where they started.

jaklgreenMay 23, 2024

I never said that it wasn't legal. I said that it is a crappy thing to do. Way too many people are OK with this and that is sad.

_calebMay 23, 2024

I'm not sure this is the case. This statement is true. But I don't think it should be this way, or that it's necessary. Special skills may not be required to work at the bakeshop, but it seems to me that some people might have the personality, temperament, and aptitude that might make them more valuable to the operation than others. If I was running Gideon's, I wouldn't want the instability, costs, or risks of a revolving door of personnel. I'd want to make it possible for the best of the lot to stick around so my business could reliably provide excellent service over a long time. You don't get that by treating employees like cheap, easily-replaceable cogs in a machine. Right. But that's a choice Gideon's is making, isn't it? Aren't we all under the impression that their operating costs are lower than the revenue being generated? Yes. I just think it's sad.

LilofanMay 23, 2024

Steve is a rags to riches story. He opened up his first bake shop with one employee and $800 in the bank in 2016.

UNCgolfMay 23, 2024

It's essentially impossible for every single job in the country to be more than a minimum wage job. I'm certainly not opposed to people being paid more, but I acknowledge the reality of it. Working at Gideon's is an entry level job that requires no special skills of any kind; it's an easily replaceable position. People are never going to make any significant amount of money working a job like that. Anyways, it seems like Gideon's workers do make more than minimum wage.

LilofanMay 23, 2024

Since Unite Here 362 is representing the Gideons staff then its negotiating with company and union to agree on pay , etc and union paying members to vote to approve. It is not mandatory to join the union.

DobergeMay 23, 2024

I'm dubious about Steve's statement about not increasing his own salary and never taking a bonus and investing profits into "new and secret things." What a weird thing to say. By his own words there are lines all day every day. The big tips we've seen are presumably off big sales, and profit margins seem high for cookies and cakes (could be wrong here). So he either was taking a huge salary initially or he's sitting on a sizeable war chest to fund secret projects. And whatever that salary is, if he's truly happy with it then he can open just one more location and use the income from that to increase the salary of all his employees.

_calebMay 23, 2024

I know we have this debate every time there's mention of CMs or employment, but "if you don't like it, get a different job" doesn't seem like a great response to people asking for higher wages. What would we prefer–that people to not work at all because they're holding out for a management position? I get that this whole fandom is about something that falls squarely in the category of wants-not-needs, but it really bothers me how consumeristic everyone can be about people's work. The $6 cookies cost like $.30 to make. Gideon's has a line out the door nearly all day almost every day. If guests are feeling gouged and workers are feeling taken advantage of, can we not think of anything that could be done to address this? I, for one, would prefer to have a well-paid person who loves their job making and serving these cookies than an underpaid, indifferent (or worse) person who's just biding their time until something better comes along.

lazyboy97oMay 23, 2024

Decent and legal are not the same thing. One can think it’s not decent without concocting legal intents that are clearly not present in the criteria laid out by the Fair Labor Standards Act.