How a couple's kitchen table and a bean burrito built a $1 billion food empire

andy rachel amy (Credit: courtesy of Amy's Kitchen)

In the kitchen of a modest Victorian ranch house in Northern California, there sits a small round table. For nearly 30 years, this table served as the primary research and development lab for a food empire.

It was here that Fred, the original chef for Amy’s Kitchen, would arrive from the nearby production plant, plopping down trial recipes for founders Andy and Rachel Berliner to taste. “He’d bring it in… and we would taste it,” Rachel Berliner recalled, speaking to Fortune via Zoom from the same Petaluma house. “And then he would say, ‘add a little more spice,’ or ‘let’s tone the vegetables down.’ Then he’d take it back to the kitchen… back and forth.”