You’ll learn the whole business, whether you planned to or not
Pros
I’ve worked customer service at a few manufacturers and Berkley’s co-packing operation is the first place where I actually feel like I can solve problems for customers instead of just apologizing for them. When a club store order needs a change, I can walk out to the floor and talk to the people running the line. No ticket system, no three-day wait for someone in another building to respond. It’s family-owned and it acts like it. The founders are reachable. I’ve had the CEO respond to an email about a customer issue the same day, which sounds small until you’ve worked somewhere that would never happen. The work itself keeps you sharp. We handle co-packing for some serious CPG brands headed to Costco, Sam’s, and Walmart, so the standards are real and the customers know what they’re doing. You learn fast. Pallet specs, retail compliance, display packaging, freight, you end up knowing the whole picture instead of one narrow slice. Growth is visible. New reps, new locations, new equipment conversations happening out loud instead of behind closed doors. Leadership sends out regular company memos so you actually know what’s going on. Coworkers help each other because pods are structured around shared accounts, not competing ones.
Cons
Roles blur. The org chart says one thing, reality says another. I’ve done things well outside my job description because there was nobody else to do them. Some people like that. If you want a lane and a lane only, this isn’t the place. Growing pains are constant. New locations, new people, and we’re in the middle of an ERP implementation, so some processes live in the old system, some in the new one, and some in someone’s head. It’ll be better when it’s done, but right now you spend time working around systems instead of in them. HR is handled through PuzzleHR rather than in-house. Payroll and benefits questions get answered fast, there’s an anonymous hotline, and you can go straight to the account rep with anything. It works, but it’s a phone call instead of a walk down the hall, and some people never get comfortable with that. Pay is competitive, honestly better than I expected for a company this size, but the path upward isn’t always clear. Promotions happen when the business needs them, not on a schedule.
