Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, here with my co-host Sarah Casagrande, Principal and Sales Advisor at Generation CPG.
If you're enjoying the show, please follow and review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
Sarah, it's so nice to have you back again.
I can't believe I'm back again.
It's great to have you here.
I wanted to start off by talking about something that I actually just read in the Nutter newsletter about date codes.
And I don't know, date codes are exciting, right?
If you're in CPG, that's not like a boring topic, right?
I'm excited about them.
I did a little research on date codes and the history of them.
Then I think we need to jump into date codes.
So I saw in the Nutter newsletter that in California, sell by dates are going to be banned starting July 2026.
They'll require best if used by to signal peak quality or used by for product safety.
Beer and I guess other beverages are excluded.
But we are talking a little bit about this and all the things that will need to change on your packaging if you did have a sell by date, priceless.
IX1 distributor portals, I'm assuming.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, so that's not an insignificant piece of business.
You have to run down all of your existing inventory, order the new packaging, all that stuff.
Well, I do want to give a shout out to Jess Penderson of Spoiler Alert.
Jess is in our Slack community, which you can join as well at slack.bevnet.com.
But Jess is heading up a number of really interesting initiatives at Spoiler Alert.
And you can reach her in Slack if you have product that you need to move really quickly.
But then we were talking a little bit about date codes.
And we weren't sure whether or not they're even required on packaging.
And so you did a little digging.
Turns out there's no federal legislation at the state level.
Certain states require it.
Massachusetts is one of them.
But yeah, I never knew.
I mean, I do pay attention to date codes.
My husband and I have frequent arguments about them.
Who eats the rotten food?
He does.
I do not.
If I buy a loaf of bread and it says best by 1013, on 1014, it's like it's Cinderella turning into a pumpkin at midnight.
I'm tossing it.
For bread?
Yeah.
Don't you smell it?
No, I just go by the date.
No mold.
That's what my husband says.
He says, if there's mold, then we toss it.
But I just don't trust it.
Are you thinking like, I mean, I can see how you might think that the mold is growing inside the bread, but you can't see it yet because of-
That's right.
It's underneath.
Maybe it's not on the last piece that you see.
It's invisible mold.
Well, I have to admit, I will use just about anything.
I always smell it and maybe even taste it, I guess.
I feel like, so we'll have a jar of Reo's tomato sauce in the fridge and I won't really know how long it's there.
But if you give it a tiny little taste, if it's tangy, it's bad.
See, I just label it.
Once I open something, I take a piece of painting tape or whatever I have and I write the date.
You're so good.
I do.
I mean, I pay attention to, you know, if it says use within the first seven days of opening it, I follow that.
Wow.
Amazing.
This weekend, as a matter of fact, I used a can of coconut milk that expired a year ago to make some chia pudding.
I was nervous because coconut is like one of those things that I feel like can go rancid.
Yeah.
That wouldn't even be allowed in my house.
Like, I would have caught that.
I go through my pantry, I rotate.
I don't even know if that would make it in my house.
I would catch that at one week expired and it would be gone.
Good for you, man.
Yeah, I know.
I'll use almost anything if it isn't rancid or rotten, and sometimes if I'm not sure, like especially with fruit that's right on the cusp, I'll give it to my kids, and if they don't eat it.
Your kids eat everything though.
Right.
They'll eat everything.
You're lucky.
Last night Arthur, he said he was still hungry after dinner, so he took a head of Napa cabbage out of the fridge and started eating it.
That's your child.
I've seen you eat a bag of spinach in the car.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, anyways, I also want to point out another thing.
I didn't realize until we were digging into this a little bit, that there's no federal regulation for food or beverage brands to have any kind of coding at all.
And I reached out to Justin Prochnow of Greenberg, Chorig, to find out exactly what the deal is, because I couldn't imagine that there was no federal regulation on that.
And he confirmed, he said, there's no federal law or regulation requiring them.
So companies have them to meet customer demand for transparency.
So that was one, which makes sense.
Some retailers demand some form of expiration dating.
That makes sense.
And then the third reason I thought was so interesting and surprising that Justin gave, which is that companies are responsible for meeting all claims, including nutrition information on the NutriPanel for the shelf life of the product.
So it has to test to 90 milligrams of vitamin C throughout the shelf life.
So if you have a product that has ingredients that degrade over time, it makes sense to put a date code on there.
Yeah.
Plus if I'm a brand, I want my customer trying the product at the peak of freshness.
I don't want them to have a bad experience with product that was a little past that window.
Otherwise, how does the retailer even know if the product's expired?
It's not like they're tracking that stuff.
So it's already hard enough to rotate everything, like labor shortages.
That's hard.
Well, I would like to thank Justin Prochnow of Greenberg Trorig for clearing that up for us.
That was very helpful.
Well, Sarah, last week we had you as the Beverage Goblin.
Today was a very fruitful day on the snack counter at BevNET headquarters in Newton.
So I don't know, do you think you could snack goblin these three snacks?
Definitely the snoods.
I had not tried those before and they're like little churros.
These are the snoods sweet cougel noodle chips.
And man, I thought these were so, so good.
They're vegan and gluten-free.
It says there's plant-based protein.
How much?
How much?
Three grams of protein.
Hey, not bad for chips, right?
So I would buy those.
How much are those?
You know?
I don't know because they sent them as a sample.
Oh yeah, that makes sense.
I was a big fan of these Wanderland's nuts.
It's a pecan mix.
The flavor is hatch green chili, red miso and fennel.
These were so good.
I like the packaging too.
And last, I have this ghee roasted granola by Babo's Kitchen.
This I thought was so tasty and it has lentils, almonds, coconut, lotus seeds, melon seeds, brown sugar, ghee and edible gum.
Did you try this?
No, not yet.
Do you want to try it?
I like the packaging on this too.
Well, this is a good time to be talking about goblins because this podcast is going to launch on Halloween today.
Yeah, perfect timing.
What's your Halloween game look like for candy?
So I like to get candy that I won't eat myself.
So what do you get?
I'll get Kit Kats.
I'll get Heath bars.
You don't need a Kit Kat.
I know.
I know.
What's wrong with me?
But lots of things, but I just don't like them.
The wafers and the chocolate.
Good for you.
I like Reese's Pieces, which they don't exist for Halloween.
I can't find them.
Cups, yes.
Pieces.
Pieces.
It's like E.T.'s candy of choice.
They're so good.
I love them.
Wait, can you say the name of that again?
Reese's Pieces?
Reese's Pieces.
Yeah.
I say that too, but my friend told me it's Pieces.
What?
I know.
Is it Pieces?
Okay.
Is it Peacies, though?
It's Reese's Pea-
Yeah, we're gonna have to look it up.
But I've been saying Peacies my whole life, and I got made fun of it, fun for it recently.
Well, I'm with you in that group of people who just don't know, because I just don't know.
Okay, we won't even mention that.
I got Nerd's Gummy Clusters, some Haribo.
I feel like the gummies I'm not so drawn to, because I can feel them elevating my blood sugar.
Yeah, but in my mind, I'm like, they're kind of like fruit.
It's a cherry flavor.
I'm like, all right, this is the lesser of the evils.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Oh, didn't you, weren't you saying that you gave out lesser evil popcorn?
I did one year.
I had a lot of leftovers.
The kids were not happy.
That's like giving out scrambled eggs or something to kids.
Scrambled eggs.
What do you steal from your daughter's Halloween stash?
Peanut butter cups, gummy bears, Sour Patch Kids, Laffy Taffy.
And I saw the other day like the old school Tootsie Rolls, but in the different flavors, like they had a pink one and a green one.
I love the grape one.
Yeah, that one's good.
I hadn't seen those in a long time.
Yeah, that sounds really good.
Oh, and Swedish Fish.
I found one the other day from Trunkertreat in her bag.
And really excited about that.
And Yankta.
Yeah, Swedish.
Yeah, I like the big fat ones.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah, because when you bite into them, like it's almost like a crust on the outside.
And then it's, yeah, I do.
I will say I'm like a mounds or an almond joy.
Like I do.
Those are good, too.
And Reese's Pieces.
Whatever you call it.
Reese's Pieces.
Those are my favorite, too.
Oh, and M&M's.
Peanut or Plain?
I love the peanut.
Yeah, me too.
Well, is a special treat this Halloween.
I'm going to be giving to Trunkertreaters, Tasteellies, kids squeeze packs.
They make a squeeze pack that has konjac in it.
And then they just came out with a kids version.
That doesn't have konjac, but does have fruit juice and has a little bit of texture to it.
So I'm going to be giving those out.
Thank you to Lisa of Tasteelly.
I think that'll make our neighborhood very happy.
Yeah.
So that'll be a nice treat to offer Trunkertreaters this Halloween.
Well, hope everybody gets all the treats this Halloween.
And it was a treat to talk to Joshua Velasquez of Shire's Naturals, Kevin McGahren of Greyston Bakery alongside Adrianne DeLuca, a reporter at BevNET & NOSH about open and inclusive hiring practices in this episode of Community Call.
Please enjoy.
Today's Community Call focuses on open and inclusive hiring practices that benefit both business and community.
By giving people a fair chance at employment when they may have difficulty finding employment otherwise due to a disability, a past incarceration or other obstacles that could make it hard to find a job.
Guest Joshua Velasquez, co-founder of Shire's Naturals, Kevin McGahren, general manager of Greyston Bakery, and Adrianne DeLuca, reporter at NOSH & BevNET, who's working on a story about this topic, all join us today.
This Community Call is a companion piece to a story Adrianne's working on for nosh.com.
So make sure you head over there to read more all about it.
Thank you all so much for joining today.
This is a great topic.
One that I think a lot of the brands in our ecosystem may not know a ton about.
So I think this is going to be really helpful to shed some light on the hiring practices that you both employ.
Adrianne, why don't we start off with you?
Could you explain the article that you're working on on inclusive hiring practices?
Absolutely.
And thank you for having us here, Melissa.
The story that we're working on, it should be available on nosh.com later this month, seeks to highlight a range of different approaches that CPG food or beverage brands can take to building an inclusive and diverse workforce.
So many of these approaches could probably be used across industries.
But in reporting this story specifically, the connection between food manufacturing and building community, as well as just boosting employee retention rate, became pretty evident themes.
So I've spoken with a handful of brands, including both Kevin and Josh, shared it with us today.
And they've each taken some very unique approaches to incorporating open and diverse hiring into their company's missions.
Some have begun with it embedded from the beginning.
Others may have seen a mutual benefit or mutually beneficial opportunity and integrated these individuals and policies or approaches as the company themselves have grown.
So the story overall aims to just tell the story of how a diverse approach and just an open mindset to the individuals coming into your facility could benefit the business long term.
Thanks for that.
And I know that you've spoken with some other brands as well.
So we'll certainly be interested to hear what some of the other folks who are using these hiring practices have done and had to say about it.
So thank you, Adrianne.
Kevin, let's move over to you.
The tagline of Greyston Bakery is eat brownies, change lives.
So certainly open hiring is the foundation of Greyston Bakery's existence and mission.
Can you explain how Greyston Bakery got its start and how it really is centered around this practice of open hiring?
Sure.
We're here in Yonkers, New York, and actually have been following this for about 40 years.
Just founded 40 years ago by actually a Buddhist monk.
So it was actually a New Yorker from Brooklyn who went to NYU, majored in math, went out west to work in the high-tech industry, and while out there, got interested in Buddhism and actually converted, and then became a Buddhist monk, left his career.
He had been very successful.
Moved back here to the area and started Zendo.
Zendo is basically a group of monks, and to support themselves, they literally started baking cakes and brownies and different things.
They needed help.
They started inviting in some homeless people.
They were a view of Buddhism where one of their views of the world is also to basically help and serve and whatnot.
As they started baking more brownies and became successful, and along the way, the Buddhist monk, his name is Bernie Glassman, recommend looking him up.
He's written a couple of books.
Really, really interesting fellow.
He unfortunately passed away about five, six years ago, but a lot about him on the Internet.
He met Ben & Jerry's of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
Ben & Jerry's had a bit of a mission-based philosophy around their ice cream business that they were going to make great products, but also have a social voice.
So they got together.
They were basically all hippies together, and basically said, we're making ice cream, you have brownies, why don't you ship them to us?
They put it together, and that's today Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream.
That's actually their number two to three seller, consisting throughout the years.
Basically, we're now in about 12 flavors.
That's our biggest product.
But along the way, there was always a need for labor, and so we really kept the original mission of really accepting anyone literally off the street.
Basically, what an open hiring is, is we hire people off a list.
The way you get on a list is you put your name on it.
There's no interview, background check, resume, not even needing an address.
Then basically, the next person on the list, we hire in and then basically start the work.
It's not a guaranteed job, but it is a guaranteed opportunity to the job, and that's how we built the company ever since.
This list certainly is very important in your hiring practices.
Where do you have the list available?
How do people find it?
It's either on our website, it's on our door, there's a QR code, or they literally walk in the door and we just add the name to the list.
So a lot of different ways, and it's well known in this area of Yonkers, almost all our workers are from the area.
They don't have cars, they walk to work, and this is a place that people know that there's an opportunity to get a job.
Can you tell us a little bit about Shire's Naturals?
It all started with one employee, is that right, Andres?
Yeah, it started with Andres when we moved from our basement test lab facility to an 8,000 square foot facility.
We had tours lined up and Andres was part of one of the groups.
He came in, back with our old branding, we used to have a mascot named Cashew Charlie.
And he saw it and he said, hey, can I get into this?
And we said, yeah, absolutely.
And he started dancing once he put it on, and we were like, we love this guy's energy.
And we offered him a job, we're like, would you like to work here?
He was excited about the opportunity.
He had a check-in with his family and his parents said, well, he might need a coach.
And so we said, well, let's just see what he's capable of doing first before we bring a coach on.
And Andres never needed a coach.
He's been a shining star.
He has helped us figure out how to manage better by just having us take a step back and taking time to teach him how to do things.
But he started, I believe it was at the end of 2019, and he's been with us since and he's grown a lot.
And every year we add some more responsibilities to his plate and he's always excited about it.
So you said that having Andres has helped you manage better.
What do you mean by that?
I think when we first started, we went from 750 square feet to 8,000 square feet and you're just moving, everyone's just moving really, really fast.
And he helped us like pause the brakes or slow down a bit so that we could step back and say, you know, how do we make time so that everyone can work here?
And it was just really eye opening.
And so I feel like I've walked away a better manager at the end of the day.
Even as simple as stuff as like when you're putting out these procedures, you're making sure all those little extra steps are in there.
So that if he has any questions, he can always go back and look at his list of things to do versus me just telling him once or twice and hoping that he remembers that process.
That makes perfect sense.
And so Andres was the first.
And have there been any subsequent hires?
So he's thriving and we live in a town of 6,000.
And word got around that Andres is doing really well.
He's been growing a lot.
We've added more to his plate.
And we had a mother knock on our door one day and she said, Hey, will you please hire my son?
We had no idea who this person was.
They just knocked on our door and we were really moved by it.
And so we said, Yeah, let's set up an interview.
And so he came in with his parents.
We interviewed him.
And then we said, Well, the next step is let's have you do a shadow day and see what you're capable of doing.
And I think he started the week after that.
And he worked with us for about two years.
And then he went off after that and ended up working with his parents.
And for both of them, was it a disability that was getting in the way, perhaps of them getting a traditional job?
Yeah, so they were on the spectrum.
And really, it was a gentleman where his mom knocked on our door.
It was going to be his first job.
You know, I'd say he had some challenges sticking with assignments in the beginning.
But we were able to figure out how to help him do better at those tasks by just understanding their strengths and weaknesses.
And some stuff we just said, okay, this is not going to be for him.
Here's where his strengths are.
And so we started scheduling him on these other lines, and that's what he would work on.
And that's where we started seeing him shine even more.
It's like he would come in, he knew what he had to do versus in the beginning, when we had him do a different task.
It was really challenging for him to stick to that, and he would get distracted a lot.
And I think it allowed him, as he grew with us within those two years, to understand his own strengths and weaknesses.
We could see when he was graduating from Shire's and he was moving on, that he came in as a boy and was leaving as a man.
He had all of this experience now, and you could tell that he felt really good about it and confident.
There was a lot of confidence showing when he was headed out the door.
And again, you mentioned it makes you a better manager.
I'm just curious, do you think we're more likely to extend patience and understanding to folks who we may know are already trying to overcome challenges versus hiring a more traditional employee?
Yeah, I think that's it.
I think you're forced to slow down.
You want it to work.
You want these team members to shine.
And so at least for me, it really helped me to take the time to really build out these programs for them versus a year or two before that, I wasn't doing that.
I would, I had a process down.
I would put it out there and I wouldn't spend a lot of time going back and making sure that everyone was doing it correctly.
I would train them twice and maybe that was it.
And then I saw a lot of issues after that.
But now that we've had Andres and others on the team, I've realized that this process works for everyone at the end of the day, the process that we came up with.
And we've seen less errors on the production floor.
I think that's a really key point that you bring up, Josh, because in reporting this story and speaking with both of you, and I spoke yesterday with Nicole Wilson, who's the co-founder of snack company, Everybody Eat.
They also have a very open approach to their hiring process.
And in listening to her speak, patience and just listening to your employees and hearing what barriers they may be facing, both in work and just in their broader day to day, have really benefited them.
She was explaining as a business owner, there are so many small ways that they can just help alleviate some of these challenges and set that individual up for success.
And more often than not, it ends up benefiting the business in the long run because you have happier, healthier, more committed employees that really want to show up for more than something just than a paycheck.
Kevin, so you are saying that you're sort of locally known in your area as having open hiring practices.
And a lot of the folks that work at Greyston Bakery may not have a car or transportation that can get them there.
How long does it take you to get through your wait list?
Did you say you were at about 300 and something at this point?
That would be about three or four months, and a lot of it depends on the state of the business.
So the biggest thing we want to do is grow, because the more we can grow, the more we can hire people.
Sometimes even some turnover is not a bad thing because it opens up jobs for people to come in as long as they're going to something else that's positive.
But it's gotten as high as 1,000.
Last fall, it was actually as high as 1,000, and we're actually now down only to 300.
And so it's a bit of a challenge because there's many more people that want an opportunity like this than we can provide for.
And I'll be honest with you, what we do find is even in calling people, some people may have found something by the time we get to them, or they decided to do something else.
So it's not like we go the next 10 people and they all come in.
We might have to call more people to get that number.
What are some of the challenges that you see your employees having?
Is it incarceration?
Is it a disability?
How does that shake out at Greyston Bakery?
Yeah, the biggest problem is probably we don't know exact stats because we don't have everybody's background, but you get to know people over time.
I'd say about half of our people have been formally incarcerated.
The other half, a complete mix of it could be age, could be immigrants, could be drug addiction, mental health issues, things like that.
The biggest thing we find is actually housing is the biggest problem, and it may be more of a New York specific situation because everything's so expensive.
And so a lot of our people are still living in a shelter, and to get here in a shelter is the restrictions of when you can go, when you have to go back, things like that is probably the number one.
Number two is keeping up with meetings.
If you're formerly incarcerated, it could be probation officer.
If you're in an addiction program, being in those meetings.
And so we try to be very, very flexible with that.
That is also challenging because it might be during the day and that's when the shift is and things like that.
So we work through that as best we can.
And we do have a full-time caseworker.
And it's something that's important for us.
It's almost like a life coach for all our people that help them through a lot of these things.
How have you had to adjust your business for some of the allowances that you do need to make for your employee population?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, the first is since we're still competing against very strong businesses and everything we do, we have to make sure quality is number one.
And in order to do that, we have to make sure anybody coming in that, maybe they haven't worked in 20 years, maybe they've never worked, maybe they can't understand English, that we have enough jobs that they can help the team, but not put the product at risk, not put efficiency at risk, not put any extra onus on the rest of the employees who already have challenging jobs.
So I think thinking that through in terms of having a hierarchy jobs that somebody could come in and do and then move up as they become stronger is very important.
I think in reporting this story also kind of off your last question, Melissa, one of the unique approaches I saw to just incorporating more individuals into their workforce was Everybody Eat.
Their co-founder had previously worked with a non-profit that supported individuals who were victims of gun violence in Chicago.
And when they were starting this company, that was how they ended up with a lot of their initial employees and then necessarily recruiting via that organization.
But it's a lot of word of mouth now, but those individuals who were formerly incarcerated, struggling with housing, just struggling in their day to day, that was the pipeline that they found to find their initial workforce.
And what we do find in terms of word of mouth is a lot of its family connections, because all the people that work here have very broad families in the area.
So that also provides a very strong pipeline as well of interest.
Josh, Kevin mentioned, of course, that quality is king and as delicious as all of Greyston's products are, so are Shire's Naturals.
We were just talking about your ravioli and they are just absolutely so fantastically delicious.
Are there any allowances or changes that you needed to make to your production process to allow for a more diverse workforce?
So, another thing that we had done is we had at one point had an amputee on the team, and that also helped us figure out where we were lacking.
We realized, oh, we're still not set up for everyone to work here.
And that was about maybe three years ago now, and we went through and streamlined the process once again, so that this gentleman was able to thrive in our culture.
And doing all those things never slowed anything down.
It never affected our process at all.
And honestly, to me, it improved it, if not even made it safer in our eyes.
It sure does.
All right, so we talked about the list a little bit, and it sounds like getting the list out is less of an issue than just having enough positions to be able to offer people.
And I think that hopefully this show will kind of help illustrate some of the ways that folks like you are practicing inclusive hiring, because, I mean, it can still be difficult to find folks to hold jobs in organizations.
And I think that if we sort of, you know, illustrate how it works, it might open up other folks' eyes to how they could tap a workforce they may not have been thinking about.
So we talked a little bit about the list.
What is the interview process look like?
Kevin, I think you said basically you just sign.
So is there just no interview at all?
How does that work?
Now there's no interview process.
So the only thing we do require is some evidence of legality to work, and it could be different forms in terms of proving that.
Then the ability, we do have a restriction of sensibility to stand and lift because it is an active bakery.
So to Josh's point, we don't really have an accommodation yet if you're physically handicapped.
We have many other types of handicaps, but that is still something we'd love to get to at some point.
But other than that, no, we just have a two-day orientation, and it's really more about bringing people into the world of work, in terms of, we have to set up a bank account so we can deposit a check.
We have to basically get them a uniform.
We have to show them how to sign in to the plant, go through the schedule and what's going to happen, show them videos of what it is.
And the reality is through those two days, we do lose some people who say, wow, that's maybe not for me, or that could be too hard, or wow, I really have to show up at 7 a.m.
and I have to come back the next day at 7 a.m.
and that reality.
So there's a little bit of a screening in those two days, but it really is open to anyone and that's our main point, because it has been amazing to us as we look at all the statistics.
One thing that always jumps out at me, it's the latest numbers, 27% unemployment for formerly incarcerated.
I mean, these are people that have served their time, they've done their dues, and they still employment, and two thirds under the poverty line because they can't find jobs.
And that's just, again, in terms of formerly incarcerated.
So really, just to give them a chance is primary.
And that's what we're doing.
We're giving people at least a chance.
What does your attrition look like?
And, you know, it may be all over the map, but are there any sort of learnings that you've had and could share about how quickly people drop out and how you know when someone's going to be in it for the long haul?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
And, you know, one of the reasons I'm here beyond being from Yonkers and being, you know, mission-based person in general, is that I've managed other companies hiring frontline workers.
And the reality is, any amount of background check and interviewing doesn't tell you whether they're going to show up, whether they can work well with others.
So you can put all this extra time, and ultimately the best chance is having them start and see how it goes.
And normally frontline workers, your turnover rate is about 50 percent.
It sounds really high, but half of that would be for the good reasons, because they find a better job and more power to them.
Half a bit, because it's just not a good fit for them and it doesn't work out.
Our turnover, if we're regularly hiring people, is about similar to that.
It's about 50 percent.
But what we do find last year, when we weren't hiring most of the year and basically stabilized, it actually was only about 10 percent.
So once we get through that first six months of people fitting in and saying, hey, I can get this routine and they work to work, it's actually pretty low.
But the reality, because we're always bringing in people, it does stay somewhat high.
We're also encouraging people, it's going to sound terrible, but it's to move on and to look at other things.
So we give recommendations, we help people with their resumes, we talk to other employers because we really want to upscale people.
We want people to move up.
Plus, we can hire other people because in our mind, the biggest barrier is getting that first job.
So if we can be that first job, they now have access to other jobs.
But they're still here.
I don't want to say they're blocking other people, but vetting somebody from having that same chance.
And so we do celebrate people when they move on to something else.
We were happy about moving somebody else into that slot.
Josh, how about you?
Has your interview process changed at all as you're kind of like opening up, you know, your minds on where you're looking to hire people from?
Yeah, so it's been very informal.
As, you know, Andres showed up on a tour, and then the other gentleman was his mom knocking on the door.
And then it was more word of mouth because we're in that small 6,000 population town.
We brought in some other people that way.
We have yet to really have like a set interview process.
What has been consistent is we always do a shadow day.
Kevin, I think you said you do something similar of like, you know, we'll have them come in and we'll say, here's the process, here's what you're going to do.
So we have like a two day process with our manufacturing.
We have one called make day and the second day is called pack day.
And we'll see how they are on both of those days.
You know, we'll ask for feedback.
We'll say, hey, do you think this is something that you're interested in?
And that's where we get to see their strengths and weaknesses.
And then we'll be able to focus them on, hey, you're going to be on this packing machine versus you're going to be the guy that's going to be lifting up these heavy, you know, 50 pound boxes.
And that's probably the only consistent thing that we're doing so far at this stage.
You know, we're a lot smaller company than Kevin's running.
So, it's been a lot of word of mouth.
And it's been working for us that way right now.
Do you think for any potential employees, you would do a shadow day no matter what their situation was?
Or do you think that's most useful when you're...
No, we do that for everyone.
Yeah, it doesn't matter whether you're neurodivergent or not.
It's just it works for both sides.
So it's not like we're wasting our time.
They're not wasting their time.
They get to say, hey, I want to do this.
Then we can start planning out a training schedule for them.
I feel like I've heard very similar sentiments from the other brands I've spoken to as well, where you can't really determine much from an interview process if that person is going to want to do the job that is in front of them at that given moment.
I will add that in speaking with Nicole yesterday, because that conversation is still fresh in my mind, that the one thing that she said, they do stick out in the interview.
It's nothing about your background or what jobs you've held in the past, but they try to challenge who's sitting in front of them to test whether or not they have a growth mindset and are willing to problem solve and just think creatively because overall, for their organization, she's emphasized that having that diverse set of thought and problem solvers on the production floor when things can get a little hectic has been a large benefit as they've grown.
Adrianne, that's a great point about looking for a growth mindset.
I think we can learn some overarching ideas about hiring here as well.
Kevin, you've seen so many folks come in and out and hired so many people at Greyston Bakery.
What do you think it is that makes a really great, committed employee?
I'd say two things.
One is a team orientation.
Are they somebody who thinks of the world as teammates, as collaboration, things like that.
It's funny when Bernie Glassman founded the company and started to expand it, all his tenants were all around their building, and they're all Buddhist views, and yet they all add up to being a good teammate, just working well with each other, trusting, supporting, work things together.
I'd say the second is somewhat related to growth mindset is willingness to learn, and basically an openness to learning.
We find that some people just want to do one thing, not change at all, and there's some merit to that, but ultimately we need people to adapt and grow, and we can kind of see early on how that's going to work.
So it's that combination, because if you're not their teammate, and you don't like change, often that can lead to interpersonal issues among a group, and really we need everybody working well together.
And so those are the two things I've seen in general.
How many of the folks who work at Greyston Bakery are sort of folks who have been there for a good amount of time?
You know they're totally committed, and they're just amazing hires that you can count on.
Yeah, it's a really good question, and my senior team and I always have debates around this, because it's almost like two mentalities in the world.
One is you have great people, don't move them because everything's going well.
And my philosophy is the opposite.
If you have great people, then you move them to a new job, or you try to encourage them to leave, because that will encourage other people to join, because people see if they do well at this company, they're going to move up.
And so we've had a lot of change and a lot of movement, and basically that's ultimately, I think, inspirational to everybody that walks in the door, that I'm not just coming in to do an entry level job, but I see that there can be growth going on, and that's what we want to see.
So our 40, 45 management, two thirds of that came from open hiring, and we have them in all different areas.
And I have a person in finance, we're training somebody to go into sales, and that's really gonna be the key going forward.
We just promoted two people, the supervisor, so all four of my supervisors that cover the various shifts were original open hires.
And we also find those are the best people to basically encourage and support the people coming in, because they've been there, they've done that, and they can work it together.
Now having said that, what makes it very challenging, at the same time, they're often training and working with a lot of people who won't be here, because there is turnover.
And so we have to get the job done, they have to support the people who are here, but then the people that aren't going to rotate out.
The average tenure is only about three and a half years.
I mean, I've probably got about maybe a dozen people over 10 years, but the mass majority are in this four to six year range, and then they move on to something else which we're fine with.
Josh, I know you were talking a little bit about how Andres and I think a couple of the other folks that you've hired have turned out to have been such fantastic hires because they are so committed to what you're all doing and working as a team.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah.
Andres has many times has come up to me and just said, hey, thank you for taking the time to spend with me and help me grow.
He gets the big picture.
He knows that we're building a brand.
Obviously, this is his first time doing this, but it was something that he was willing to roll the dice on when he left his first job that he did not like.
And he came here and he was like, well, these guys are taking the time to show me how to grow.
And then there's that exciting piece that came with it of, it's not just, I'm coming in here at 630 in the morning, and it's the same process every day.
He's looking forward to the growing of the company itself.
And he also, part of that comes from, he wants to continue to grow with the company as well.
He sees a future here.
He's really good at training.
I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but he remembers everything that you say, which can be good or bad.
Gets me in trouble a lot, but he's really good at training.
And so we've given him that responsibility.
And so as we continue to grow, he looks forward to building that team out because he knows that at some point, he'll be shifting over to potentially just be training people that are coming into the production side of things.
And that is sort of like where I feel like that's where he wants to be.
And another example is we have another gentleman, another word of mouth, a neighbor's son came over and he started working with us.
I said, look, I only need help right now on the production side of things.
And he's more of an IT guy.
He's a computer guy.
And there's more than I do on computers.
And I said, this is what I have right now.
Is that okay?
And he said, yep, absolutely does not like production, but he shows up every day and he does it.
And we've been slowly moving him out into the office side of things.
And he's been working on getting most of our stuff cleaned up on that side of stuff.
And that's something that he's been looking forward to.
And he's committed in sticking with us.
I mean, he stuck with us for, I think he's been on the team now for two years.
And he's never really said he's hated production.
He's just always like, how long is this going to be?
Like, when are we switching over to the next task?
But he says it's so dry, but he's not mad.
He's just looking forward to when he can actually put his skills, which is the IT side of things, to use.
Just to dig in a little deeper, you both seem to foster some hard and soft skills within your workforce beyond what's needed even just for the day to day, working on the production lines.
Just wondering if you could share a little bit more about how you are setting these employees up for success so that they can go on to companies beyond yours.
I can start.
I mean, what we do is primarily three things.
One, we do periodically run classes just to broaden skills that we know will add some depth to the company, but also give them certifications that can go elsewhere.
Two core ones, one is Excel and one is forklifts.
You have a physical skill and you have a computer skill.
In a day in a class, so a lot of people is something they've never seen before where they end a day and they have the certificate, which is great.
Another way we do it is we try to identify some jobs in the office, which I've mentioned before, like a customer service job for the holiday.
That's kind of a way to almost test drive like an internship like we might have had in college.
And they can try it out, but they're not committing to it, and yet they're in a different world.
It's a phone, it's a computer, it's an office, it's different.
They're not wearing a head net and everything else.
And that's been a way to identify people that are further interested, but either way, they've got that experience.
And then the third way is introducing more what we feel is common technology to the world that helps bridge.
So for instance, we have a system our plan now that uses Apple iPads, which I had brought from another company they were not using here.
And yet if they went to another company with a factory, that's something they'd run into using lead management.
So it's a tool that helps us here, but if they learn it, it's going to help transition elsewhere.
So several of the ways we kind of try to think about that.
And on a smaller level, we're a smaller team here.
How we're setting everyone up for success so they can grow whether it's here or they can take the leap to a next job, which David did, is we do one-on-ones, quarterly one-on-ones with them to check in where they're at, see where they would like us to help them focus on some tasks that maybe they want to improve on.
And I'd say that's where we're at today.
We're not on Kevin's level yet.
I love hearing all this because we look forward to getting to where Kevin is at some point, but I'd say right now, between Andres and the three other gentlemen that we have, it's quarterly check-ins.
It's always checking in with them to see where their strengths are so we can continue to tailor those jobs so that they feel comfortable and confident every time that they come in versus just saying, hey, just go out there and do this job.
We don't care if you like it or not.
We don't care if you're good at this or not.
We're going to try to make you fit into this task.
And it's worked out really well and we've benefited.
You know, as they come through the door, it's always like the person that didn't like this one task or that wasn't their superpower, that next person that comes in, the universe sends us like, they just slide right in there and then it almost takes the stress off of like Andres, I'll use as an example, because there's certain things that, you know, he knows that that's not his strength.
He'll still do it, but he stresses out that he might mess it up.
What we've seen is a gentleman will come in after that and take that over, and you can just see the relief on Andres' face that someone else came in, and they're really good with that task.
Josh, you're certainly supporting your community as well as supporting the growth of your business, but you're a bootstrap brand and you're looking to scale.
Does it cost anymore to hire, you know, someone with a disability or, you know, someone who might have trouble finding a job elsewhere?
How does that work?
I haven't seen it.
It hasn't cost us anymore.
You know, we hire at our stage a living wage, and I'll put it out on this call, you know, we start out at $18 an hour.
We're not focused on bringing in neurodivergent team members so that we can pay less.
This is the starting for everyone that walks through the door.
If you're a perfect fit, great.
And there's room to grow, you know.
I'll touch up on what Kevin said earlier, because you have a larger team.
There is potential for Andres to get some certifications down the road.
I don't want to overwhelm him right now, so I haven't presented him with any of that.
But to bring it back to your main question, you know, it hasn't cost us anymore.
If anything, the turnover rate is very low, because once they feel like they know they're part of the team, they feel comfortable with their job, they are confident with it, they love coming to work all the time, they're staying there.
And if they want to go and they, you know, we help prepare them to go to that next job as well.
I think that's helpful information for anyone with a brand who's thinking about doing more of this.
Kevin, could you answer the same question?
And I know you may provide more official resources.
You have a case worker, that kind of thing.
Right.
But I mean, for the amount of people we would need, again, having done frontline hiring in the past, you're still going to have turnover for recruiting agency, for the background checks, for an extra HR person, for all the onboarding and all the different things.
We don't find it's any more expensive.
We do have different costs, but I definitely don't find it any more expensive than I see it both ways.
Basically, the people that do stay are so committed, and they really do create a pillar of commitment throughout the organization that sets a great example for everyone.
One thing I just wanted to add, Joshua, you were doing completely the best thing of really engaging with each employee and understanding what they want to do, what they're interested in.
That's only something we're adding now because one of our pillars of the company is confidentiality.
What we've been working with, and we actually even have a union, believe it or not, I inherited a union.
But what we've now worked through is a way that we are going to do mid-years and year ends for all the workers, but more almost like a career fair type of situation of like, what have you done in your background that you haven't told us about, that we can learn from, and then go out and either help you leverage it here or elsewhere.
You need to agree to it.
Everybody's a little bit skittish at the beginning.
They're like, no, this is all to help promote almost like the opposite of people might think of interviewing.
And so that's something we're just unblocking on now, but you're right at the core of doing that already with employees, which is great.
I'm able to at this stage, I think because we started the way it started, there's no backpedaling to get there, and I'm actually glad that it did happen this way.
Kevin, as we started the show off with, this is Greyston Bakery's mission and you do make it part of your marketing.
Do you find that your hiring practices, does it help sell brownies?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
And the answer is unfortunately, I don't think so.
I think it helps find the right business B2B partners that share a similar mission.
Like we're very close with Whole Foods, we cover restaurants, Emirates Airlines, they have their emblem on the brownie, and then our story in the back and those are great partners.
But in terms of consumers, we really haven't found it so much, and yet same time, I'll be honest, we haven't done that much marketing.
It's only something we're trying to do now, because Ben & Jerry's business has been on a bit of a decline, the ice cream world is very competitive.
And so we're actually working through that now, what's the right combination.
But in the end of the day, I think it still does come down to price and quality.
We had a meeting with a Costco buyer recently, and he was very, very honest, he was very, very helpful.
He said, I don't care about your mission.
I have my own mission.
My own mission is the best quality, lowest price for my consumers.
And my question is, how can you help me?
And it was a great, honest conversation.
And I bring that back to all of our employees, and it helps them understand, hey, everybody's job security is on doing the best job we can do.
And I think everybody kind of embraces that, and it works pretty well.
My next question was going to be, does it help you in your retail pitches?
Is that usually the response?
Are there any softy retail buyers out there who care a lot about that?
I think you just need more advertising budget to kind of bring it to life, you know, with commercials and everything else.
We're trying to start with videos and whatnot.
At the same time, we also recognize there's a lot of companies, we believe, with like great missions or great purposes.
So it's a good background story.
And I think it's important, just like an origin story or a family story.
And we want it to be part of a package, but we don't believe we should lead with it.
We haven't been leading with it, but it is something we're still trying to figure out what's the best way to work.
I'm the same way.
You know, we've done a poor job of telling people, you know, the great things that are happening behind the closed doors here at Shire's, because we feel like it just feels weird, sort of like putting that out there.
To me, it's like, you know, when you see someone post that they held the door open for someone or, you know, we were raised up differently.
That's just the right thing to do.
And it doesn't seem like it's a marketing tool.
Adrianne, is that a similar sentiment that you've heard from other folks?
Absolutely.
I think, you know, Josh, you just hit the nail on the head with just, it's the right thing to do is kind of the sentiments I've gotten from everyone else.
And every brand I've spoken to has also kind of started off by saying, we are horrible about telling this part of our story.
And kind of for similar reasons, where it almost feels as if, at least to them, that you're telling someone else's story in part as you're marketing your product.
So I think authenticity has been really like a key part of this conversation and how you do approach communicating what's going on in the factory, that it may be of interest to consumers or to retailers, but not in a way that it becomes your whole brand.
I have a last question for you, Kevin.
If you were the general manager of Greyston Bakery and suddenly this was not your set of core values and this wasn't a practice, would you continue to hire the way that you're hiring now?
It's an excellent question.
I mean, my career, I've loved my career because the main really satisfaction I've got is creating careers for people, creating jobs, creating livelihoods, and that's what I've really enjoyed about it.
I think the difference would be if we had full access to money, we might build a bigger company and still be able to employ as many people.
I think we'd keep open hiring, but I think probably in a different way, because one thing that does happen being who we are, we don't have access to the capital, we really do have to expand.
So we might have 100 people now and be a certain size, but maybe we could be 10 times as big and yet still employ 200 people, because it would be a different way.
But it's a good question and we're trying to work through that going forward.
Josh, you started open hiring with just one person and not necessarily because it was your set of core values, but because you were looking for employees.
What advice do you have for other brands and founders who want to go down this path?
I'd say everyone deserves to have a shot.
I really encourage everyone to go out there.
If you have a spot that needs to get filled, give that person a shot, slow down like I had to learn to slow down, and take the time to teach them so that they can catch up and be a great team member.
Joshua Velasquez, Kevin McGahren, Adrianne DeLuca, thank you so much for joining today.
That was a terrific discussion, and I really appreciate all of you for joining.
That concludes another episode of the Community Call Podcast.
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