6 Questions with Russalynne Griggs of Good Eggs
Good Eggs is the simplest way to feed your family, all week long. We’re an online grocery delivery service based in the Bay Area, offering absurdly fresh local produce, easy weeknight meal kits, everyday staples, and wine, beer, and spirits — everything you want and everything you need, delivered to your door.
We believe feeding your family well shouldn’t come with a tradeoff—be it your time, your standards, or your wallet. We’re pioneering a new way to fill your fridge, by sourcing the best food from producers we know and trust, and bringing it straight to you—all at a price the same or less than your grocery store.
1. Tell us about your role at Good Eggs and how you’re setting yourself apart in the grocery delivery sphere.
We are what you would think of if you combine Amazon and Whole Foods, though we do not have a brick and mortar store where customers come in and purchase. That is what really sets us apart. We are dedicated to providing absurdly fresh groceries and the best service to our customers who go online, shop our site, and have their items delivered to them.
Good Eggs has its own warehouse designed for grocery delivery, rather than shipping to a supermarket warehouse, delivering to a supermarket, unpacking, shelving an item, and then having someone pull it from that shelf to deliver it to a consumer. Without a retail store, the company can also use a different environment; produce, for example, stays refrigerated, and employees wear warm clothing to work with it, something that wouldn’t happen in a supermarket produce section. Our website now offers over 5k items, a fraction of a typical supermarket’s scope, but with curated options for every standard item, from meat to snacks.
The other piece that truly sets us apart is that we are as locally sourced as possible. We require 100% transparency from all of our producers, and we attempt to stay within a 250-mile radius of our hubs. If we have to go outside of that for, let’s say bananas that don't grow here in California, we make sure the producer we choose is focusing on our mission and values.
As the face of our Talent Acquisition team, I get to be a direct link to the community. Through participating in job fairs and community spotlight events. I have played a crucial role in building relationships with several of our Hiring partners throughout the bay area, including The West Oakland Job Resource Center to continuously bolster our workforce.
Through them, we are committed to hiring 50% of our workforce from the city of Oakland. 25% of those individuals are from disadvantaged neighborhoods. And WOJRC (the West Oakland Job Resource Center) helps complete that compliance piece by asking those critical questions that we as employers are unable to ask.
We utilize Checkr for background checks. We hit 50-75 checks monthly. We also utilize Driver Pro for all of our delivery drivers. That is an amazing product. We do drug screening and use the pre- and post-adverse options through the platform.
2. How do you maintain and improve efficiencies at that volume?
With Checkr, we see results within 48 to 72 hours. I receive updates when a certain county may be slower. The way that our process works is that we have on-site interviews weekly, and we actually hire on-the-spot during those interviews. I'd say we average about 40 a week over a 2-day span. We have a whole team dedicated to it. Over the weekend, we held our first job fair in our new facility and conducted about 350 interviews. About half to three fourths of them will make the cut to the background stage.
With the integration into our ATS, having the option to select multiple candidates to send to the background check stage has been extremely helpful in streamlining our process. If we want to hire, say 15 candidates, I can go into my ATS, select that group of 15 and send them to the background check stage in our workflow. So, we essentially are able to move at a large volume versus doing things individually and waiting for weeks.
Everything is contingent hiring. Once we have moved you into the background check stage of our workflow, we send an offer letter and set up their start date. The only time we pause that process is if we receive a “consider” response back.
3. Can you tell us more about your commitment to fair chance hiring?
We are huge advocates for fair chance hiring. Having the pre- and post- adverse functions is game changing for us. Primarily because it helps us gain visibility into an individual's background. We don't want to just see what the report says, we want to connect with people to understand what they’ve been doing post-infraction or post-rehabilitation. What is their forward progression? What is their plan? It helps us to meet people as humans. What we've honestly learned is that those individuals who are fair chance or part of the reentry population are those who truly give us the most quality work.
4. You’ve recently moved to a new facility. What have been your biggest needs in terms of flexibility and scaling?
We were originally based in San Francisco, and recently opened our new fulfillment center in West Oakland, which is one of the compliance pieces with the WOJRC. Of course, with the company transitioning, we’ve had a huge need for flexibility. We've asked everyone to be as transparent as possible and we do the same because transitioning the company is tough. We want to make sure that we are being open and honest with our candidates and our current employees about what's going on. We have a 125,000 square foot facility to staff, which is four times the size of our old facility in San Francisco. Having the job fair this past weekend helped bolster those numbers.
5. What trends in hiring or staffing are you keeping your eye on right now, which might impact your ability to find and retain a quality workforce?
The largest hurdle is coming across candidates in this gig economy. We want people who obviously are going to be very dedicated to us as an employer. However, the gig economy and competing with people who have the option to literally hop in and out of jobs poses quite a bit of competition for us. We want to make sure that we offer our employees great benefits and a good place to call home for their work life, and a great work family that's supportive of them in all aspects. With the passing of AB-5 in California, we are shifting from having contracted drivers. We wanted to make sure that we not only were able to help the business, but also those individuals who would be losing slots.
6. How is Good Eggs responding to the recent pandemic?
When it comes to supporting the community, we have donated a large amount of food. For our vendors and producers, we are bringing on as much of their surplus product as we can to assist with what can not be offloaded due to the shelter in place ordinance. When it comes to the health and safety of our employees and customers, we are providing all of our employees with gloves, mask, and hand sanitizer as needed. Drivers are no longer picking up boxes and bottle returns. In addition to increasing the sanitizing and disinfection of high touch spots within our facility. We have increased our food safety training in huddles and have moved to one use items as much as possible to eliminate additional touchpoints. On top of all that, we are following all CDC and FDA regulations to prevent COVID-19 transmission.
To increase the visibility of job opportunities, we are currently running campaigns on multiple platforms. We are hiring for roles across the board at the Good Eggs Kitchen as well as the Oakland Fulfilment Center. Additionally, we are conducting video interviews to maintain the health and safety of all parties.
Checkr continues to support our organization by providing transparency and quick turn around for all background checks submitted.
Russalynne Griggs is a Talent and Acquisition Manager at Good Eggs.