production associate

packer

production supervisor

production lead

sanitation worker

Home Chef

On a day to day basis, it's a gloomy atmosphere all round. The workers never come in with a good morale because they are being overworked, talked to like children, and at the end of the day the work they do is not even appreciated nor are they paid for overtime. You also have the power hungry supervisors who are not even on the level of management. People who get even the smallest boost in responsibility abuse it or never do their jobs well. Best description for this place would be slave work with slave masters doing nothing but stand around and expect workers to be as satisfied as they are. Even with the company growing exponentially they never compensate their workers who are the blood of the company, without them orders would never get shipped out. They say it's an open environment, but the divide between management and staff is like night and day. People who work with the food, customer service and social media come in to work well rested, less stressed and well compensated. While the production team is worn out and ill-prepared to work in frigid temperatures; treated less than human. The hardest part of the job is having to dumb yourself down, not being able to contribute in any sort of creative or relevant way. There is nothing enjoyable about this job. All they do is hire people who they think will not read into how much they are being undervalued. The turn-over rate is so high that there's almost no room for advancement. If they higher you for a position, they would rather you stay there to do what they need you to do in order to maximize profit. Occasionally (rarely) giving people $10 Chipotle gift cards to make them feel like there's more to a $9/hr job. What people do there and the conditions they endure is well worth a $15/hr pay. Management should really screen who they let work there, some people have sketchy backgrounds, the management themselves don't know how to effectively run their company. If they think making small schedule changes or hiring and firing people for no real reason won't have adverse effects on the company, they should think again. Would not recommend for anyone with an option, it's a dead-end job.

I worked as an employee at Home Chef in Curtis Bay for some time. At first everything seemed great. It seemed positive and like a good environment to work in. However that soon faded... Quickly! The biggest problem this company has is management. Starting with the leads and going up the chain to the Supervisors and Managers. Also don't forget HR. HR has the absolute worst attitudes. They are not there for the employees at all. If you have an issue and go to HR just know they will go back and tell whoever you reported exactly what you said and who reported them. The management is absolutely unprofessional. The Supervisors and Managers have very negative attitudes. They have extreme favoritism. They speak to most  employees with the absolute utmost disrespect. It is a very "clicky" environment where people in positions of "power" have their favorites and friends that they associate with. You are not appreciated no matter how hard you work. They actually make that known that they don't care if you stay or leave. They have morning meetings during first shift where the manager is very negative and very unprofessional. The company wonders why they have such a high turnover rate. Well yes there were employees that never had intentions on staying there long or out in the work but there is a good percentage of employees there that work extremely hard just to be taken advantage of and never be appreciated as well as dealing with disrespect and favoritism. Most things that go on at that location go unreported because employees are too afraid to make a report and end up being targeted! I personally enjoyed the work however for my own mental health and well-being I had to make the decision to depart from the company solely due to management. Their disrespect, the favoritism, the lack of appreciation, the lack of organization and communication. If they ever want the Baltimore location to make a turn around they need to revamp starting with management and work its way down! 

When I first started at Home Chef, I was excited. The job itself was enjoyable. I liked helping customers, the systems were easy to use, and I was performing well. I thought I found a long-term role I could grow in.

That all changed when I got my team lead out of training. My new team lead was unresponsive and disengaged. I’d ask questions and be ignored for hours, sometimes with no reply at all. One-on-ones were short, pointless, and felt like something she just had to get through. There was no real support or leadership, and it became clear that as long as numbers looked good, nothing else mattered.

I cared about my work and gave it my best, but when leadership doesn’t acknowledge or support you, it kills your motivation. I ended up resigning because I couldn’t deal with the disrespect and lack of communication anymore.

Pros:
   •   Fully remote
   •   Easy systems and training
   •   The actual work is meaningful
   •   Great coworkers

Cons:
   •   Poor management communication
   •   Team leads rarely help agents during high volume times
   •   Questions raised in meetings are often ignored
   •   Extremely strict QA standards with little grace or flexibility
   •   Chat scheduling is unreasonable, especially on Fridays
   •   No additional support when agents are burned out
   •   Schedule changes made without notice or concern for employee well-being
   •   Lack of diversity in leadership
   •   No transparency about internal policies
   •   TLs do not step in to help when volume is overwhelming
   •   Breaks and restroom time are micromanaged
   •   Hard to advance or be noticed, even if you’re a strong performer
   •   Unrealistic expectations with little support
   •   Leadership is disconnected from the day-to-day agent experience

Advice to Management:
Listen to your agents. So many are frustrated but stay quiet to avoid retaliation. Just because someone is good with metrics doesn’t mean they should be in charge of people. I loved the job itself, but one bad team lead completely ruined it. You’re losing good employees because of bad leadership.

While the department has a relaxed work environment the day to day aspects can be overwhelming. I worked for Home Chef for 4 years and the nonstop problems that crop up due to the companies we partnered with caused excessive workloads. The production department is also filled with people who need to be retrained, they can’t seem to keep inventory on hand, ever. The amount of money lost due to shipping related issues, production issues, and the sheer idiocy of customers that can’t fathom certain aspects of food is staggering. If the operations team could figure out a better way they could absolutely give everyone a meaningful raise. Managing problems is the job of the customer support department but they are for the whole company to bear. Unfortunately, most other departments don’t care to solve issues because they don’t have to deal with repeated customers problems. Home chef customers are awful. When you talk to good ones it’s okay but the bad ones are demanding and entitled. They also have no clue about anything but constantly talk like they do.

The management team was going downhill when I left. Some of them are good and helpful but definitely lots of egos on the team.  I left due to lack of advancement and all the stress.This company is best to work for a couple years and then leave. 

I can say a lot about working at Home Chef. I worked in Bedford Park less than a year. The pay was less than minimum wage because they were outside of the Chicago city limits so “they were not required to pay minimum wage”. The work is what you would expect in a cold, food production environment. You work on your feet for 8 to 10 hours depending on the work load and if they managers panicked and felt they were not going to meet their quota. The staff is very diverse which is nice, but there was a whole lot of “stick with your own kind” mentality at this location. Some of the people were really nice though and race wasn’t a factor as long as you worked hard. I will say there was a lot of room for growth with the company, but you definitely needed your own vehicle as the start times were pretty early and even though the facility was accessible by public trans, not always for the earlier hours (I.e. 6 or 7 am). Moral of the story, if you can stand 40 degree weather for 8 hour periods or longer, are familiar with the typical gossip/semi racist atmosphere of a warehouse, and have reliable transportation, this job can be a great stepping stone to make some consistent money.  Side note: I don’t believe they do background checks because a lot of people spoke about being ex felons there.

High turn over rate wouldn't recommend people to work here. Supervisors and managers have a thing with favorites employees and elast favorite.  Least favorites are isolated from talking to others and told to be silent. I can understand if work isn't being completed due to distraction,  but this isn't the case.
Certain supervisors target individuals that they do not care for. This is very unprofessional work is not a place for friends or likes . It's for work they pay no attention to how are staff keeps shrinking due to their offensive actions up employees. The point system is horrible please don't be sick one day you have to have a 3 days of abcenses with a dr. Note to not be pointed  which makes no sense what so ever. The leads are able to tell the supervisors that they want and or don't care for certain staff in their groups which is descrimination so we're forced to have to same lead no choice in where to station for subordinates. But a lead can say who they do not like and supervisors take it into accountability.  This is highly unprofessional for a place of work.  Likes or dislike of a person or persons should not determine how work flow is run. Happy employees create better work place. Give employees freedom to choose their leads for the day  and or spacific prep task 

This is my first time working for a start up company and I really value the experience I'm gaining.  If you're a hard worker and don't mind being kept on your toes it's fantastic. Home Chef is growing at an exponential rate and things change constantly.  That type of environment may not be for everyone, but if you like never having a dull moment you may just fit right in.  If you're a leader and know how to take and then build upon constructive criticism there's really no limit to where you can grow with this company. I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed or frustrated with the poor communication between certain departments, but it isn't ever anything that can't be worked through. A good deal of the management team is young and it may seem as though they are inexperienced when it comes to employee relations, but they're very obviously eager to please and that counts for something to me.  My coworkers are always pretty selflessly offering themselves up to help or providing learning tools.  Everyone is relatively friendly.   A pretty cool thing is there are often after work group activities so that we can get to know each other and/or celebrate milestones. I'm very happy to be working with Home Chef and I consider it the best impulsive decision I've ever made to join the team.

Cold environment so bundle up, be ready to stand for 8 hours, and there are multiple roles if you are a food Production Associate to do.
There are other positions to apply for as well such as Quality Assurance, Warehouse, and Sanitation, other side positions are safety leads, Tech guy, and Human resources which are higher up for pay.
Production Associate, Warehouse, Quality Assurance, and Sanitation are the ones on the cold work area though, the main 2 work areas.

The job is mostly easy as I'm Production Associate but you're gonna be moving alot with your arms, you could be moving alot with your legs too if you're a loader. The other positions seem to be easy for them as well but there will be hard days despite that.

Point system for being late/absent/leave early needs work so it can keep more employees, takes a long time to rack up vacation days, you do get Tme and a Half if you choose to work on holidays though and for working over 40 hours each hour so that's good.

I've worked here for a year almost & as someone I've seen several people come and go in the span of like two days. People don't stay long here & it's not because of how cold it is. Home Chef is not it. I've learned a lot here, mostly about corporate America & how you can't really trust in anyone to do their jobs here.

The tasks themselves are easy, but the management, paired with the behaviors of other associates & HOW management choose to address these discrepancies, terrible. I've been here long enough to see how it changes, and it's not in the company's best interest. They make decisions that effectively cause people to quit, and then wonder why these people quit.

They don't treat their associates right here. There's too much of the "clique" mentality among associates, there's always another shift's responsibilities being thrown onto the last shift. Home Chef is just not built to keep their people. They overwork their people and then have the gall to have a problem with people not continuing to be taken advantage of. 

Also. their communication is trash. They do everything with no common sense whatsoever and make their job harder than it ever has to be. 

Management at Home Chef is definitely a team atmosphere. The management's work ethic is second to none. They say they are always available, and more often than not they hold to their word.

 Expectations are high, but so are rewards. Compensation for good work it not held back and recognition for a job well done is constant. 

But with the good also comes the bad. If someone is not working to expectations, they are very quickly moved out. Being as fast paced as it is, management sometimes ask for more than what is normally expected and is not shy to promote from within and compensate for good work and dedication. A lot of the reviews so far have been negative at Home Chef but these are most likely from former employees that did not pull their weight. 

Overall, Home Chef does ask for a lot, but to those which much is given, much is expected. "Coasting" or talking up a good game is very quickly seen through and weeded out. Teamwork is valued overall and commitment to our customers and company is preached.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Production associate 1 salary reported	$9.00 per hour
Packer 10 salaries reported	$43.25 per hour
Production supervisor 17 salaries reported	$65,221 per year
Production lead 1 salary reported	$20.50 per hour
Sanitation worker 6 salaries reported	$80,583 per year

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