Editor’s note: This is part of a series exploring how Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs and small businesses have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and their plans for moving forward.
Maker: Evan Delahanty
Business: Peaceful Fruits, a Barberton-based organic fruit snack company
How have your normal business operations changed since the pandemic hit in March?
It's definitely been a roller coaster ride for us. You know, we are a food manufacturer, so we were deemed essential. So we stayed open. But because we employ adults with disabilities, they're at higher risk both because of their living situations and health concerns and everything else. And so even before the official lockdown, we were already pretty carefully talking, you know, Governor DeWine would have his briefing, and then we would have a conversation with the folks at The Blick Center to evaluate the risk. And we decided just slightly ahead of the lockdown, to really cut back and then to totally suspend the program once the lockdown went into place.
Bonny King (right), an occupational therapist with The Blick Center in Akron, works with Jayda to count packages of fruit snacks.
Have you found ways to provide support to your employees, many of whom are among the most vulnerable right now?
Some people are really scared. They’re worried that Peaceful Fruits is going out of business, because they're just used to the good things in life being taken away from them. And so it's a lot of reassurance to say, ‘Look, we're here, we're working, we're going to be here when you're ready to come back, when you're able to come back and, you still have a place here.’ You’ve got to be ready to reassure people as best you can because there is a lot of uncertainty. But so far, we are as set as we can be to weather the storm. It's not smooth sailing or anything, but I can say we’re going to be here on the far side to the best of my knowledge, and we’re going to keep on pushing to make that true.
Kim fills trays with pureed fruit, which will eventually go into a large dehydrator.
Even though we’re living day by day, have you given any thought to the future of your business?
We’ve tried to take this time to really refocus on our research and development, and just make sure that when things do come back that we’re prepared, because we are getting ready to launch an entirely new product line that we think is really exciting and has some potential to be more disruptive and more innovative than where we started three or four years ago with the fruit snacks. And so, just really honing in on the packaging, honing in on the products, the recipes, the flavors, the positioning. Hopefully we're not losing ground over these three to six months as long as we're still in a financial position to launch them properly.
After dehydration, the fruit snacks are ready to be packaged.
