Amy’s Kitchen is a niche organic food company that started of necessity. Vegetarian parents, Rachel and Andy Berliner were expecting their first child. Rachel was on doctor-ordered bed rest with a need to feed two. Andy was grocery shopping looking for the best food for his growing family, vegetarian organic easily ready meals. Andy and Rachel have been concerned about the effects pesticides and the meat farming industries have on our environment and eventually ourselves in use today. The couple soon discovered the options were few if any, so they started making their own with the help of Rachel’s mom, Eleanor. Eleanor came up with the recipe for a very tasty pot pie in 1987, right after Amy was born.
The trio was soon joined by other family members to help cook the pot pies in the couple’s kitchen to sell while the newborn, named Amy slept nearby. It was also Rachel’s mom who came up with the company’s name, Amy’s Kitchen, from a dream she had the night before of what to name the fledging company that took off quickly to fill the needed untapped market. The pot pie was a huge success and was followed by new recipes by many requests from people all over, asking for more. Each recipe was developed through trial and error with a lot of taste testing and sourcing organic produce before there was a serious demand for organic produce. The Berliners have grown the company ever since. They opened a full-sized kitchen in June of 1988 dedicated to the business. They maintain strict cooking methodologies instead of manufacturing their products, opting for a less processed food product. They now have products in 43,000 national retailers of all sizes and are still growing from the beginning in natural food stores. Amy’s Kitchen currently has plans for a company headquarters to better serve their growing customer base with more people becoming educated on the less-than-favorable food processing used in mainstream food sourcing.