2020: A Look Back

As we mark one year since the start of the pandemic, we take a moment to reflect on what we have experienced over the last year and also what we have been able to accomplish as a team. Taking care of each other is a core value at Amy’s. It has been long before 2020, but as we faced the challenges of a global pandemic and devastating wildfires in two of the three towns where we operate, taking care of each other never became more vital or more apparent for everyone at Amy’s.

Many people and businesses will look back on 2020 as the most difficult year of a lifetime. And Amy’s is no different. Like many food companies, when COVID struck, we were faced with unprecedented challenges—how to continue making food, meet skyrocketing demand, while keeping employees safe. What makes our story unique is in the way we make our food.

Since the late 80s, we’ve been cooking with real, organic ingredients in production facilities that function more like restaurant kitchens than manufacturing plants. Our employees cook side-by-side, making tofu, tortillas, ricotta, sauces and soups from scratch and hand-rolling burritos, hand-stretching dough, and hand-topping pizzas. This way of cooking, or manufacturing, left us particularly vulnerable because many of our processes require our team members to stand closely together to cook and assemble our foods. As a company that’s making food for all types of dietary needs, like vegan, dairy-free and gluten-free, everyone at Amy’s feels an immense responsibility to make our food available for the people who depend on us for it. So, stopping production was simply not an option. But, from the start, we knew that we had to do everything we could to protect our employees above all else and we made swift and impactful decisions to do so.

• We began by analyzing and ranking our product offerings by the amount of feet required between employees to produce them; then temporarily paused production on any item that couldn’t be produced without proper spacing or until we could place physical barriers between people.
• We went from producing over 200 meals to less than 80 and then slowly began adding products back into production in a phased approach much like our societal reopening.
• We temporarily altered how we make certain recipes, always without sacrificing quality or flavor. For example, rather than layering sauces and toppings onto a pizza, which normally requires multiple team members, we mixed the toppings and placed them on the pizza in one layer for the time being.
• We armed our employees with PPE, erected dividers and physical barriers, staggered entrance times, and socially distanced break areas.
• We altered the layout of facilities, making more space in common areas for social distancing and even added new outdoor break areas.
• As case counts rose in our counties and across the country, we tested all employees and implemented rapid testing as soon as it was available to us.

These efforts, and close partnerships with the counties where we live and work, proved effective in that we saw very little evidence of spread within our plants. So even as case counts were rising all around us, our employees felt assured at work that we were taking every precaution to ensure their safety.

Just as we began to get a handle on COVID, devastating wildfires ravaged Medford, OR, where one of our three kitchens is located, and Northern California where we’re headquartered. Our team in Oregon was particularly impacted as more than 20 of our employees lost homes. But, true to our employees’ character, our team came together and raised over one hundred thousand dollars for those affected, taking care of each other even as each person faced what felt like insurmountable challenges of their own.

But in the darkest of times, there is always some hope. And that glimmer of hope came in the form of vaccine. As news of vaccination development and then approvals emerged, we, like everyone around the world, saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Over the course of the past couple of months, we have worked closely with county health officials to devise a rollout plan for our employees once they become eligible as essential food manufacturing workers. We prioritized education and accessibility above all else, educating employees, through a surround-sound information campaign, about the efficacy and safety of the vaccine to empower them to make their own choice to receive it. We are also striving to make the vaccine as accessible as possible in cooperation with the local health officials and counties where we operate. In Sonoma County, for example, we assembled our own vaccination clinic, in partnership with the county, hiring doctors, nurses and medical staff to manage and administer vaccines on site. As of mid-March, over 800 of our employees received their first vaccine doses in our clinic and second doses are underway. In addition, once our employees received their first doses, we were also able to open our clinic to high priority citizens and workers in the county who were unable to get their vaccines elsewhere, supporting the county’s efforts to get as many vaccines into the community as quickly as possible. We are so thankful to each county where we operate for their partnership in getting this vital protection to our team.

As we take this moment to reflect, we realize that it is an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that rises to the surface. Gratitude for our employees, who have worked so hard over the course of the past year to continue making food for people who depend on us for it. Gratitude for the counties, where we operate, that have worked tirelessly with us to ensure our safety protocols, contact tracing, and most recently, their partnerships in vaccination rollout. Gratitude for our retail partners and front-line grocery workers who have made it possible to get our products to consumers throughout the pandemic. And gratitude for our consumers who have continued to support Amy’s even when we struggle to get enough product to shelf to meet their needs.

As we close out a year with the pandemic, we know that we are still by no means in the clear yet. But we are hopeful that the end is in sight. And while we so look forward to being on the other side of this, we know that no matter what, we will continue to take care of each other, we will continue to make great food for people to eat and we will continue to do everything we can to make our food more accessible to more people.