COVID-19: Partnership ensures job security & feeds community

The COVID-19 pandemic has most employees at our U.S. headquarter in Ridgefield and our Animal Health headquarter in Duluth working from home. The cafeteria staffs at those sites have few customers, but the company has kept them on the job. Employees of Sodexo, a company we contract with to run our dining facilities, have turned their attention instead to helping neighbors in need. The arrangement means a continued paycheck for hourly employees in tough economic times. In Ridgefield, a partnership between Boehringer Ingelheim, Sodexo and the nonprofit Food Rescue US has led roughly 50 cafeteria workers to prepare 250 meals a day for a homeless shelter, food pantry, other social-service agencies and a local hospice care center. In Duluth, eight Sodexo workers are preparing 310 meals a day three days a week – 60 for police and firefighters in nearby Gainesville, Ga., and 250 for Boehringer Ingelheim employees working onsite at a plant in Gainesville that manufactures poultry vaccines.