Head Baker

Production Manager — Merzbacher's

Germantown, Philadelphia | Full-time | On-site | Daytime hours | Relocation available for the right person

Merzbacher's has been baking artisan bread in Philadelphia for over 10 years. A few months ago we acquired the wholesale business of Metropolitan Bakery, nearly doubling our production overnight. We're now looking for an exceptional Production Manager to help lead the next chapter of the bakery.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who loves great bread, enjoys building strong teams, and wants ownership over how a production department operates.

We bake naturally leavened and yeasted artisan bread for roughly 200 wholesale customers throughout the Philadelphia region.

What began as one baker renting oven time overnight has grown into a busy production bakery with a simple philosophy: bread is everyday food, and everyday food deserves extraordinary care. Quality matters to us. Consistency matters just as much.

A busy day now means as many as 800 baguettes out the door, plus hundreds of hearth loaves and hundreds of dozens of buns and rolls. We're proud to produce at that scale without losing sight of craftsmanship. Our flour comes from Snavely's Mill in Lititz, PA, and the facility is built to hold a standard at volume: two double rack ovens, two large deck ovens, and three spiral mixers, with two dough retarders, two ingredient walk-ins, and freezer storage.

We're also in an exciting period of growth. Bringing together two long-standing Philadelphia bakeries has created new opportunities and new challenges—and we're looking for someone who wants to help shape (no pun intended) what comes next.

This position combines two equally important responsibilities.

First, you'll be an active part of production. You should have deep commercial artisan baking experience and genuinely enjoy working at the bench. . Preshaping baguettes two-handed? Cutting through hundreds of pounds of dough like a samurai? That's a good day. You understand fermentation, mixing, shaping, baking, and troubleshooting quality issues, and you help hold the standard our customers expect.

Second, you'll lead our 15-person production team. That means creating schedules, developing bakers, improving systems, maintaining production standards, and helping the team become more consistent over time. Some weeks will require more hands-on baking; others will focus more heavily on planning, training, and process improvement. Success comes from being able to move comfortably between both.

You'll work closely with me and the rest of our management team to build a production department that is organized, reliable, and continuously improving.

Above all, an exceptional baker. We don't need someone who can follow a formula. We need someone who reads dough: who knows a ripe poolish from an immature one at a glance (or whiff), who can save a batch that was underdeveloped, who understands the dough is the boss and builds the day around it. I'm on the floor most mornings asking the same question: how's the dough feel today? We want someone who already thinks that way.

We're looking for someone with:

• Significant, hands-on commercial artisan bread experience
• Experience leading or supervising a production team
• Strong organizational and communication skills
• A calm, steady approach under pressure
• An eye for quality and consistency
• Comfort working with production metrics, scheduling, and inventory
• A mindset of continuous improvement, with a lean instinct for spotting waste and variability and engineering them out

Our production team is multilingual, and several bakers primarily speak French. You don't need to speak French yourself, but patience, respect, and clear communication are essential.

Experience with pastry production is helpful but not required.

Six months into this role, we'd hope to see:

• Production running more predictably day to day
• Clear standards that everyone understands
• New bakers being trained consistently
• Small problems being addressed before they become larger ones
• A production team that feels supported, accountable, and proud of its work

This isn't about becoming the hero who solves every problem. It's about building systems and developing people so the bakery becomes stronger over time.

You'll report directly to me, and you'll have real ownership over how production runs. Alongside our operations, packing, customer relationships, and business operations managers, you'll help build a bakery that's still growing.

We're still refining many of our systems following a major expansion. If you enjoy building, improving, and leaving an operation better than you found it, you'll have plenty of opportunity to do that here.

This is a physically active production environment. You'll spend long days on your feet in a warm bakery, lifting up to 50 pounds and working alongside the team.

Our schedule is generally daytime, with the production manager's day typically starting around 7 or 8 a.m., though seasonal peaks occasionally run longer.

You'll be expected to stay close to the work. That means being capable of stepping onto the bench when needed, but your greatest contribution will be building a department that runs well because of your leadership, not your constant presence.

The work is demanding, but it's meaningful. Every day thousands of people throughout Philadelphia eat bread that began in this bakery. We take that responsibility seriously, and we're proud of what we make.

Salary starts at $72,000, depending on experience, with a clear path for growth as responsibilities expand. Relocation assistance is available for an exceptional candidate.

Send an email telling us a little about yourself, where you've baked, and what interests you about this role. A resume is welcome, but we'd much rather get a sense of who you are than read a formal cover letter.

If you have photos of bread you're especially proud of, we'd love to see them.

Email with the subject line Production Manager.

I read every application personally.

— Pete Merzbacher
Founder & Head Baker Merzbacher's