Tito’s turned ‘the worst piece of dirt’ into a 14-acre farm to feed its employees

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.

“When we’re interviewing people, [it’s] part of the conversation of some of the benefits of working for us,” Pastel said. “What tells someone that we care about them more than ‘We feed you every day lunch and we provide you with [fruits and] vegetables to take home once a week’?”

The Seven Acres Farm and farmers market is also a good way to bring employees from different parts of the organization together to interact and share with one another, she said.

Free lunch with a side of education. Tito’s has expanded its programming beyond free lunches and take-home totes filled with carrots and kale. Now employees can learn how to meal prep with the 75 varieties of produce offered.

“We’re going from vending machines to clean, healthy, nutrient-dense vegetables. They may not know how to cook all of this,” Lukken said. “We have a couple organic chefs there that help cook for the employees and show them…how to cook the vegetables that we’re growing.”

What about me? Not every office has an adjacent empty lot available for a fully-functional farm or the resources to staff a gaggle of farmers, but Pastel said most offices probably have space for a small container or herb garden.

At a Tito’s satellite office in East Austin, the company designated a small area to plant and cultivate herbs, she said. Lukken recommended to others interested in developing a fresh food program to start small and beta-test, a lot and often.

Like broccoli, just try it. It’s not like a vodka company had any special expertise to get into the employee farm business.

“It was completely flying by the seat of your pants,” she said.