POCATELLO — Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter and Mayor Brian Blad made it official Wednesday morning at the Pocatello Regional Airport — Amy’s Kitchen is coming to the Gate City. And with it will come 200 jobs in December, with the possibility of reaching 1,000 in a few years.

    In addition to the 200 immediate jobs at the food plant, Amy’s Kitchen Chief Financial Officer Mark Rudolph said the company will spend $25 million in capital improvements at the plant immediately and pledged to use local contractors. The family-owned company is hoping to begin production at Pocatello in December.

    “There is more capacity here than at our plants in Santa Rosa, California, and Medford, Oregon, combined,” Rudolph said of the Pocatello facility.

    Amy’s Kitchen product sales outstripped its ability to produce its various lines of over 88 frozen meals. These include pizzas, pocket sandwiches, pot pies, entrées, snacks and whole meals that meet the needs of people with special diets, including vegetarians. Rudolph said despite the need for additional production facilities, the company reached a half  billion dollars in sales this year.

    “That’s a lot of individual meals,” Rudolph said.

    The company began in 1988 when co-founders Rachel Berliner and husband Andy started producing vegetarian pot pies. They named their fledgling company after their daughter Amy.

    Berliner shared the rise of the family’s company in the lobby of the airport Wednesday.

    “We felt there was a need for natural organic meals that tasted good,” Berliner said. “We had no idea we’d be that successful.”

    Berliner said Amy’s takes a different approach to producing its food items, and said it is more like home cooking. The company employs its own chefs, crafts its own recipes and sources its own ingredients.

    “We just freeze it. We don’t add chemicals,” Berliner said.

    Over the years, the company has tailored products to meet niches in market demand by producing some items that are non-dairy and non-wheat gluten.

    “Any time a consumer writes us, I read it,” Berliner said. “That’s what you can do with a family business. We provide a service.”

    Rudolph said the company realized it couldn’t get a new plant built from scratch, and up and running, to meet demand fast enough. So it started looking at existing plants to buy. It first contacted Pocatello on Sept. 11. This put Bannock Development Corp., The Pocatello-Chubbuck Chamber of Commerce, and city and county officials in high gear.

    “We had to do it fast and they made it happen,” Rudolph said.

    The Idaho Department of Commerce also went to work with its economic development board and worked on getting a Tax Reimbursement Incentive plan in place for Amy’s. The company is approved to receive a tax credit of 26 percent for 15 years.

    The law, which makes Tax Reimbursement Incentives possible, passed the Legislature last session and went into effect July 1. Sen. Roy Lacey, D-Pocatello, was the original author of the bill and he worked on it for three years. It initially focused only on agriculture-related value added business expansion, but was enlarged to cover all businesses in Idaho that can bring growth and jobs.

    To further entice Amy’s Kitchen, the Bannock County Commissioners approved a 75 percent property tax abatement for the next five years that covers the existing Heinz property and any future investments.

    In 2013 the Heinz property was valued at $18 million and it paid $364,679 in property taxes.

    Commissioner Steve Hadley said the county’s decision to give the company the large tax break for the first five years cemented the deal.

    “That’s what brought them here,” Hadley said.

    Mayor Blad said he appreciated the coordination and efforts of leaders with the city, county, state and community.

    “We’ll put our talented work force back to work,” Blad said.

    Approximately 400 employees at Heinz lost their jobs when the plant was idled in June.