The Grazing Mind

Brian Allen from our Horizon sales team was on Denver’s 9News this morning to talk about WhiteWave’s sponsorship of the BolderBOULDER and the company’s training program for all employees in our Broomfield office. WhiteWave’s training program with Ric Rojas supports the health and wellness of Broomfield-based employees and is an example of how WhiteWave is working to become a different kind of food company.

The BolderBOULDER 10k is held on Memorial Day (this Monday!) and this year, WhiteWave has 80 employees registered to run the race.

Watch the video clip from 9News and learn more here: http://www.9news.com/rss/story.aspx?storyid=337108

If you come to WhiteWave’s headquarters in Broomfield and are an expectant mama, we have a reserved parking spot for you right up front. Go mamas!

In keeping with our goal to change the way the world eats for the better, WhiteWave is participating in the Community Food Share Compete to Beat Hunger Corporate Challenge. Community Food Share (CFS) is a hunger-relief organization in Boulder and Broomfield counties which helps feed one in six county residents who live at or below the poverty line.

This is WhiteWave’s ninth year participating in the Corporate Challenge to raise money for CFS and our fundraising tactics have evolved over the years into one week of grassroots fundraising events that build community and create a little friendly competition between departments at our Broomfield headquarters. Right now at our office, we have more than 20 fundraising events taking place ranging from hosting raffles and kickball games, to selling cupcakes, homemade lip balm and pie sales.

This is my first year being involved with Corporate Challenge and it’s a blast! Everyone is so creative with their fundraising event ideas which makes it easy to give generously to CFS. So far, we’ve raised over 50 percent of our fundraising goal and the challenge is not yet over. I’m confident that WhiteWave will meet our fundraising goal this year!

We hope you all had a great Mother’s Day. Check out the bulletin board in our Mother’s Room of our sweet WhiteWave babies.

Check out this great video to learn more about how WhiteWave has supported Community Food Share over the years.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsho2F2YLHc

Jos and Deanna Poland both have dairying roots that reach back to their grandparents on both sides. Jos is originally from Holland, and moved to Oregon in 1993 to start a dairy farm near Eugene. Deanna grew up on an Oregon dairy farm. The Polands moved to Madras, Ore. in 2005 to start an organic dairy because they wanted to have their cows out on pasture, as grazing was a common practice in Holland when Jos was growing up.

“We think grazing is much better for the cows, and less stressful on us,” Jos says. “The cows are healthy and their immune systems are strong because they’re outside all of the time,” according to Jos.

In addition, Jos also has a deep belief in the importance of soil health and its connection to cow health and ultimately human health. “You are what you eat,” he says. Deanna agrees, “If organic is good for the cows, it’s got to be great for us! We’ve put in an organic garden, and buy more organic products now,” she says.

Jos and Deanna have three children: seven-year-old son Johan and five-year old twins Maija and Maikel, who all help out on the farm.

The Polands were the recipients of Horizon’s 2008 National Quality Award, which recognizes the Horizon farmer who consistently delivers the highest quality organic milk of all Horizon family farms in a given year.

We wanted to share more photos of the great kids we had at WhiteWave’s headquarters in Broomfield last Thursday for Bring Your Kids to Work Day. The kids were so engaged, interested and sharp. We can’t wait to have them back next year!

More than 150 kids came to WhiteWave’s Headquarters in Broomfield yesterday for Bring Your Kids to Work Day. Here are some pictures of our WhiteWave kiddos. We had such a great time with all of them.

Yesterday, The Denver Post published “The Denver Post Top Workplaces” – a list of the best places to work in the Denver metro area. More than 1,000 local companies were invited to participate and WhiteWave was ranked #14 of the 58 mid-sized companies that applied for the Denver Post’s 100 Best Places to Work for 2013.

The evaluation for the Top Workplaces program is based upon feedback from an employee survey that Colorado-based employees of WhiteWave Foods completed a few months ago. The survey asked our employees questions about engagement, organizational health and satisfaction. We are honored to have been selected for the award, particularly as the judges were our employees!

This award tells us we’re making progress toward achieving our goal of becoming the Earth’s favorite food company.  To thank our employees for participating in the survey and helping us make the list, we placed a flower and thank you note at each employee’s desk this morning. At WhiteWave, we believe each of our employees can make a difference in our future, and we value our diverse group of smart, passionate, hard-working people. One of our company values is “Individuals Matter” and this rings true today and every day.

As part of WhiteWave’s Values in Action (VIA) program that promotes volunteerism, community involvement, and environmental events and initiatives, our friends at Growing Gardens in Boulder came to our office recently to talk with us about the amazing world of honeybees. Interesting brown bag presentations such as this one are just one of the perks that employees of WhiteWave Foods get to enjoy. We learned so many fascinating facts about honeybees and want to share some of our favorites.

• The honeybee is the only insect in North America that doesn’t hibernate in the winter
• A honeybee’s whole body is covered in hair – even the eyes!
• If you could combine all of the brains in a swarm of bees, the swarm would have a brain similar in size to a dog’s brain
• A honeybee’s sense of smell is 40 times better than humans
• If you get stung by a bee, smell the spot where you were stung. It will smell like bananas!
• In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will produce one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey
• The average American consumes a little more than one pound of honey each year
• Bees possess five eyes – three simple eyes that discern light intensity and two large compound eyes for detecting movement

Some of the most valuable fruits, nuts and field crops depend on insect pollinations, particularly pollination from honeybees.

• Almonds – 100% pollinated by bees
• Apples – 90%
• Blueberries – 90%
• Peaches – 48%
• Oranges – 27%

Honeybees are responsible for one third of our food supply. Thank you, honeybees!