The bakery didn’t always used to employ members of the local community; as the number of members has decreased over the years, the abbey has had to look elsewhere for assistance in the bakery. While we visited, only one monk seemed to be working. (He was the person loading the loaves into the bakery’s original oven, seen in the bakery process videos below.) The abbey, according to our guide, is very generous to its workers. While paying only slightly above minimum wage, the benefits of working for Monks’ Bread are enticing (Health insurance and retirement contributions). The monks do not have the resources to run the bakery by themselves anymore; there are more local employees working in the bakery than their currently are monks (30 to 25). The biscotti bakery next to the bread factory, however, is only staffed by the abbey’s monks. This bakery needs significantly less people to staff it, and it is possible for one person to do the few tasks there.
Abbey brother prepares to place 400 loaves of bread in bakery’s original oven.