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A private bakery in Río Cauto halts production after reporting flour being skimmed off
The Doña Nieves bakery in Vado del Yeso, Granma province, stopped production after the leaseholders tightened controls over the process and the bakers walked off the job, according to the business's manager in a post picked up by 14ymedio.
The manager of the Doña Nieves complex, Robert Román Quezada, explained on Facebook that his family holds a lease with the Río Cauto state bread and pastry company, which includes rent for the premises and handing workers 5% of the profits. For weeks, he says, customer complaints piled up over the quality, the size and the low weight of the bread.
With no fix in sight, the family carried out a surprise inspection of the production process. By their account, for every 25 kilograms of flour the bakery was turning out some 120 loaves more than the recipe allowed; rolls meant to weigh 30 grams after baking barely reached 24, and those meant to weigh 50 grams came in at 44.
At 40 pesos apiece, those 120 loaves would come to 4,800 pesos, and 9,600 if 50 kilograms of flour were processed. The family itself clarifies that these figures represent the potential value of the surplus output and are not proof that the workers pocketed the money.
The leaseholders put a representative in place to monitor ingredients, quantities and the weight of the finished product, and withdrew two perks they say they had granted voluntarily: an extra payment and 5 loaves a day per worker. The family says the staff stopped working after those measures, and it is now looking for 3 new bakers to resume production.
The post set off a debate online. Several commenters backed the controls and said skimming raw materials and shaving weight off bread are common practice; others questioned the arithmetic because dough loses weight in the oven. Román Quezada replied that portions for 50-gram rolls were cut at 70 grams of dough precisely to offset that loss, and said that in 13 days of supervision no loaf has weighed under 56 grams, with some reaching 68.
Another strand of the debate turned to working conditions: several users criticised the family for itemising the perks withdrawn without saying what the bakers actually earned. Complaints about bread spread to other provinces, and from Ciego de Ávila one commenter said ration-store bread had stopped being distributed and that private sellers were charging 60 pesos for it. The business said it hopes to resume production between Monday and Tuesday; the people of Vado del Yeso are still without bread.
Sources: 14ymedio
Data updated: 2026-11-08T16:15:00.000Z