Amy's Kitchen: From The Mind Of One Woman To Your Kitchen Table
Like many busy couples, Andy and Rachel Berliner turned to frozen dinners when home cooking wasn’t on the agenda. One night in 1987 they came up with a better idea. The result: organic powerhouse Amy’s Kitchen.
Based in Petaluma, Calif., Amy’s leads the nation in prepared organic food sales and boasted 2008 revenues of $240 million. With Andy, now 61, as CEO and Rachel, 55, as head of marketing, the 1,600-employee company sells 140 vegetarian products, such as frozen black-bean tamales, in chains that include Kroger (KR, Fortune 500), Safeway (SWY, Fortune 500) and Whole Foods (WFMI, Fortune 500). The couple’s daughter, Amy – born the same year as the company that bears her name – is training to join the family business. And it all began with a humble potpie.
RACHEL: My parents raised their own organic vegetables. Andy’s first business was Magic Mountain, an organic tea company, which he sold in 1981. We were already committed to a healthy vegetarian lifestyle when I got pregnant with our daughter in 1987. Near the end of my pregnancy, I pulled a muscle and couldn’t stand long enough to cook or shop, so Andy went to the local health-food store for some frozen meals…
ANDY: …and they tasted like cardboard.
RACHEL: We had been talking about how to put our child through college and provide her with a certain standard of living, and we knew we wanted to do that by running our own business. We just didn’t know what type it would be.
At the time potpies were the most popular frozen meal, so we decided to bake our own. My mother suggested that since we were launching the company to support our daughter, we should name it after her.
ANDY: To launch Amy’s, we borrowed against Rachel’s car, and I sold a watch and some gold coins. That raised about $20,000, enough to get us going. When we ran through that money and went for a line of credit, almost every bank turned us down. Only our local bank finally approved us, for $20,000. I learned later that when the loan officer reviewed our application, he was so impressed with our product that he predicted we would be the bank’s largest customer someday. He was right, and we still bank with them.
Read more from Rachen and Andy on their business here.
Photo from Amy’s Kitchen
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