ANDY BERLINER and his wife Rachel started Amy's Kitchen in Santa Rosa with
the goal of filling a niche. Both "vegetarians and health food
people," they found little of good quality offered in health food
stores, so they decided to start their own line of vegetarian food.
Finding that it was possible to use organic vegetables and grains to make
convenience foods, they decided to make a quality frozen line which was
natural and not yet available. Rachel was pregnant at the time,
emphasizing the fact that, as they got busier in their own lives, the
Berliners had less time to cook. Convenience food which hadn't been
important to them before was clearly going to become more and more
prominent. Berliner had a background in the food industry, and they
figured there were more people like them who would like to have real),
good natural food without having to make it themselves.
They
chose vegetable pot pies as their first product, basing the product on one
of the original frozen food favorites, Swanson's pot pies. "A lot of
us grew up on those pies, and they had a sort of comfort concept in our
minds," Berliner says. "But now having become And vegetarian
and health-oriented, we couldn't even think of eating that product."
The Berliners noted that health food stores were selling meat pot pies and
decided that if they sold even half of the volume of the meat pies sold,
they'd be doing well.
The
initial vegetable pot pie sold the equivalent of the existing turkey,
chicken and beef pot pies four times over. Sales were close to home
initially, but within c(Still months, the pies were in health food stores
across the country. "After six months of having the vegetable pot pie
on the market, people thought that Amy's had been around for years "
Berlmer says. The vegetable pies became a staple, and their demand
triggered between two and six new products per year, all snapped up by
recently established distribution channels. Since 1988 and the birth of
the Berliners> daughter Amy, the company has grown 30 to 40 percent
almost every year.
The
Berliners' products now include a variety of foods with options for dairy
and non-dairy: pocket sandwiches, stir-fries, enchiladas with rice and
beans, vegetarian salisbury steak with vegetables, lasagne, macaroni and
cheese, ravioli, tomale pie, shepherd's pie, burritos, pizzas, veggie
burgers, country pie and apple pie.
"What
I didn't realize when we first started was that nobody else was making
frozen convenience meals for health food stores," Berliner says. His
competitors went to large frozen food manufacturer and asked them to make
healthful products for them. "It is far different when you make the
product yourself; you can control the quality and fine tune the
product," Berliner says. Amy’s has made a huge jump in the quality
of its product, which Berliner believes is part of the company's success
aside from the fact that they're natural or vegetarian.
Consumers
have the reassurance that any Amy’s product is manufactured by a company
dedicated to vegetarian food on production lines that are never used for
meat products. Amy's growth has been without falter. The first fiscal year
lasted three months and yielded $80,000. The next year, revenues climbed
to $800,000 and then quickly reached $2 million. For the fiscal year
starting July 2000, the Berliners expect more than $60 million in sales.
Their plant makes 3.6 million meals per month and close to 50 million
individual meals a year.
AC
Nielsen ranks Amy's as number one of the top five brands of natural foods
sold among mainstream supermarket frozen entrees, pizzas and convenience
foods with 71 percent dollar share-seven times greater than the number two
brand and up 30 percent from last year. Amy's contributed 83 percent of
the dollar growth of that category last year, manufacturing 19 of the
top-selling 20 items in he category. In health food stores the percentages
are smaller because the freezer sections are much bigger. "Even in
stores with huge freezers we have a really dominant share " Berliner
says.
Amy's is
number one in the category that includes frozen entrees, pizzas and
convenience foods plus others, with a 39.6 percent b-hare of all the
prepared health foods sold across the country, up 3 percent from the year
before. "I felt for sure we would drop or stabilize because there's
so much competition coming in, but we actually grew 3 percent,"
Berliner says. Amy's contributes 63 percent to category growth in health
food stores. In handheld convenience foods such as burritos and pockets,
Amy's has a 41 percent share, almost up 7 share points July 2000, the
Berliners expect more than $60 million in sales. Their plant makes 3.6
million meals per month and close to 50 million individual meals a year.
AC Nielsen ranks Amy's as number one of the top five brands of natural
foods sold among mainstream supermarket frozen entrees, pizzas and
convenience foods with 71 percent dollar share-seven times greater than
the number two brand and up 30 percent from last year. Amy's contributed
83 percent of the dollar growth of that category last year, manufacturing
19 of the top-selling 20 items in the category. In health food stores the
percentages are smaller because the freezer sections are much bigger.
"Even
in stores with huge freezers we have a really dominant share"
Berliner says. Amy's is number one in the category that includes frozen
entrees, pizzas and convenience foods plus others, with a 39.6 percent
b-hare of all the prepared health foods sold across the country, up 3
percent from the year before. "I felt for sure we would drop or
stabilize because there's so much competition coming in, but we actually
grew 3 percent," Berliner says. Amy's contributes 63 percent to
category growth in health food stores. In handheld convenience foods such
as burritos and pockets, Amy's has a 41 percent share, almost up 7 share
points from a year ago. In the prepared meals category, Amy's has a 54
percent share, up 2.5 percent from last year.
Having
started making pizzas about three years ago, Amy's already has a 45.5
percent share of that category. "Last year, we had five pizzas all in
the top five-even our soy cheese pizza, which is non-dairy, outsells the
next , Berliner says. "It all closest pizza comes from the quality.
"Still there's a tremendous number of people who haven't discovered
Amy's yet," Berliner says. "There's a long way for the company
to grow." People in the health food market are very aware of Amy's,
which accounts for over half the sales in some categories in health food
stores. In grocery stores, it's a much smaller percentage. "There's a
lot of people out there who want good quality foods and who would like to
eat healthier foods who haven't discovered us," Berliner says.
"We've got to figure out how to do that."
A new
line of Amy's canned products was launched last summer. "We'd been
looking for )'ears to expand on the Amy's brand name, which is strong in
health food stores, yet we wanted to get outside of the frozen area "
Berlner says. "We learned a little about canning, tasted all of the
soups available in the health food stores and discovered there could be a
tremendous quality gain." After some research, Amy's decided it could
improve on what was currently offered.
(from
Sonoma Business September 2000)
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