Amy’s Kitchen Adds Execs to Stabilize Supply Chain Ops, Brand Transparency

After a turbulent 12 months that saw challenges ranging from supply chain hiccups to labor disputes, organic food company Amy’s Kitchen is looking to bring stability to its business by bringing in experienced leaders to fill executive and management level roles across multiple departments.

New hires include Oksana Woloszczuk as chief supply chain officer (formerly of McCain Foods); Steve Kravariotis as VP of supply chain planning (formerly of The Clorox Company and Delmonte/Big Heart Pet Brands); David Griego as senior director of engineering (formerly of Del Real Foods); Goretti Hamlin as VP of human resources (a former Amy’s employee who returned after a stint at accounting firm Pisenti & Brinker); and Felicia Collins as senior director of communications (formerly of Kiss the Ground and Tyson Foods).

“The last few years we’ve learned a lot about the need for well functioning supply chains that can manage everything from pandemic to climate risk and scale in the way needed as we continue to see more people coming into the brand,” Paul Schiefer, VP of Impact and Communications at Amy’s Kitchen, told NOSH this week.

The frozen meal-focused company, which employs nearly 3,000 workers and currently operates three plants across California, Oregon and Idaho, has been navigating a series of hurdles since the onset of the pandemic, facing supply chain snarls and rising input costs for key ingredients on top of a production plant opening and subsequent closing and allegations of unfair and unsafe labor practices in two facilities.

What’s happened?

As the pandemic set in and demand for frozen food spiked in early 2020, Schiefer said, Amy’s acquired a new production facility in San Jose, California in order to maintain the fill rate for its frozen pizzas and avoid losing shelf space at key retail accounts. During that time, the company saw the departure of CEO Xavier Unkovic, with Amy’s Kitchen co-founder Andy Berliner reassuming the role in 2021.

But, in January 2022, a worker at Amy’s Santa Rosa facility filed a labor abuse complaint, claiming factory workers were denied water breaks and bathroom access by management in order to meet high production quotas. The employee also claimed fire exits were blocked and said management did not offer sufficient line training and became hostile when safety issues arose.

By July, Amy’s abruptly announced it would close its new San Jose facility. According to Schiefer, the demand for frozen pizza was lessening, the product had already lost shelf space at numerous retail accounts and the company was losing nearly $1 million a month by keeping it open. Following the closure, former employees at the plant echoed similar complaints to those filed by the Santa Rosa whistleblower.

“In every situation like this, there’s opportunities to learn and get better and I think Amy’s has always been committed to seeking improvement in every area, and certainly these new executives continue to allow us to invest in becoming a better company,” said Schiefer. “But I also think there were a lot of mistruths that circulated about our safety and our relationship to our employees.”

According to Schiefer, California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal OSHA)’s high hazards team spent six days conducting a “wall-to-wall investigation” of the plant. The organization spent the following six months looking into every document and recorded incident that occurred in Amy’s facility and interviewed hundreds of employees.

When the investigation concluded, all allegations had been dismissed with no merit except one, which Schiefer said spurred from one plant manager’s personal opposition to a proposed employee boycott against the brand and was not representative of the company’s official point of view.

“He said it from a place of emotion, he’s been there for over 20 years…his parents work in the plant and his cousins [so] he took it really personally that there were forces outside of Amy’s asking people to boycott,” said Schiefer. “His emotions got the better of him, but that was the only thing with any merit. We immediately posted that yes, as an employee, you have a right to boycott or ask people to boycott the company you work for – that’s part of free speech in this country.”

The labor unions involved in the dispute – Unite Here Local 19 and the Teamsters Union Local 665 – did not respond to multiple requests for comment. According to information from the National Labor Relations Board, an informal settlement agreement was reached between Amy’s and its employees in late October. The company received a total of 13 initial citations from Cal OSHA regarding the safety allegations at its Santa Rosa plant; those issues have all since been resolved.

What’s next?

The challenges Amy’s has faced also presented the brand with new opportunities to listen and engage with its employees, according to Schiefer, who noted the organization is actively working to bring its workers into conversations around management and production practices.

Over the next year Amy’s plans to continue building out its first East Coast production facility in Goshen, New York, which is expected to open by late summer. The 40,000 square foot plant has been in the works for almost a decade and will become Amy’s fourth production facility. According to Schiefer, Amy’s streamlined its product range throughout the pandemic so the production lines originally planned for the facilities have changed; Kravariotis and Griego, have already begun reworking plans. .

“We’re trying to predict the next five to seven years of production volume and demand,” said Schiefer. “We’ve shifted our production strategy, partly because the consumer landscape has changed a bit, [so] we’re trying to make the best sense of it all so we can build the plant we need for the next 20 to 50 years.”

Outside of retail, Amy’s also operates four fast-food-style, organic and vegan restaurants in California, dubbed Amy’s Drive Thru. The company originally planned to aggressively expand that concept but has since dialed back plans in order to “get it right,” Schiefer said, with just three new locations opening in Southern California this year

“Admittedly, the growth of the concept has been slower than what we’ve liked and in part we put so much quality and cost into the ingredients of our food but trying to do it at a very affordable price, really just a small premium over traditional fast food,” he said. “To be honest, it’s a pretty complex business to scale well.”

The brand is taking a similarly measured approach to growing its retail presence as well and will focus on expanding core lines over the next year while also prioritizing building out brand awareness and reintroducing its brand to a new generation of shoppers.

“We have some of the highest loyalty of any brand, the highest repeat use, but we have very low brand awareness compared to some of our competitors,” claimed Schiefer. “There’s a lot of headroom just in the categories we compete in and we’re a very culinary driven company, we’re always experimenting with new flavors…so there’s a lot of room for us to still stay aligned to our core purpose and vision and expand it to other parts of the frozen aisle.”