The best office snacks are chocolate-chip granola bars, kettle-cooked potato chips, and cold cans of pamplemousse La Croix. There is no study proving this, but it’s not opinion; it’s supported by facts (aka my taste buds).
But at Austin, Texas-based Tito’s Handmade Vodka, a 14-acre farm changed the office food game. The company offers employees fresh fruit and vegetables each day for lunch, and sponsors a free farmers market three days a week where employees can pick out and take home produce to cook with their families.
“Our distillery was in a food desert, so to speak, and so we noticed that there was no access to good, clean, healthy food,” said Amy Lukken, Tito’s chief “joyologist,” who characterized her role at Tito’s as “putting the heart in the tin man of corporate America.”
The farm, aptly named Fourteen Acres Farm, sits on a piece of property adjacent to the distillery, and Lukken described it as “the worst piece of dirt.” But the team transformed the plot with “bad sun, bad dirt, and heavy winds” into a functioning farm, with 76 raised beds and 16 high-tunnel greenhouses, and a water catchment system.
“We’re a vodka company that has seven full-time farmers,” she said.
Well-being, recruitment, and engagement, oh my. The Tito’s HR team was charged with “trying to think of as many things as we can to make employees have a better overall life,” according to Julie Pastel, Tito’s VP of HR.
“Most companies can just give the standard pay, standard perks, etcetera,” Lukken added, “but when someone goes above and beyond to care for you and care for your families, I think that’s a really big message.”
And the company has used the farm to position itself to candidates as a place that cares for employees.
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