When Amy’s Kitchen started in 1987, its co-founder, Rachel Berliner, admits she and her husband, co-founder Andy Berliner, had no idea it would become a juggernaut organic food pioneer. What began with one homemade vegetable potpie in their 1870s farmhouse has now expanded to up to 1 million meals daily.
“We always felt that if we did the right thing that the business would work rather than trying to have a goal of making this much money, we thought we had a goal of making this much good food and to make it the best we can and the highest quality,” Rachel Berliner told Simon Mainwaring during an episode of his “Lead With We” podcast. “And that’s always been our approach. It’s not the make the money first.”
It’s as authentic as this — if someone is hungry, Rachel Berliner wants to feed them. Amy’s Kitchen offers more than 250 products and budget-friendly multipacks of its popular burritos and a plethora of dietary options including vegan, soy-free, gluten-free, tree nut-free, and kosher items.
Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s, Rachel Berliner told CBS News she recalls the organic garden in her yard and how it essentially established the roots of how she ate. “They taught me to always eat healthy and to never eat things I couldn’t pronounce,” Berliner said.
She added that while she didn’t like vegetables at the time, helping in the garden was expected. “My mom is a great cook, and I got a sense of what food should taste like,” Rachel Berliner said on “The Bite Goes On” podcast. “That’s what I do with the company, developing the meals and coming up with ideas.”
When Berliner was pregnant and placed on bed rest, father-to-be Andy Berliner ventured out to find quick and easy vegetarian cuisine for her but returned with some pretty unsatisfactory options. The couple began experimenting with various vegetable potpie recipes, and eventually, their daughter — and the brand — were born.
Andy Berliner said the response within the natural food industry was explosive once they introduced their line.
“We started with one product, a vegetable potpie, organic vegetable potpie. And even though the product wasn’t fully developed at our first trade show and we didn’t think it tasted right yet, people loved it, and they loved the idea,” Andy Berliner said on “Lead With We.”
“And three months later, it was as if we’d been in business for years because it moved into all the natural food stores around the country, and people were saying come out with more products.”
During those early days of getting Amy’s Kitchen off the ground, Rachel Berliner told online training provider Talented Ladies Club in an interview that working from home allowed her to be a stay-at-home mom.
“In the beginning, our office was in our barn, and we worked from home,” she shared. “My mother was also a great help.”
Rachel Berliner revealed her mother actually wrote all the copy on the original boxes. The Berliners also solicited the input of friends and other family members to shape their creations.
With careful attention to detail, Berliner says her approach to presenting the brand was different, just like the food it creates.
“I have a very unusual philosophy about the business, which I started right from the beginning,” she explained. “It’s kind of a subliminal message. Somebody is going to the store, and they’re buying this box of frozen meal, which is really not the most natural way to eat. The natural way to eat is to go to the farmer’s market, get your fresh vegetables, come home, and make salads and soups. But this time in this world, we’re too busy or we don’t know how to cook. But what we try to do is give them a connection to their food.”
Since the beginning, she says personal touches went into photographs used on Amy’s Kitchen packaging.
“I always put a plate from my grandmother, and we have flowers in the garden, and I put a flower on the package,” informed Rachel Berliner, who studied art in college. “And we feel that at every step of the way, all the love that people put into the food, the farmers, the processors, the people working in the office, the people making the food, the shipping, everything — we just try to make it a very loving experience and caring experience.”
Growing Amy’s Kitchen With Care
Rachel Berliner admits that she takes great pride in sharing the joy of Amy’s Kitchen with the world.
For the business owner, the feeling of enthusiasm over Amy’s Kitchen never gets old. It’s one of the reasons she still reads all the fan mail sent to the company’s California headquarters. “I do love reading letters from Amy’s fans who discover our free-from foods and tell us things like: ‘Thank you. I thought my life was over’ and ‘I thought I’d never eat my favorite foods again,’” Berliner said.
Amy’s Kitchen has continued to expand over the years and now includes Amy’s Drive Thru in five locations throughout California. With a menu of organic veggie burgers, pizzas, burritos, salads, and shakes, Amy’s Kitchen’s customers requested fast food made with intention, and the innovative company delivered.
“We’ve got this great opportunity in Amy’s Drive Thru, and we certainly see that continuing to grow, and putting in restaurants in more and more places across initially California and hopefully eventually across the country,” says Paul Schiefer, president of Amy’s Kitchen.
Despite how big their enterprise gets, Rachel Berliner maintains the nucleus of Amy’s Kitchen is still centered around how it started. “We still taste in the farmhouse in Petaluma around the same table,” Rachel Berliner explained. “I wanted to refinish the table, but we decided to leave it the same color because we’ve been using it all these years.”
