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GOURMET NEWS NOVEMBER 2019 www.gourmetnews.com NATURALLY HEALTHY 1 6 Tierra Farm Continued from PAGE 1 working conditions. They've had to adjust as the company expanded out of its single facility in Valatie, New York, a small town about 20 miles south of Albany, to include additional distribution and sales operations based in Latham, New York, and in Aurora, Colorado, about 15 miles outside of Den- ver. The company also acquired Power of 3 Nutrition, a seed blend company created by founder Anne Elise Stern and headquar- tered in Tenants Harbor, Maine, in Febru- ary of this year and Señor Sabor, a Pennsylvania-based organic spice company, in July of this year. "We're looking at addi- tional acquisitions in 2020," Kletter said. "We feel that there are a number of compa- nies that could add to our growth opportu- nity." The rapid growth from a few employ- ees who operated like a family in Valatie to more than 60 employees in multiple facilities has led to some growing pains that Kletter has been working to solve since being hired by Founder Gunther Fishgold in late 2016. Although his posi- tion at Tierra Farm is his first as the CEO of a food and beverage manufacturer, Kletter has extensive experience manag- ing and growing other companies, and his challenge was to figure out how to scale the company while keeping intact its solid relationships with customers and suppliers and ensuring a quality working environment for its staff. "It's been amaz- ing," he said. "We've made a lot of changes – as the business has evolved, there were things that had to happen to move forward. I brought in people that were able to scale." Certifying as a B Corp gave Tierra Farm a way to evaluate its progress in terms of the social values underlying those relation- ships with customers, suppliers and em- ployees as well as a way to evaluate and to publicize the company's ongoing commit- ment to the environment, which is ex- pressed in activities such as recycling boxes, using solar power and seeking trans- portation efficiencies. "It's important to us," Kletter said. "The organic piece goes with- out saying." "We didn't have a guide before. We did- n't have a way to evaluate how we do things better as we're judging ourselves with our former self," he continued. "There wasn't a pathway to continuous improvement. B Corp provides a frame- work that allows us to continuously im- prove our company.... It's really neat for us to be able to keep score, and that's one of the major reasons why we wanted to become a B Corp." Part of that score involves an evaluation of how well the company treats its em- ployees. Tierra Farm has paid its employ- ees a minimum starting wage of $15 an hour for the past five years and has pro- vided health care for all employees for the past 10 years, including co-pays, which are reimbursed. "The only thing you would ever have to pay for is something elective," Kletter said. "We spend a lot of money every year on health care, and we are thrilled to do so." While the company's operations were lo- cated on a single campus, Tierra Farm pro- vided lunch for all of its employees. "We recently ended it because we couldn't man- age it in three different locations," Kletter said. "We had a chef, had meals together, and everything was great." But with growth came complexity, and the lunch program has been retired in favor of simply paying everyone for their lunch time. "We're pay- ing employees to eat lunch now," Kletter said. "It's gone over very, very well, and we're able to take care of our Latham and our Denver staff much easier because of that." While the company gym at the Valatie facility used to be accessible to all of Tierra Farm's employees, that was no longer the case once those employees were spread across multiple facilities. "That used to be easy, so now, every em- ployee who wants to join a gym, we pay for it," Kletter said. Tierra Farm also subsidizes its employ- ees' education – whether or not their edu- cation involves coursework that's directly tied to their job responsibilities. "It doesn't have to be in the food business, as long as it's an accredited program," Kletter said. Employees with outstanding student loans are eligible for reimbursement for a share of those loans every month. Employees celebrate their birthdays as a day off that isn't counted against their vacation days, and they're invited to par- ticipate in frequent company events that give new employees an opportunity to meet their co-workers and provide everyone with informal opportunities to give management some feedback, Kletter said. "We're not alone in that area, but we try to do an event every other month or so," he said. Counting in the health care, lunch program and other benefits, the average Tierra Farm employee earns more than $50,000 a year and has been with the company for more than five years, according to Kletter. "In most cases, when an employee leaves for one reason or another, it's very amicable," he said. "We're very confident that we pro- vide a great working environment. Some- times an employee leaves to pursue another opportunity, and we are fine with that – we wish them well and hope that some of the skills they learned at Tierra Farm are transferable elsewhere. Sometimes that same employee will look to come back after they discover that they aren't going to find the same work- ing environment elsewhere. And in most cases, that's okay, too." GN THAT'S TASTY, a Shenandoah Growers brand, is making it easy for people to choose healthier eating habits with the launch of its new line of Stir-In Purees. Available on shelves in the coming weeks, the line of purees offers consumers an easy solution to add bursts of flavor to their everyday cooking. THAT'S TASTY Stir-In Purees use or- ganic ingredients, so consumers can add a ton of flavor to meals and still feel good about enjoying the dish, too. The line, launching this month, includes eight total fresh flavors: Garlic, Ginger, Spicy Harissa, Sun-dried Tomato, Italian Herbs, Parsley, Basil and Dill. Each features the hero in- gredient in its purest form, along with or- ganic sunflower oil and organic olive oil. The THAT'S TASTY line of purees is a sim- ple way to add healthy, fresh flavor to any meal. All THAT'S TASTY products are fresh, certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and sustainably farmed. "As a brand, we pride ourselves on of- fering consumers the highest cal- iber products," said Nadine Williams, Director of Marketing at Shenan- doah Growers, Inc. "Unlike other purees that use conventional herbs, added chemi- cal preservatives and ingredients like sugar, we wanted to introduce a line that's all or- ganic and easy for anyone to use." Packaged in 2.8-ounce tubes, the purees will be available at all major U.S. retailers and have a shelf life of up to six months re- frigerated after opening. For recipes and more information, visit www.thatstasty.com. GN THAT'S TASTY Stir-In Purees Simplify Healthy Habits BY LORRIE BAUMANN Once Again Nut Butter has produced its line of nut and seed butters and honeys since 1976, when the company was founded by husband and wife Jeremy Thaler and Connie Potter after a friend sug- gested that they use the barrel roaster in which they'd been making granola to roast nuts for peanut butter. From there, a local museum in Nunda, New York, asked them to make an old-fashioned peanut butter that included the peanut skins. Thayler liked the result so much that he figured he could sell it. That thought came naturally to the cou- ple because they'd already been serial en- trepreneurs, which is why they named their new peanut butter company "Once Again," according to Gael Orr, who is the Market- ing, Communications and Public Relations Manager for what's now an employee- owned enterprise. "Once again, they were in business," she said. Thayler and Potter re- tired from the business in 2006, and it became 100 percent employee-owned at that time. Orr has worked for the company for the past 10 years and says she'll probably retire from Once Again Nut Butter when it's time for that to happen. "The company really cares about my family," she said. "They care about employees. They care about my voice." Over the years, the company's original old-fashioned peanut butter line has ex- pended to include a total of about 30 products in about 80 SKUs comprising salted, unsalted, roasted, unroasted, sta- bilized and stir-style peanut butters as well as Almond, Hazelnut and Cashew Butters and Organic Seed Butter. The company acquired Dawes Hill Honey in 1992. Milk chocolate products were launched in 2018. Each of the products bears the image of Rocky Raccoon on its label. Rocky Raccoon was born as the company's mascot after a fam- ily of kit raccoons was found on the company's property in its early days. The company's employees cared for the raccoons until they were old enough to be released into the wild, and Rocky, named after a Beatles song, remains as a legacy of that time. The products are also gluten free, and all of the nut butters are certified by the Non-GMO Project. GN Once Again Nut Butter Spreads Integrity

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