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How Taylor Farms Rebuilt After Disaster

After a devastating fire at its flagship plant, Taylor Farms faced the challenge of reconstructing its processing facility. Through resilience, teamwork, and strategic innovation, the company emerged stronger and more productive than ever.

Taylor Farms Salinas Rebuilt
Taylor Farms opened its rebuilt processing facility as a state-of-the-art plant with increased efficiencies in every part of the building.
Dennis Group

In April 2022, Taylor Farms’ flagship facility in Salinas, Calif., suffered a devastating fire where their main foodservice leafy green production facility was located. The fire started between the walls of the decades-old structure, and the blaze eventually made its way to the roof, collapsing it in flames and destroying the 60,000-sq-ft of processing space. The larger building structure surrounding that production area remained mostly intact.

In the immediate aftermath, the company decided to rebuild the facility on the same real estate . CEO Bruce Taylor also set the bar high with a one-year deadline to finish that project. Meanwhile, customer deliveries of triple-washed lettuce, romaine, cabbage, baby spinach, baby spring mix, and green leaf would go on as scheduled, leveraging the company’s network of plants and distribution to pick up the slack, relying on a seasonal facility in Yuma, Ariz., and other local facilities near Salinas, California for processing and shipping.

Right on schedule, Taylor Farms reopened in April 2023, but along the way the company and design/build partner Dennis Group encountered obstacles of every kind, from supply chain issues for materials and components to catastrophic weather events like an atmospheric river that turned the construction site into a mud pit, and flooded Salinas as well.

Taylor Farms FireAfter Taylor Farms' processing facility in Salinas, Calif., burned down, the company set an ambitious goal of one year for a complete rebuild.Dennis Group

“This factory was our first factory in California. This was our first home for Taylor Farms, and it was like family coming together after losing their first house,” says John Krbechek, VP of engineering at Taylor Farms Foodservice Division. “Failure [to rebuild] was not an option.” 

Today, Taylor Farms has a state-of-the-art processing plant with a weekly production volume of 15 million lb of fresh-cut produce. It’s one of the highest capacity plants of its kind in the industry, and because of this phoenix-like rise from the ashes, Taylor Farms has earned a Manufacturing Innovation Award from ProFood World. Here, we’ll detail how Taylor Farms used the blank slate of reconstruction as an opportunity to increase efficiencies in processing, sustainability, sanitation, and much more.

Rerouting production

The strategic triage enacted after the fire by Taylor Farms began with making sure customers received their produce orders without interruption, while detailed plansSalad Blend were created to rebuild the Salinas plant on a one-year timeline.

Taylor Farms has 22 production locations across North America, and depending on the location, produces a combination of fresh vegetables and fresh food items for restaurants, schools, grocery stores and convenience stores. The Salinas plant that burned down was dedicated to the foodservice market segment, so production remained in the seasonal sister facility for an extended term in Yuma, while a logistical system to service customers was created to receive raw produce and finished produce from six other coolers.

Every year between April and November, leafy greens are grown and processed in Salinas. Then from November to April, production equipment is trucked from Salinas to Yuma to continue processing, since that’s when leafy greens are grown and harvested in that region.


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Serendipitously, because the Salinas fire happened in April, all the equipment necessary to continue processing greens in Yuma was still there, about to be sent back to Salinas. So, Taylor Farms kept operations going in Yuma, sending raw vegetables now being harvested in Salinas to Yuma for processing, then back to Salinas to be shipped to clients.

With those immediate production problems solved, Krbechek and Jeffrey Lewandoski, senior partner at Dennis Group, turned their attention to rebuilding the Salinas plant and using the opportunity to upgrade and modernize the facility from the ground up.

Here you can watch a timelapse video of the interior of the plant being built and populated with processing equipment.

“It was pretty devastating when we were looking [into the ruins] and it was still smoldering. We had big evaporative coils that were just melted into a pool of aluminum,” says Krbechek. “The surrounding building structure survived the fire but the infrastructure, electrical, refrigeration, water, and all the utilities had to be redone, rerouted, or reconfigured.”

Sanitation Strategies

Starting from scratch meant Taylor Farms could build a new plant envelope up to the very latest hygienic standards, and those high standards would apply to everything inside that envelope. “The whole facility is a food-safe, sanitary washdown space, including walls, ceilings, floors, and drains—there are no points that can’t be cleaned,” says Lewandoski. “Nothing is tight to the walls that you can’t clean behind. We have two-inch standoffs on all piping, conduit, racks, and everything is washdown ready, from the lights to the doors to the frames, everything can get wet, soaked, and sanitized,” he says, adding that they used either stainless steel or galvanized steel for materials because those don’t rust, which can be a hazard in a food plant.

The flooring and equipment placed on it was also designed with the same sanitary strategy to be cleaned from all angles. The flooring includes trench drains and is sloped strategically in high-use areas to avoid pooling water—especially important in a triple-wash processing operation. “Everything that’s on the floor is held an inch-and-a-half off with grout pads. Nothing is sitting flat on the floor, so it’s all cleanable,” notes Lewandoski. Drying areas were also upgraded by converting overhead monorails to round tubing so water can’t pool on it.

While thorough cleaning and sanitation happens daily after each shift, Krbechek says at least once a quarter, the equipment is disassembled and moved to another part of the Taylor Farms campus for deep cleaning. “We actually cook [the parts] in an oven and bake them, so bacteria doesn’t have a chance to survive. Our new factory is designed to get that equipment out the doors easily, get it cleaned, and bring it back inside for reassembly.”

Shredded LettuceWhile daily cleaning and sanitation happens on the processing lines between each shift, at least once a quarter the equipment is disassembled and moved to another part of the campus for high-heat deep cleaning to ensure food safety.Dennis Group

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