As much as we love being a distributed company with the freedom to work remotely, we certainly still have workplace challenges. To make it all work and still foster a positive team culture, we know we need to be intentional about creating shared experiences and a sense of community. Throw in a global pandemic on top of things, and the need to support the team becomes even more important.
That's why, last year, we started a new tradition.
It was the middle of summer, and we all needed a pick-me-up. We wanted to renew our team’s sense of community when most of us were miles away from each other and unable to convene in-person.
We started researching ideas in the hope that we’d come across something sweet we could send to everyone at their individual homes.
Enter Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood, California— a family-owned farm with a mission to “bring high quality, fresh, organic produce to people everywhere with the least impact on our land, people and community.” Frog Hollow is a stone fruit farm. They grow cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, and many other delicious foods. They’re committed to regenerative agriculture, believe in fair labor practices, and avoid synthetic chemicals in their growing process.
We knew immediately that this was a company whose mission aligned with our own mission to Make Things That Matter. They were committed to doing something good in the world, and we wanted to champion that effort.
Fortunately, it was the height of peach season when we stumbled across the folks at Frog Hollow, and we knew just what to do. We promptly ordered 3lb boxes of peaches for every team member — contractors and partners included — and shipped them right to their homes.
We had one caveat: please send pictures! Please share recipes! Ok, that’s technically two caveats, but we felt it was only fair to share. And sharing was the fundamental goal of this endeavor. Our team gleefully exchanged photos of morning fruits bowls, peaches on the grill, peaches and cream, and — perhaps most telling of all — a single peach pit: a remnant of something so good it had to be enjoyed immediately.
Ultimately, although this tradition may seem insignificant, it’s gone a long way in making our team’s lives happier. Now, every August, we all get a box of fresh fruit on our doorstep, we open them “together,” and share photos, talk about recipes, and delight in how delicious they are. It brings us together in a world that’s become strangely fractured. And at the end of the day, we think that matters.