New owner of plant means more jobs for Pocatello

A California-based company will be moving into the Heinz plant in Pocatello.

Amy’s Kitchen plans to take over and reopen the plant.

The family-owned company, which has been making half a billion dollars a year in profits, started in 1988 to create frozen meals. All Amy’s Kitchen foods are vegetarian and certified organic. The company is owned by Rachel Berliner and her husband, Andy, and named after their daughter.

“This is why we started the business,” Berliner said as to why they named it after their daughter. “This is what we’re doing it for, to put her through college, and she did go to college. She went to Stanford and graduated the top of her class, so we’re excited about that.”

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter and city officials were at the official announcement at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning at the Pocatello Regional Airport.

Company officials hope the plant will to be in production with at least 200 employees by the beginning to middle of December. They said they will start off making just a few products, like macaroni and cheese. But the company hopes to expand not only its product line, but possibly the plant itself.

The facility already has nine spiral freezers.

“That’s more spiral freezers than we have in both our other plants together. So there’s potential here for this plant to be a major producer for Amy’s,” said CFO Mark Rudolph.

Rudolph also said the plant could bring 1,000 jobs to Pocatello – and he said he was being conservative with that number.